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>> 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. Mainly beca

>> 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. Mainly because police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics, so the data is horribly incomplete. And as anybody knows, you can massage the data to show anything you want when you don't have the complete picture: Officials with the Justice Department keep no comprehensive database or record of police shootings, instead allowing the nation’s more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies to self-report officer-involved shootings as part of the FBI’s annual data on “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement. That number – which only includes self-reported information from about 750 law enforcement agencies – hovers around 400 “justifiable homicides” by police officers each year. The DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics also tracks “arrest-related deaths.” But the department stopped releasing those numbers after 2009, because, like the FBI data, they were widely regarded as unreliable. source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/08/how-many-police-shootings-a-year-no-one-knows/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/0... The other problem with your data is that there is no firm evidence how each of these scenario's played out. Did the person being shot pull a firearm? What about brandishing a weapon or charging the officer, or attempting to assault the officer? We don't know because this kind of evidence is never taken into account. All people see is a cop who killed a citizen, nobody knows the exact circumstances around every single one of these instances - which makes ALL the data that much more suspect. So yeah, when you look at the raw numbers, they look bad, but when you add in the circumstances by which these played out, you'd probably find out a lot of these were justified - which is why cops tend to get a lot of leeway in these kinds of scenarios, and are rarely charged.

DanBC 11y ago
As I understand it (I don't know much about guns) a weapon is a measure of last resort. The officer should only discharge the weapon if someone is about to die and all other efforts have failed. And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth. So if that's true why isn't information gathered about every single round of ammunition that's fired? Because every time that trigger is pulled is a time when someone (the officer, a member of the public) is at risk of death, and pulling the trigger carries a very real risk of killing the alleged perpetrator. (Or innocent bystanders). It's baffling to me that statistics like these are not kept. Maybe this would be too high a burden. But at least they should keep numbers on how many people they kill, and what the precise situation was around that death.
- newman314 11y ago
  Does this look like last resort? [1] And obviously this is not an isolated incident hence much of the anger directed at police. Guns should be last resort but sadly is not the case today. [1] http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-shoot-suspect-man-bayview-district-instagram-youtube-video/ http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-shoo...
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- jpindar 11y ago
  As I understand it, police do have to report every round fired - to their immediate supervisor, who has no particular reason to compile statistics on such reports or to show them to anyone else.
- MagnumOpus 11y ago
  > And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth. This is true, for the US. It is also one of the symptoms of what is wrong with "enforcement" in that country. Police officers in many other countries (such as Germany for instance) are explicitly instructed to shoot to wound if at all possible - and with good results both in terms of getting their suspects arrested but not killed, and in terms of not getting killed themselves. Indeed, this is not just the case for police worldwide, but even for the US armed forces when working under "nation building" rules of engagements rather than "total war" rules of engagements. A shoot-to-kill doctrine is an obvious sign that rather than having an attitude of serving and protecting their community, the enforcers are serving/protecting themselves first.
pjc50 11y ago
police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics That is a big part of the problem itself. What about brandishing a weapon or charging the officer, or attempting to assault the officer? We don't know because this kind of evidence is never taken into account .. and a number of recent high-profile cases involve the police claiming these things happened while the video footage showed they didn't. The UK system is supposed to regard every death by police firearm as an incident that is fully investigated by the independent police complaints commission. (Does America even have one of those?) The system is not perfect (e.g. Mark Duggan, Jean Charles de Menezes) but it works reasonably well. The Mark Duggan fiasco concerns me in that I think some of the bad relations between US police and the black public are "leaking" into UK culture.
nkoren 11y ago
> Mainly because police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics, so the data is horribly incomplete. And as anybody knows, you can massage the data to show anything you want when you don't have the complete picture: That is true, but not to the US' credit. In the UK, the records are compiled nationally and are beyond question. There have been three fatal police shootings here in 2015; all of them were front-page national news. The US keeps no such records, and until http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ began compiling credible news reports, nobody was keeping national records. The numbers on killedbypolice.net are therefore an absolute minimum for how many people are killed by police in America. Killings which are not well-documented in the news aren't included. If the number is inaccurate, then the picture in America is even worse. Undoubtedly many of them are justified. America is awash in guns, and if somebody is shooting at you, then undoubtedly you have the right to shoot back. However only 48% of those who were killed had a firearm on or near them (it doesn't necessarily mean they were using it).[1] Many of the remainder are classified as being "armed", but that includes cases like this mentally ill man who was killed for holding a screwdriver in an unthreatening manner[2], so those numbers should be considered suspect. Finally, there are hundreds of killings every year of people who cannot be considered "armed" by any definition. Many of these are well-documented on video; if you want to spend the next few hours watching snuff films, they're easy enough to find. The punishment for the overwhelming majority of these killings is a paid vacation for the murderer. Something is desperately wrong with America. 1: 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... 2: https://www.rt.com/usa/252533-dallas-screwdriver-shooting-jury/ https://www.rt.com/usa/252533-dallas-screwdriver-shooting-ju...
- tremon 11y ago
  > Undoubtedly many of them are justified I may be a bit pedantic here, but I think that's an unfortunate choice of words. If I understand the legal situation in the US correctly, Culling of individuals by power of government can only be justified through a judge, and executed with consent from a state governor. Some of the cullings may be defensible, given the nature of the police's job. But in my view, none are justified.

DanBC 11y ago

As I understand it (I don't know much about guns) a weapon is a measure of last resort. The officer should only discharge the weapon if someone is about to die and all other efforts have failed. And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth. So if that's true why isn't information gathered about every single round of ammunition that's fired? Because every time that trigger is pulled is a time when someone (the officer, a member of the public) is at risk of death, and pulling the trigger carries a very real risk of killing the alleged perpetrator. (Or innocent bystanders). It's baffling to me that statistics like these are not kept. Maybe this would be too high a burden. But at least they should keep numbers on how many people they kill, and what the precise situation was around that death.

newman314 11y ago
Does this look like last resort? [1] And obviously this is not an isolated incident hence much of the anger directed at police. Guns should be last resort but sadly is not the case today. [1] http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-shoot-suspect-man-bayview-district-instagram-youtube-video/ http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-shoo...
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jpindar 11y ago
As I understand it, police do have to report every round fired - to their immediate supervisor, who has no particular reason to compile statistics on such reports or to show them to anyone else.
MagnumOpus 11y ago
> And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth. This is true, for the US. It is also one of the symptoms of what is wrong with "enforcement" in that country. Police officers in many other countries (such as Germany for instance) are explicitly instructed to shoot to wound if at all possible - and with good results both in terms of getting their suspects arrested but not killed, and in terms of not getting killed themselves. Indeed, this is not just the case for police worldwide, but even for the US armed forces when working under "nation building" rules of engagements rather than "total war" rules of engagements. A shoot-to-kill doctrine is an obvious sign that rather than having an attitude of serving and protecting their community, the enforcers are serving/protecting themselves first.

pjc50 11y ago

police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics That is a big part of the problem itself. What about brandishing a weapon or charging the officer, or attempting to assault the officer? We don't know because this kind of evidence is never taken into account .. and a number of recent high-profile cases involve the police claiming these things happened while the video footage showed they didn't. The UK system is supposed to regard every death by police firearm as an incident that is fully investigated by the independent police complaints commission. (Does America even have one of those?) The system is not perfect (e.g. Mark Duggan, Jean Charles de Menezes) but it works reasonably well. The Mark Duggan fiasco concerns me in that I think some of the bad relations between US police and the black public are "leaking" into UK culture.

nkoren 11y ago

> Mainly because police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics, so the data is horribly incomplete. And as anybody knows, you can massage the data to show anything you want when you don't have the complete picture: That is true, but not to the US' credit. In the UK, the records are compiled nationally and are beyond question. There have been three fatal police shootings here in 2015; all of them were front-page national news. The US keeps no such records, and until http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ began compiling credible news reports, nobody was keeping national records. The numbers on killedbypolice.net are therefore an absolute minimum for how many people are killed by police in America. Killings which are not well-documented in the news aren't included. If the number is inaccurate, then the picture in America is even worse. Undoubtedly many of them are justified. America is awash in guns, and if somebody is shooting at you, then undoubtedly you have the right to shoot back. However only 48% of those who were killed had a firearm on or near them (it doesn't necessarily mean they were using it).[1] Many of the remainder are classified as being "armed", but that includes cases like this mentally ill man who was killed for holding a screwdriver in an unthreatening manner[2], so those numbers should be considered suspect. Finally, there are hundreds of killings every year of people who cannot be considered "armed" by any definition. Many of these are well-documented on video; if you want to spend the next few hours watching snuff films, they're easy enough to find. The punishment for the overwhelming majority of these killings is a paid vacation for the murderer. Something is desperately wrong with America. 1: 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... 2: https://www.rt.com/usa/252533-dallas-screwdriver-shooting-jury/ https://www.rt.com/usa/252533-dallas-screwdriver-shooting-ju...

tremon 11y ago
> Undoubtedly many of them are justified I may be a bit pedantic here, but I think that's an unfortunate choice of words. If I understand the legal situation in the US correctly, Culling of individuals by power of government can only be justified through a judge, and executed with consent from a state governor. Some of the cullings may be defensible, given the nature of the police's job. But in my view, none are justified.