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Don’t support laws you are not willing to kill to enforce (2014)

104 points by necessity 10y ago

strictnein 10y ago
(2014)
ahoy 10y ago
Lots of countries manage to have all sorts of regulations and very few killings by police. I don't think the premise of this essay is valid.
- mseebach 10y ago
  That's not the premise of this essay.
- dleslie 10y ago
  In many such countries the police are not nearly as militarized.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    So, instead of "don't support laws you aren't willing to kill to have enforced", perhaps, "don't support militarized police" would be the better recommendation. Since, after all, that's the root of the problem.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Which problem do you expect to be fixed first? Every new crime can be fought right in the legislature here and now. Who can demilitarize the police? [EDIT:] Are police unions, bar associations, and armaments manufacturers just going to sit out the session in which you get your miraculous "just do the right thing ok cops?" law passed? I can't believe that someone as knowledgeable as yourself really thinks that way...
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Which problem do you expect to be fixed first? Demilitarizing the police takes building a coalition for a single, focused, legislative action. Preventing all new, and eliminating all existing, legislation that you aren't willing to have the state kill to enforce requires a lot more. So, I'd say that demilitarizing the police is a lot easier. > Every new crime can be fought right in the legislature here and now. Who can demilitarize the police? Demilitarizing the police can be fought right in the legislature, here and now, too. EDIT (to respond to yours): > [EDIT:] Are police unions, bar associations, and armaments manufacturers just going to sit out the session in which you get your miraculous "just do the right thing ok cops?" law passed? I don't see bar associations particularly likely to oppose demilitarizing police; OTOH, police unions are often opponents of efforts to decriminalize minor offenses that are useful as pretexts (and often are sponsors of new criminalization of this type.) So, is it easier to build a coalition to beat them on one point, or thousands?
        jessaustin 10y ago
        Actually lawyers like to work, so as a whole they like lots of complicated awful laws to keep the courts crowded all the time. Think a little more deeply about how special interests function, however. The NRA really cares about gun control, and few others do, so they get their way. The teachers' unions really care about public education policy, and few others do, so they get their way. Likewise, those who profit from our awful "justice" system really like that profit, so any giant attempt to destroy their entire world will get demolished. We may never know who invented this "one wonderful law will save us" meme, but one doubts he worked on the side of good. We've got to start by eating around the margins of the problem.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Actually lawyers like to work, so as a whole they like lots of complicated awful laws to keep the courts crowded all the time. That's a popular stereotype, but -- especially in any way relevant to the kind of criminal offenses at issue in this discussion -- its not borne out at all, AFAICT, by the actual history of bar association lobbying.
  - smt88 10y ago
    Nor is the populace.
  - hugh4 10y ago
    More to the point, in those countries it's very very unlikely for anyone to pull a gun on a cop.
- deleted 10y ago
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- pixl97 10y ago
  Lots of countries don't have a literal war on drugs. Lots of countries don't have racials issues stemming from slavery. But what is amazing is those countries that do have higher levels of violence.
- pixl97 10y ago
  Lots of countries don't have a literal war on drugs. Lots of countries don't have racials issues stemming from slavery. But what is amazing is those countries that do have higher levels of violence.
nbb 10y ago
Some of the most idiotic reasoning I've read in a long time.
StillBored 10y ago
I've been something like this for days.. Why are the police pulling people over for busted tailights/etc? Isn't having a yearly car inspection regime enough? How frequently do tail lights burn out, and is it that critical to everyone's safety that it gets fixed as soon as cop sees it or can it wait for a few months until the state inspection. Don't most cars have some kind of indicator that a light is blown? Basically the vast majority interactions most people have with the police are when they are acting like thugs/tax collectors and enforcing fee's for minor infractions of laws that weren't even on the books more than a couple dozen years ago and for the most part haven't done anything to improve safety. Basically, the police culture seems to focus on over-policing useless things like traffic enforcement while under-policing dangerous parts of town with beat cops.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  There is no annual inspection in my state (Michigan) and many cars here lack features like that.
- mc32 10y ago
  I don't know the answer. That said, in other countries lots of the cars which are allowed on the road in the US are not allowed on the roads. Sometimes its vehicle age, sometimes it's not keeping up the vehicle, etc. So, we're not the most demanding --on the other hand, at least as it concerns cities, we don't offer great alternatives in the form of public transit. Rural transit is not typically that much better.
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  Non-working lights makes a vehicle unsafe to drive in conditions that require it (night, rain, snow, fog, tunnel). When I used to drive regularly I would often see cars with non-working lights. Most people probably aren't even aware that their light is not working. Anyone who can get the driver's attention and inform them of the problem is performing a service for everyone near roads.
- deleted 10y ago
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- 10y ago
sethrin 10y ago
Police have become the threat that the Founders feared when they talked about the dangers of a standing army. Either they need to be armed with non-lethal weapons only, or they need to stand trial for each killing (severally and collectively), or both.
knucklesandwich 10y ago
I don't see how this follows. Not all laws permit use of deadly force. And it's not even the laws per se as much as the circumstances and criteria around authorization of deadly force. I've been trying to learn about this lately, and it seems as though the supreme court case Graham v. Connor [1] is heavily implicated in the fact that very few of these police are convicted despite how objectionable the circumstances have seemed. As a side note, if you're interested in this type of thing, Radiolab has just started an excellent podcast on supreme court cases called More Perfect [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor [2] http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect
- vkou 10y ago
  Not all laws may permit the use of deadly force, but every encounter with the police implicitly does. The line between being pulled over for a minor infraction, and making an officer fear for his life is a very blurry one.
  - wlievens 10y ago
    In my country (Belgium) no one would make that association. As far as I know, there has been one policr officer killed violently on duty in the past decade, and that was in a confrontation with organized crime. There's something weird with the culture of violence in the US.
  - knucklesandwich 10y ago
    Except that the implication here is that the laws precipitate the use of lethal force. You may not be guilty (or suspected to be guilty) of anything in the eyes of the law and face the prospect of lethal force, considering police have investigatory powers. The laws aren't the problem here (I think there are problems with the laws and penalties in other regards, but that's a separate matter), its the wide berth we give to police to enact deadly force.
    - pixl97 10y ago
rpiwetz 10y ago
"But it is also true that police abuses are far more likely to victimize poor African-Americans and other politically weak groups." -Did the author provide any evidence for this statement?
isleyaardvark 10y ago
Are people willing to kill to enforce laws against petty theft or should we only make theft illegal above a certain dollar amount?
- pixl97 10y ago
  No, all theft should be illegal, otherwise that will just allow someone to abuse the system by stealing small amounts multiple times. And no one is killing to enforce laws against petty theft, no one is killing to enforce laws against almost any infraction. The use of deadly force comes in effect when you have a portion of the population willing to use violence against cops, which makes cops very nervous that they will 'get the winning lottery ticket' next stop and overusing force back.
niftich 10y ago
This is silly. Breaking laws comes with penalties, which are determined by the courts. There is nothing that inherently states that lawbreakers must be forcibly moved to a government-controlled site; furthermore there's nothing that says people who try to resist arrest should be met with lethal force.
- danbruc 10y ago
  You have to at least establish the identity of the person you want to bring to court. This comes with the possibility that the person might resist and there you go - either you give up and let the person walk away without knowing who he was or you have to use some kind of force. And there is no way around that - rules and laws are just words on paper, ultimately you always have to use force in one way or another if someone does not voluntarily honor the words, otherwise they will only be words on paper and nothing more.
  - niftich 10y ago
    You can penalize 'resisting arrest' in other ways than trying to arrest. You can fine them, or revoke licenses, or apply some other penalty that isn't based around jail time -- for which you'd have to actually perform the arrest.
    - danbruc 10y ago
      How do you fine someone without knowing the identity? What do you do if they don't pay the fine? What if they continue doing what they are no longer allowed to do without the license? There are certainly cases where you can punish someone without any cooperation on their side - like no longer giving them some benefits or freezing a bank account - but those scenarios are really far from covering all possible scenarios and you still have to determine the identity at the very least.
- mseebach 10y ago
  Perhaps there's nothing that says so, but nevertheless that's the system which is in place in most of the civilised world. If you want to enforce a law (it's always an option not to enforce a given law, but then you might as well not have it) against an offender that for whatever doesn't want to cooperate with the penalty decided, what do you propose doing?
Mao_Zedang 10y ago
Before you start blaming racism and all such manner of things consider some interesting statistics. Other western countries have much lower police fatalities, being a police officer in the US is way more dangerous than other western countries. http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.html http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.htm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officer... http://www.npm.org.au/honour-roll http://www.npm.org.au/honour-roll I could not find a source but it would be nice to see a break down of - killed illegally - killed by accident - injuries - gun - knives - etc Broken down by country/per capita, I think we would find (my opinion as I couldn't find the stats) that the US is abnormally high to its peers.
- knucklesandwich 10y ago
  A little over 50% of officers killed in the past 10 years were killed by accidents, mostly car accidents. Feloniously Killed: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_1_leos_fk_region_geographic_division_and_state_2005-2014.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl... Accidentally Killed: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_52_leos_ak_region_geographic_division_and_state_2005-2014.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...
  - Mao_Zedang 10y ago
    Good link thanks for finding it, I would say that 50 officers killed on purpose is even worse when compared to the other stats I linked. At face value it appears to be 5x higher. Interestingly look at the rate of injury as well especially from fire arms. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_76_leos_asltd_type_of_weapon_and_percent_injured_2005-2014.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...
    - knucklesandwich 10y ago
      In 2014, according to killedbypolice.net, the number of recorded killings by the police was 1111 [1], which would mean you have about _21 times_ the odds of being killed by police in a given interaction than they have of being killed by you. I haven't found any statistics on assaults from the police, so its hard to compare apples to apples there. I'm not saying it's not more dangerous to be a police officer than the average occupation (I think it goes without saying that we expect it to be a dangerous job). But it's important to put these numbers in global terms as well. The assault rate according to those stats was 9%, with a 28.3% injury rate from assaults. To put that in perspective, assuming injury rate remains constant (which doesn't appear to be the trend, it appears to be going down), that means you have about a 39.7% chance of serving 20 years and ever receiving an injury from a criminal. For a normal occupation that would be high, but for the police that doesn't seem especially dangerous. Especially considering that about 80% of those injuries are from "Personal Weapons" (aka, getting punched). Weather or not its an explanatory factor in a statistical sense, I don't know, but personally I can't see how that justifies some of these incidents. [1] http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014.html http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014.html
massysett 10y ago
This is disingenuous. Few reasonable people would suggest that the police have authority to kill because someone litters, has a broken tail light, or sells single cigarettes in violation of New York law. Depending on your viewpoint and the situation, killings occur because people resist the police, because people run from the police, because the police are trigger-happy and biased, or because the police are murderers. One might even think that it is ridiculous to ban sales of single cigarettes. Even so, this piece suggests I should not support laws banning littering unless I believe the police should be authorized to kill litterers. This is ridiculous. Of course we can support a law even if we believe that a violator should not be subjected to summary execution.
- brooklyndavs 10y ago
  Exactly. Police in other western countries are able to enforce minor infractions without killing or injuring the suspect. One can have the discussion (and should!) if these laws make sense or not, but if they are going to be enforced cops shouldn't be judge/jury/executioner. This seems to be a very American problem.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    They're not acting as judge/jury/executioner, they're defending their lives. We can argue about the tiny percent of such cases where there's controversy as to whether force was used properly, but your sweeping generalization is wrong and totally unfair to people who put themselves in harms way to protect you and me everyday. BLM talking points are not facts and presenting them as such is irresponsible.
    - JulianMorrison 10y ago
      They are defending their lives against phantasms and projections, largely arising from racism.
      - deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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randyrand 10y ago
>Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you. Really seems like they are missing the obvious answer: IF you don't want to die, don't resist police orders. Do your resistance in the courts.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Are you talking about our present reality, or perhaps about some alternate universe in which good lawyers are inexpensive?
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    In our present reality, if you try to resist the police using physical force rather than the courts, it may not matter to you if good lawyers are free. You may not make it far enough to hire one, because trying to get physical with the cops is a mind-blowingly stupid idea! Don't do it. If you have to show up in court with a bad lawyer - or even representing yourself - do that rather than trying to fight the police.
    - mikestew 10y ago
      If you have to show up in court Statistically, there's over a 90% chance you'll never see a court date. Because, see, if you don't sign this plea deal we'll just make shit up to pile into the existing charges. Maybe your day in court will let you dodge that triple life sentence, or maybe you'd rather just cop guilty and take the 90 days.
jeffdavis 10y ago
I'd like to see more coverage of the libertarian candidates this cycle. Neither major party seems likely to fix this issue -- Republicans will dismiss it and Democrats will pander and apply band-aids (all the while increasing the scope of government). And the libertarians this time around are serious candidates -- president and VP nominees are both two-term governors. Pretty hard to ignore when the major candidates are so bad.
- hellothere999 10y ago
  Oh my! Two term governors! Well sign me up... Gary Johnson is a neo-liberal to the core. To him everything comes down to how much it costs. He's anti-mandatory vaccinations. He's all about FairTax which hit the poor harder than the rich. Screw people that don't have rich parents. He's anti net neutrality and believes incumbents should manage the network as they see fit. Of course he opposes government intervention to keep the internet "independent". Let's rely on network access providers, cause that's working out well. He's all about the free market and anti government meddling until either argument get in his way. He says government should not subsidize or bailout industry but hey it should support building more coal (pandering to coal nation). He supports the TPP, which is nothing but a gift to entrenched big business and the erosion of other nations sovereignty. He's a Constitutional "originalist", which is basically code word for "screw letting people decide how to govern themselves, we're sticking to the flawed work of some long dead white guys." In short, he's just as vague when it comes to concrete solutions, big on talking points, pro rich, anti poor, but worst of all driven by idealism versus reality. Typical politician. Nothing new to see there.
  - jeffdavis 10y ago
    Nothing you say is particularly radical. I know many will disagree with his positions on some things, or maybe many things. The point is that they are reasonable politicians, and especially when the main candidates are so bad, deserve a fair chance in the media to have their say.
hyperion2010 10y ago
Draco and Hamurabi knew what they were doing.
devy 10y ago
Carter correctly points out that the massive growth of criminal and regulatory law means that almost anyone can potentially end up in the same situation as Eric Garner. So does Carter and author suggest reducing the number of laws? Or should we just take it that law enforcement abusing power causing deaths are inevitable?
- latch 10y ago
  Quoting the article, quoting Carter: Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right. And in the same paragraph: But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for official violence to get out of hand.
  - devy 10y ago
    Right below that quote, it reads: the scope of government regulation has grown so great The unfortunately reality is laws are only growing NOT reducing.
SilasX 10y ago
This looks to be a variant of the point about applying infinities to human lives in public policy. Basically, a tiny non-zero chance of death still means a finite numbers of lives killed by the policy. And any police encounter has some tiny chance of escalating to lethal force by either side. But the obvious implication, to me, is "hey, everything has a cost in lives, that shouldn't be a dealbreaker". However, the author uses it in a way that implies that it's some useful heuristic for which laws are good, rather than a trivial point about the ever-present risk of death. (I expected it to be a point about how, if you want to enforce any law, you have to apply increasing escalation against those who resist it. Refusal to comply -> arrest; resistance of arrest -> force; resistance of force -> death)
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Resistance of force should only result in death if there is no other option; that is, if you resist it very well. In most cases, it should just result in enough force that you are no longer able to resist.
  - deleted 10y ago
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JulianMorrison 10y ago
But what if they completely resisted the law to the point of shooting back? Well then it's the shooting back that will get them killed. There is a rather short list of things the police ought to be shooting at, and they all boil down to endangering life. Going on a gun rampage. Going on a knife rampage. Holding hostages. Selling cigarettes is not on that list and the only reason that cops get away with it, is a culture of fear and egregious defensive overreaction, which treats unarmed black men as threats equivalent or worse than a white guy with a pistol drawn.
- mseebach 10y ago
  Shooting back? So law enforcement shot first?
stanfordkid 10y ago
lol parking tickets ?
lolc 10y ago
I'd want to see how the law "don't shoot after fleeing suspects unless they pose an immediate threat to others" will need deadly force to be effective. The normal way laws are enforced is by threatening to remove privileges. In my opinion the discussion should be around the way the police force interacts with people. If some laws get abolished in the process, that's probably good.
leepowers 10y ago
The article is mis-titled and mis-leading, and detracts from the core principle. Any law, no matter how minor, can be escalated by a resisting citizen (or a bad cop) into a bigger, more violent situation. After a fair reading of the article the real argument goes something like this: 1) The sheer number of laws means every citizen is in violation on a regular basis. Especially for trivial things like rolling through a stop sign, selling loose cigarettes, changing lanes without a signal, etc. 2) Every violation is an opportunity for a police encounter. A population that has only 10 laws to obey will have lower encounter rate than a population that has 1000. 3) Each police encounter has a non-zero chance of resulting in violence. Be it a citizen resisting and the cops responding with violence. Or in a cop making a fatal mistake, or a cop overreacting to a situation. There is some likelihood of a violent outcome. 4) Improved officer training and tactics alone are a limited way to lower the per-encounter violence rate. Oversight and accountability are difficult to implement due to various institutional and political barriers. 5) A better, safer, long-term solution is to reduce the total number of encounters by reducing the total number of laws a citizen is required to obey. Fewer encounters mean fewer opportunities for violence. My main objection to this argument is that #5 would be as difficult to implement as #4. Paring down the number of laws will take a lot of political will and capital. Changing the institutions of policing and prosecution will take just as much political will to change. We should probably do both.
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
I think a big part of the problem is that people want to be able to break some laws (the ones that "are wrong" or "shouldn't apply to me", or just the ones that they want to), and suffer no consequences for doing so. And then, when the police try to enforce some consequences, the people feel like they (the police) shouldn't do that, are wrong to do that, and therefore they (the people) are right to try to defeat the police, either by running away or by direct attack.
tim333 10y ago
There are lots of ways to enforce laws without using armed police. In the UK you have to take your car for annual inspections which covers tail lights, speeding and the like get caught by cameras, parking is covered by traffic wardens writing tickets with no guns or arrests involved, non payment of tax results in fines. Personal drug use is mostly ignored. You only really need arrests for things like theft or assault.

104 points by necessity 10y ago

(2014)

ahoy 10y ago

Lots of countries manage to have all sorts of regulations and very few killings by police. I don't think the premise of this essay is valid.

mseebach 10y ago
That's not the premise of this essay.
dleslie 10y ago
In many such countries the police are not nearly as militarized.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  So, instead of "don't support laws you aren't willing to kill to have enforced", perhaps, "don't support militarized police" would be the better recommendation. Since, after all, that's the root of the problem.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Which problem do you expect to be fixed first? Every new crime can be fought right in the legislature here and now. Who can demilitarize the police? [EDIT:] Are police unions, bar associations, and armaments manufacturers just going to sit out the session in which you get your miraculous "just do the right thing ok cops?" law passed? I can't believe that someone as knowledgeable as yourself really thinks that way...
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Which problem do you expect to be fixed first? Demilitarizing the police takes building a coalition for a single, focused, legislative action. Preventing all new, and eliminating all existing, legislation that you aren't willing to have the state kill to enforce requires a lot more. So, I'd say that demilitarizing the police is a lot easier. > Every new crime can be fought right in the legislature here and now. Who can demilitarize the police? Demilitarizing the police can be fought right in the legislature, here and now, too. EDIT (to respond to yours): > [EDIT:] Are police unions, bar associations, and armaments manufacturers just going to sit out the session in which you get your miraculous "just do the right thing ok cops?" law passed? I don't see bar associations particularly likely to oppose demilitarizing police; OTOH, police unions are often opponents of efforts to decriminalize minor offenses that are useful as pretexts (and often are sponsors of new criminalization of this type.) So, is it easier to build a coalition to beat them on one point, or thousands?
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        Actually lawyers like to work, so as a whole they like lots of complicated awful laws to keep the courts crowded all the time. Think a little more deeply about how special interests function, however. The NRA really cares about gun control, and few others do, so they get their way. The teachers' unions really care about public education policy, and few others do, so they get their way. Likewise, those who profit from our awful "justice" system really like that profit, so any giant attempt to destroy their entire world will get demolished. We may never know who invented this "one wonderful law will save us" meme, but one doubts he worked on the side of good. We've got to start by eating around the margins of the problem.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Actually lawyers like to work, so as a whole they like lots of complicated awful laws to keep the courts crowded all the time. That's a popular stereotype, but -- especially in any way relevant to the kind of criminal offenses at issue in this discussion -- its not borne out at all, AFAICT, by the actual history of bar association lobbying.
- smt88 10y ago
  Nor is the populace.
- hugh4 10y ago
  More to the point, in those countries it's very very unlikely for anyone to pull a gun on a cop.
deleted 10y ago
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pixl97 10y ago
Lots of countries don't have a literal war on drugs. Lots of countries don't have racials issues stemming from slavery. But what is amazing is those countries that do have higher levels of violence.
pixl97 10y ago
Lots of countries don't have a literal war on drugs. Lots of countries don't have racials issues stemming from slavery. But what is amazing is those countries that do have higher levels of violence.

nbb 10y ago

Some of the most idiotic reasoning I've read in a long time.

StillBored 10y ago

I've been something like this for days.. Why are the police pulling people over for busted tailights/etc? Isn't having a yearly car inspection regime enough? How frequently do tail lights burn out, and is it that critical to everyone's safety that it gets fixed as soon as cop sees it or can it wait for a few months until the state inspection. Don't most cars have some kind of indicator that a light is blown? Basically the vast majority interactions most people have with the police are when they are acting like thugs/tax collectors and enforcing fee's for minor infractions of laws that weren't even on the books more than a couple dozen years ago and for the most part haven't done anything to improve safety. Basically, the police culture seems to focus on over-policing useless things like traffic enforcement while under-policing dangerous parts of town with beat cops.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
There is no annual inspection in my state (Michigan) and many cars here lack features like that.
mc32 10y ago
I don't know the answer. That said, in other countries lots of the cars which are allowed on the road in the US are not allowed on the roads. Sometimes its vehicle age, sometimes it's not keeping up the vehicle, etc. So, we're not the most demanding --on the other hand, at least as it concerns cities, we don't offer great alternatives in the form of public transit. Rural transit is not typically that much better.
jsprogrammer 10y ago
Non-working lights makes a vehicle unsafe to drive in conditions that require it (night, rain, snow, fog, tunnel). When I used to drive regularly I would often see cars with non-working lights. Most people probably aren't even aware that their light is not working. Anyone who can get the driver's attention and inform them of the problem is performing a service for everyone near roads.
deleted 10y ago
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10y ago

sethrin 10y ago

Police have become the threat that the Founders feared when they talked about the dangers of a standing army. Either they need to be armed with non-lethal weapons only, or they need to stand trial for each killing (severally and collectively), or both.

knucklesandwich 10y ago

I don't see how this follows. Not all laws permit use of deadly force. And it's not even the laws per se as much as the circumstances and criteria around authorization of deadly force. I've been trying to learn about this lately, and it seems as though the supreme court case Graham v. Connor [1] is heavily implicated in the fact that very few of these police are convicted despite how objectionable the circumstances have seemed. As a side note, if you're interested in this type of thing, Radiolab has just started an excellent podcast on supreme court cases called More Perfect [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor [2] http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect

vkou 10y ago
Not all laws may permit the use of deadly force, but every encounter with the police implicitly does. The line between being pulled over for a minor infraction, and making an officer fear for his life is a very blurry one.
- wlievens 10y ago
  In my country (Belgium) no one would make that association. As far as I know, there has been one policr officer killed violently on duty in the past decade, and that was in a confrontation with organized crime. There's something weird with the culture of violence in the US.
- knucklesandwich 10y ago
  Except that the implication here is that the laws precipitate the use of lethal force. You may not be guilty (or suspected to be guilty) of anything in the eyes of the law and face the prospect of lethal force, considering police have investigatory powers. The laws aren't the problem here (I think there are problems with the laws and penalties in other regards, but that's a separate matter), its the wide berth we give to police to enact deadly force.
  - pixl97 10y ago

rpiwetz 10y ago

"But it is also true that police abuses are far more likely to victimize poor African-Americans and other politically weak groups." -Did the author provide any evidence for this statement?

isleyaardvark 10y ago

Are people willing to kill to enforce laws against petty theft or should we only make theft illegal above a certain dollar amount?

pixl97 10y ago
No, all theft should be illegal, otherwise that will just allow someone to abuse the system by stealing small amounts multiple times. And no one is killing to enforce laws against petty theft, no one is killing to enforce laws against almost any infraction. The use of deadly force comes in effect when you have a portion of the population willing to use violence against cops, which makes cops very nervous that they will 'get the winning lottery ticket' next stop and overusing force back.

niftich 10y ago

This is silly. Breaking laws comes with penalties, which are determined by the courts. There is nothing that inherently states that lawbreakers must be forcibly moved to a government-controlled site; furthermore there's nothing that says people who try to resist arrest should be met with lethal force.

danbruc 10y ago
You have to at least establish the identity of the person you want to bring to court. This comes with the possibility that the person might resist and there you go - either you give up and let the person walk away without knowing who he was or you have to use some kind of force. And there is no way around that - rules and laws are just words on paper, ultimately you always have to use force in one way or another if someone does not voluntarily honor the words, otherwise they will only be words on paper and nothing more.
- niftich 10y ago
  You can penalize 'resisting arrest' in other ways than trying to arrest. You can fine them, or revoke licenses, or apply some other penalty that isn't based around jail time -- for which you'd have to actually perform the arrest.
  - danbruc 10y ago
    How do you fine someone without knowing the identity? What do you do if they don't pay the fine? What if they continue doing what they are no longer allowed to do without the license? There are certainly cases where you can punish someone without any cooperation on their side - like no longer giving them some benefits or freezing a bank account - but those scenarios are really far from covering all possible scenarios and you still have to determine the identity at the very least.
mseebach 10y ago
Perhaps there's nothing that says so, but nevertheless that's the system which is in place in most of the civilised world. If you want to enforce a law (it's always an option not to enforce a given law, but then you might as well not have it) against an offender that for whatever doesn't want to cooperate with the penalty decided, what do you propose doing?

Mao_Zedang 10y ago

Before you start blaming racism and all such manner of things consider some interesting statistics. Other western countries have much lower police fatalities, being a police officer in the US is way more dangerous than other western countries. http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.html http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.htm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officer... http://www.npm.org.au/honour-roll http://www.npm.org.au/honour-roll I could not find a source but it would be nice to see a break down of - killed illegally - killed by accident - injuries - gun - knives - etc Broken down by country/per capita, I think we would find (my opinion as I couldn't find the stats) that the US is abnormally high to its peers.

knucklesandwich 10y ago
A little over 50% of officers killed in the past 10 years were killed by accidents, mostly car accidents. Feloniously Killed: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_1_leos_fk_region_geographic_division_and_state_2005-2014.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl... Accidentally Killed: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_52_leos_ak_region_geographic_division_and_state_2005-2014.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...
- Mao_Zedang 10y ago
  Good link thanks for finding it, I would say that 50 officers killed on purpose is even worse when compared to the other stats I linked. At face value it appears to be 5x higher. Interestingly look at the rate of injury as well especially from fire arms. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_76_leos_asltd_type_of_weapon_and_percent_injured_2005-2014.xls https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...
  - knucklesandwich 10y ago
    In 2014, according to killedbypolice.net, the number of recorded killings by the police was 1111 [1], which would mean you have about _21 times_ the odds of being killed by police in a given interaction than they have of being killed by you. I haven't found any statistics on assaults from the police, so its hard to compare apples to apples there. I'm not saying it's not more dangerous to be a police officer than the average occupation (I think it goes without saying that we expect it to be a dangerous job). But it's important to put these numbers in global terms as well. The assault rate according to those stats was 9%, with a 28.3% injury rate from assaults. To put that in perspective, assuming injury rate remains constant (which doesn't appear to be the trend, it appears to be going down), that means you have about a 39.7% chance of serving 20 years and ever receiving an injury from a criminal. For a normal occupation that would be high, but for the police that doesn't seem especially dangerous. Especially considering that about 80% of those injuries are from "Personal Weapons" (aka, getting punched). Weather or not its an explanatory factor in a statistical sense, I don't know, but personally I can't see how that justifies some of these incidents. [1] http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014.html http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014.html

massysett 10y ago

This is disingenuous. Few reasonable people would suggest that the police have authority to kill because someone litters, has a broken tail light, or sells single cigarettes in violation of New York law. Depending on your viewpoint and the situation, killings occur because people resist the police, because people run from the police, because the police are trigger-happy and biased, or because the police are murderers. One might even think that it is ridiculous to ban sales of single cigarettes. Even so, this piece suggests I should not support laws banning littering unless I believe the police should be authorized to kill litterers. This is ridiculous. Of course we can support a law even if we believe that a violator should not be subjected to summary execution.

brooklyndavs 10y ago
Exactly. Police in other western countries are able to enforce minor infractions without killing or injuring the suspect. One can have the discussion (and should!) if these laws make sense or not, but if they are going to be enforced cops shouldn't be judge/jury/executioner. This seems to be a very American problem.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  They're not acting as judge/jury/executioner, they're defending their lives. We can argue about the tiny percent of such cases where there's controversy as to whether force was used properly, but your sweeping generalization is wrong and totally unfair to people who put themselves in harms way to protect you and me everyday. BLM talking points are not facts and presenting them as such is irresponsible.
  - JulianMorrison 10y ago
    They are defending their lives against phantasms and projections, largely arising from racism.
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randyrand 10y ago

>Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you. Really seems like they are missing the obvious answer: IF you don't want to die, don't resist police orders. Do your resistance in the courts.

jessaustin 10y ago
Are you talking about our present reality, or perhaps about some alternate universe in which good lawyers are inexpensive?
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  In our present reality, if you try to resist the police using physical force rather than the courts, it may not matter to you if good lawyers are free. You may not make it far enough to hire one, because trying to get physical with the cops is a mind-blowingly stupid idea! Don't do it. If you have to show up in court with a bad lawyer - or even representing yourself - do that rather than trying to fight the police.
  - mikestew 10y ago
    If you have to show up in court Statistically, there's over a 90% chance you'll never see a court date. Because, see, if you don't sign this plea deal we'll just make shit up to pile into the existing charges. Maybe your day in court will let you dodge that triple life sentence, or maybe you'd rather just cop guilty and take the 90 days.

jeffdavis 10y ago

I'd like to see more coverage of the libertarian candidates this cycle. Neither major party seems likely to fix this issue -- Republicans will dismiss it and Democrats will pander and apply band-aids (all the while increasing the scope of government). And the libertarians this time around are serious candidates -- president and VP nominees are both two-term governors. Pretty hard to ignore when the major candidates are so bad.

hellothere999 10y ago
Oh my! Two term governors! Well sign me up... Gary Johnson is a neo-liberal to the core. To him everything comes down to how much it costs. He's anti-mandatory vaccinations. He's all about FairTax which hit the poor harder than the rich. Screw people that don't have rich parents. He's anti net neutrality and believes incumbents should manage the network as they see fit. Of course he opposes government intervention to keep the internet "independent". Let's rely on network access providers, cause that's working out well. He's all about the free market and anti government meddling until either argument get in his way. He says government should not subsidize or bailout industry but hey it should support building more coal (pandering to coal nation). He supports the TPP, which is nothing but a gift to entrenched big business and the erosion of other nations sovereignty. He's a Constitutional "originalist", which is basically code word for "screw letting people decide how to govern themselves, we're sticking to the flawed work of some long dead white guys." In short, he's just as vague when it comes to concrete solutions, big on talking points, pro rich, anti poor, but worst of all driven by idealism versus reality. Typical politician. Nothing new to see there.
- jeffdavis 10y ago
  Nothing you say is particularly radical. I know many will disagree with his positions on some things, or maybe many things. The point is that they are reasonable politicians, and especially when the main candidates are so bad, deserve a fair chance in the media to have their say.

hyperion2010 10y ago

Draco and Hamurabi knew what they were doing.

devy 10y ago

Carter correctly points out that the massive growth of criminal and regulatory law means that almost anyone can potentially end up in the same situation as Eric Garner. So does Carter and author suggest reducing the number of laws? Or should we just take it that law enforcement abusing power causing deaths are inevitable?

latch 10y ago
Quoting the article, quoting Carter: Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right. And in the same paragraph: But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for official violence to get out of hand.
- devy 10y ago
  Right below that quote, it reads: the scope of government regulation has grown so great The unfortunately reality is laws are only growing NOT reducing.

SilasX 10y ago

This looks to be a variant of the point about applying infinities to human lives in public policy. Basically, a tiny non-zero chance of death still means a finite numbers of lives killed by the policy. And any police encounter has some tiny chance of escalating to lethal force by either side. But the obvious implication, to me, is "hey, everything has a cost in lives, that shouldn't be a dealbreaker". However, the author uses it in a way that implies that it's some useful heuristic for which laws are good, rather than a trivial point about the ever-present risk of death. (I expected it to be a point about how, if you want to enforce any law, you have to apply increasing escalation against those who resist it. Refusal to comply -> arrest; resistance of arrest -> force; resistance of force -> death)

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
Resistance of force should only result in death if there is no other option; that is, if you resist it very well. In most cases, it should just result in enough force that you are no longer able to resist.
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JulianMorrison 10y ago

But what if they completely resisted the law to the point of shooting back? Well then it's the shooting back that will get them killed. There is a rather short list of things the police ought to be shooting at, and they all boil down to endangering life. Going on a gun rampage. Going on a knife rampage. Holding hostages. Selling cigarettes is not on that list and the only reason that cops get away with it, is a culture of fear and egregious defensive overreaction, which treats unarmed black men as threats equivalent or worse than a white guy with a pistol drawn.

mseebach 10y ago
Shooting back? So law enforcement shot first?

stanfordkid 10y ago

lol parking tickets ?

lolc 10y ago

I'd want to see how the law "don't shoot after fleeing suspects unless they pose an immediate threat to others" will need deadly force to be effective. The normal way laws are enforced is by threatening to remove privileges. In my opinion the discussion should be around the way the police force interacts with people. If some laws get abolished in the process, that's probably good.

leepowers 10y ago

The article is mis-titled and mis-leading, and detracts from the core principle. Any law, no matter how minor, can be escalated by a resisting citizen (or a bad cop) into a bigger, more violent situation. After a fair reading of the article the real argument goes something like this: 1) The sheer number of laws means every citizen is in violation on a regular basis. Especially for trivial things like rolling through a stop sign, selling loose cigarettes, changing lanes without a signal, etc. 2) Every violation is an opportunity for a police encounter. A population that has only 10 laws to obey will have lower encounter rate than a population that has 1000. 3) Each police encounter has a non-zero chance of resulting in violence. Be it a citizen resisting and the cops responding with violence. Or in a cop making a fatal mistake, or a cop overreacting to a situation. There is some likelihood of a violent outcome. 4) Improved officer training and tactics alone are a limited way to lower the per-encounter violence rate. Oversight and accountability are difficult to implement due to various institutional and political barriers. 5) A better, safer, long-term solution is to reduce the total number of encounters by reducing the total number of laws a citizen is required to obey. Fewer encounters mean fewer opportunities for violence. My main objection to this argument is that #5 would be as difficult to implement as #4. Paring down the number of laws will take a lot of political will and capital. Changing the institutions of policing and prosecution will take just as much political will to change. We should probably do both.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

I think a big part of the problem is that people want to be able to break some laws (the ones that "are wrong" or "shouldn't apply to me", or just the ones that they want to), and suffer no consequences for doing so. And then, when the police try to enforce some consequences, the people feel like they (the police) shouldn't do that, are wrong to do that, and therefore they (the people) are right to try to defeat the police, either by running away or by direct attack.

tim333 10y ago

There are lots of ways to enforce laws without using armed police. In the UK you have to take your car for annual inspections which covers tail lights, speeding and the like get caught by cameras, parking is covered by traffic wardens writing tickets with no guns or arrests involved, non payment of tax results in fines. Personal drug use is mostly ignored. You only really need arrests for things like theft or assault.