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> I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds... Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are repo

> I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds... Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often and hardly any good ones? I mean, there are a LOT of officers in the U.S. Surely they aren't all overstepping. One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day out, every single day. I'm sure it colors one's view of the world after a while. But even given this, I hardly believe that officers are "significantly (and often) overstepping their bounds".

rrmm 11y ago
Significant and often are clearly a matter of perspective: what's significant and how often is too often? Realistically, there will always be some incidents. Ideally, they should be as few as possible such that law enforcement is still effective (for whatever value of effective that society chooses). The severity also factors in: No one will probably care all that much if a cop screws up the exact wording of a miranda warning, but when the consequences are someone dead and police perjuring themselves, it takes a lot fewer of those incidents.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  As the poster I was replying to didn't set any constraints, its clear they meant generally. I disagree that generally officers significantly overstep their bounds.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Even if just 10% of US officers "overstep their bounds", whereas in the UK or Germany only 1% do, it's still a huge problem. That it's not the "general case" it's hardly any consolation.
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      Nice. Where'd you get the numbers?
      - coldtea 11y ago
        They are made-up example numbers to show that even if something is not the "general case" (e.g. majority), it can still be a huge problem if it's big enough, especially if it's bigger than the norm in other "civilized" countries. Note that you didn't provide any numbers for "most cops don't overstep their bounds" either. If we consider "killing citizens" as "overstepping their bounds" (and I'd say is the most overstepping a policeman can do), then US police does it by about 1-2 orders of magnitude (70 - 100 times) more than other western countries... Here are some actual hard numbers: For instance, an April 2007 study of the Chicago Police Department found that out of more than 10,000 police abuse complaints filed between 2002 and 2003, only 19 (0.19%) resulted in meaningful disciplinary action. The study charges that the police department's oversight body allows officers with "criminal tendencies to operate with impunity," and argues that the Chicago Police Department should not be allowed to police itself.[29] Only 19% of large municipal police forces have a civilian complaint review board (CCRB). Law enforcement jurisdictions that have a CCRB have an excessive force complaint rate against their officers of 11.9% verses 6.6% complaint rate for those without a CCRB. Of those forces without a CCRB only 8% of the complaints were sustained.[30] Thus, for the year 2002, the rate at which police brutality complaints were sustained was 0.53% for the larger police municipalities nationwide. Here are some more: According to the 2014 Legatum Prosperity Index released in November, in the measure of personal freedom, the United States has fallen from 9th place in 2010 to 21st worldwide—behind such countries as Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Uruguay and Costa Rica. Other such rankings systems show the US as low as 46. Let’s look at our immediate neighbors to the north, Canada. The total number of citizens killed by law enforcement officers in the year 2014, was 14; that is 78 times less people than the US. If we look at the United Kingdom, 1 person was killed by police in 2014 and 0 in 2013. English police reportedly fired guns a total of three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities. From 2010 through 2014, there were four fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent the size of England’s, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same time period. China, whose population is 4 and 1/2 times the size of the United States, recorded 12 killings by law enforcement officers in 2014. Let that sink in. Law enforcement in the US killed 92 times more people than a country with nearly 1.4 billion people. It doesn’t stop there. From 2013-2014, German police killed absolutely no one. And more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... And let's not even get into BS like sending SWAT teams for any BS offense, like getting some stoned teenager... http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-america...
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    Even if most officers don't overstep their bounds themselves, they cover for and protect their buddies who do. This makes the majority of cops bad cops.
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      Really? They do this? Sure... Edit: If you had said "some" and not "majority", I'd have agreed with you. But "majority" is just cockamamey, made up BS!
- geggam 11y ago
  Changing the mission back to peace keeping instead of law enforcement would go a long way to fixing the issue. Enforcing the law causes more problems than it solves. See : drug war
  - Retra 11y ago
    There's no point in having laws you don't enforce.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Not enforcing a law is much easier than repealing a law. I'm not sure about the US, but in UK plenty of law is enforced less rigorously before it's scrapped.
DanBC 11y ago
> One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day out, every single day. US police kill very many more people than other first world police forces. It's not surprising that gets a lot of press coverage. The US police forces seem to do a poor job of getting rid of the bad officers. Someone who is sacked from one force for being emotionally unstable should not be able to get a job with a gun on another force without jumping through considerable hoops. There are very many examples of this - officers with more than normal numbers of complaints for aggressive behaviour, with disciplinary action for aggressive behaviour, who then go on to murder the public.
coldtea 11y ago
>Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often and hardly any good ones? There shouldn't be that many "bad ones" to report, period. It's supposed to be a professional police force, not amateur hour of bigots, wannabe Rambos and trigger-happy Harry Callahans. And since the casualty statistics across the board are awful, and a true shame compared to any other western country, it's not a matter of "reporting" bias either. [added] >One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day out, every single day. They also represent some of what is worst about the US, day in and day out, every single day. Along with the prison system, the gun laws, and the often joke of a justice system, they help perpetuate and increase the criminals rather than reduce them (even if there are year over year decreases in crime rates, that are touted as big successes, the numbers are still ludicrous compared to any western european country).
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  > There shouldn't be that many "bad ones" to report, period. You're absolutely right! But that's NOT what I was arguing against. >They also represent some of what is worst about the US, day in and day out, every single day. NO THEY DON'T! Only a few!!! That's my POINT.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    OK, here's a food for thought: only in the US you can get shot for getting out of your car when a traffic cop stops you.
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      And that proves what? That I'm wrong? Hardly.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        I think it shows that the way police treats the population and what people have also accepted as acceptable coming from the police is seriously messed up. Contrast with a place like the UK, where police are not even allowed to carry guns outside of special units.
nkoren 11y ago
I'm an American expat living in the UK, so I am interested in judging things on comparative rather than absolute terms. In the UK, the police are on track to have killed 3 people in 2015[1]. In the US, the police are on track to have killed 1,200 people[2]. Adjusted for population, the US has a police homicide rate that is 79 times higher than in the UK. In some places, police violence is now the no. 1 form of homicide, ahead of gang violence, petty crime, domestic violence, child abuse, and any other category of violence.[3] Actual homicide is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, but if this doesn't qualify as "significantly and often" then I'm not sure what does. This is not just a civilian attitude. There are plenty of (ex-) police who feel this way too.[4] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc... 2: http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ 3: http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842489-155/killings-by-utah-police-outpacing-gang http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842489-155/killings-by-utah-poli... 4: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/i-was-a-st-louis-cop-my-peers-were-racist-and-violent-and-theres-only-one-fix/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/...
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Nice statistics. Just because an officer kills, doesn't mean it was a crime and it doesn't mean the officer overstepped his bounds.
  - anu_gupta 11y ago
    > Nice statistics Yeah, it sucks when someone comes armed with facts, doesn't it?
  - antimagic 11y ago
    So what, you're postulating that US citizens justly deserve to be killed by police 79 time more than their British counterparts? I mean the police is only supposed to kill to protect their, or a bystander's, life. We know from the few times that police-caused deaths have been caught on video in the US that this is often not at all the case. The guy shot down as he walks down the middle of the road. The guy who's neck gets broken in a police van, the young kid shot down in a park because he's playing with a toy gun. The guy that is choked to death because he's selling loose cigarettes in the street. Those are all recent cases that I am personally aware of, as a non-US citizen, living in Europe. I'm sure there have been plenty of others. So yes, not all police killings in the US are undeserved, but there sure are plenty that are, and that is what those statistics are showing.

rrmm 11y ago

Significant and often are clearly a matter of perspective: what's significant and how often is too often? Realistically, there will always be some incidents. Ideally, they should be as few as possible such that law enforcement is still effective (for whatever value of effective that society chooses). The severity also factors in: No one will probably care all that much if a cop screws up the exact wording of a miranda warning, but when the consequences are someone dead and police perjuring themselves, it takes a lot fewer of those incidents.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
As the poster I was replying to didn't set any constraints, its clear they meant generally. I disagree that generally officers significantly overstep their bounds.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Even if just 10% of US officers "overstep their bounds", whereas in the UK or Germany only 1% do, it's still a huge problem. That it's not the "general case" it's hardly any consolation.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    Nice. Where'd you get the numbers?
    - coldtea 11y ago
      They are made-up example numbers to show that even if something is not the "general case" (e.g. majority), it can still be a huge problem if it's big enough, especially if it's bigger than the norm in other "civilized" countries. Note that you didn't provide any numbers for "most cops don't overstep their bounds" either. If we consider "killing citizens" as "overstepping their bounds" (and I'd say is the most overstepping a policeman can do), then US police does it by about 1-2 orders of magnitude (70 - 100 times) more than other western countries... Here are some actual hard numbers: For instance, an April 2007 study of the Chicago Police Department found that out of more than 10,000 police abuse complaints filed between 2002 and 2003, only 19 (0.19%) resulted in meaningful disciplinary action. The study charges that the police department's oversight body allows officers with "criminal tendencies to operate with impunity," and argues that the Chicago Police Department should not be allowed to police itself.[29] Only 19% of large municipal police forces have a civilian complaint review board (CCRB). Law enforcement jurisdictions that have a CCRB have an excessive force complaint rate against their officers of 11.9% verses 6.6% complaint rate for those without a CCRB. Of those forces without a CCRB only 8% of the complaints were sustained.[30] Thus, for the year 2002, the rate at which police brutality complaints were sustained was 0.53% for the larger police municipalities nationwide. Here are some more: According to the 2014 Legatum Prosperity Index released in November, in the measure of personal freedom, the United States has fallen from 9th place in 2010 to 21st worldwide—behind such countries as Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Uruguay and Costa Rica. Other such rankings systems show the US as low as 46. Let’s look at our immediate neighbors to the north, Canada. The total number of citizens killed by law enforcement officers in the year 2014, was 14; that is 78 times less people than the US. If we look at the United Kingdom, 1 person was killed by police in 2014 and 0 in 2013. English police reportedly fired guns a total of three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities. From 2010 through 2014, there were four fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent the size of England’s, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same time period. China, whose population is 4 and 1/2 times the size of the United States, recorded 12 killings by law enforcement officers in 2014. Let that sink in. Law enforcement in the US killed 92 times more people than a country with nearly 1.4 billion people. It doesn’t stop there. From 2013-2014, German police killed absolutely no one. And more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... And let's not even get into BS like sending SWAT teams for any BS offense, like getting some stoned teenager... http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-america...
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  Even if most officers don't overstep their bounds themselves, they cover for and protect their buddies who do. This makes the majority of cops bad cops.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    Really? They do this? Sure... Edit: If you had said "some" and not "majority", I'd have agreed with you. But "majority" is just cockamamey, made up BS!
geggam 11y ago
Changing the mission back to peace keeping instead of law enforcement would go a long way to fixing the issue. Enforcing the law causes more problems than it solves. See : drug war
- Retra 11y ago
  There's no point in having laws you don't enforce.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Not enforcing a law is much easier than repealing a law. I'm not sure about the US, but in UK plenty of law is enforced less rigorously before it's scrapped.

DanBC 11y ago

> One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day out, every single day. US police kill very many more people than other first world police forces. It's not surprising that gets a lot of press coverage. The US police forces seem to do a poor job of getting rid of the bad officers. Someone who is sacked from one force for being emotionally unstable should not be able to get a job with a gun on another force without jumping through considerable hoops. There are very many examples of this - officers with more than normal numbers of complaints for aggressive behaviour, with disciplinary action for aggressive behaviour, who then go on to murder the public.

coldtea 11y ago

>Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often and hardly any good ones? There shouldn't be that many "bad ones" to report, period. It's supposed to be a professional police force, not amateur hour of bigots, wannabe Rambos and trigger-happy Harry Callahans. And since the casualty statistics across the board are awful, and a true shame compared to any other western country, it's not a matter of "reporting" bias either. [added] >One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day out, every single day. They also represent some of what is worst about the US, day in and day out, every single day. Along with the prison system, the gun laws, and the often joke of a justice system, they help perpetuate and increase the criminals rather than reduce them (even if there are year over year decreases in crime rates, that are touted as big successes, the numbers are still ludicrous compared to any western european country).

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
> There shouldn't be that many "bad ones" to report, period. You're absolutely right! But that's NOT what I was arguing against. >They also represent some of what is worst about the US, day in and day out, every single day. NO THEY DON'T! Only a few!!! That's my POINT.
- coldtea 11y ago
  OK, here's a food for thought: only in the US you can get shot for getting out of your car when a traffic cop stops you.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    And that proves what? That I'm wrong? Hardly.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      I think it shows that the way police treats the population and what people have also accepted as acceptable coming from the police is seriously messed up. Contrast with a place like the UK, where police are not even allowed to carry guns outside of special units.

nkoren 11y ago

I'm an American expat living in the UK, so I am interested in judging things on comparative rather than absolute terms. In the UK, the police are on track to have killed 3 people in 2015[1]. In the US, the police are on track to have killed 1,200 people[2]. Adjusted for population, the US has a police homicide rate that is 79 times higher than in the UK. In some places, police violence is now the no. 1 form of homicide, ahead of gang violence, petty crime, domestic violence, child abuse, and any other category of violence.[3] Actual homicide is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, but if this doesn't qualify as "significantly and often" then I'm not sure what does. This is not just a civilian attitude. There are plenty of (ex-) police who feel this way too.[4] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc... 2: http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ 3: http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842489-155/killings-by-utah-police-outpacing-gang http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842489-155/killings-by-utah-poli... 4: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/i-was-a-st-louis-cop-my-peers-were-racist-and-violent-and-theres-only-one-fix/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/...

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Nice statistics. Just because an officer kills, doesn't mean it was a crime and it doesn't mean the officer overstepped his bounds.
- anu_gupta 11y ago
  > Nice statistics Yeah, it sucks when someone comes armed with facts, doesn't it?
- antimagic 11y ago
  So what, you're postulating that US citizens justly deserve to be killed by police 79 time more than their British counterparts? I mean the police is only supposed to kill to protect their, or a bystander's, life. We know from the few times that police-caused deaths have been caught on video in the US that this is often not at all the case. The guy shot down as he walks down the middle of the road. The guy who's neck gets broken in a police van, the young kid shot down in a park because he's playing with a toy gun. The guy that is choked to death because he's selling loose cigarettes in the street. Those are all recent cases that I am personally aware of, as a non-US citizen, living in Europe. I'm sure there have been plenty of others. So yes, not all police killings in the US are undeserved, but there sure are plenty that are, and that is what those statistics are showing.