8 ms·

Shot by Cops and Forgotten

72 points by jmaygarden 9y ago

alacombe 9y ago
Tips for criminals: if you don't want to get shot, change your vocation. > Beyond the numbers, interviews with dozens of current and former police officers, shooting survivors, activists, and independent experts described the devastating impact of police shootings on families and communities How about we start talking about the devastating impact of crime in the communities to begin with ? > There’s a common misconception that police will try to disable a suspect by aiming for the legs or arms, [...] This is Hollywood fantasy. Hit an artery (running along the legs or arms), and the suspect will bleed to death in minutes. > Bruce Franks Jr., a protester in Ferguson who now serves as a St. Louis representative in the Missouri legislature, said cops in his city shoot first and come up with reasons later. Too bad, in the case which made Ferguson relevant, it was established that Michael Brown tried to wrestle the officer and fired his weapon several time in the patrol vehicle...
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  Would you mind pointing me towards the law showing which crimes, specifically, are capital offenses? And, if you would be so kind, under what circumstances a death sentence may be carried out on the streets without a trial for those crimes?
  - steveeq1 9y ago
    > And, if you would be so kind, under what circumstances a death sentence may be carried out on the streets without a trial for those crimes? If a man shoots at an officer for no reason.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      I hate to break it to you but even in that case there is still something like due process to be followed and NO OFFICER HAS THE RIGHT TO EXECUTE THAT PERSON ON THE SPOT.
      - steveeq1 9y ago
        Sure they do, in the case of self defense.
        jaccarmac 9y ago
        For self defense there usually needs to be some proof of a credible threat. Recent events indicate that this burden of proof is for some reason lower for police officers than for citizens.
        ratboy666 9y ago
        "What do we want?" "Dead Cops" "When do we want them?" "Now" Sure, bombastic hyperbole. But... http://www.newsweek.com/police-line-duty-deaths-increase-2017-636064 http://www.newsweek.com/police-line-duty-deaths-increase-201...
        jaccarmac 9y ago
        23 killed by firearms through June. Read the Vice article and compare those numbers to 23.
        jacquesm 9y ago
        No, in that case they should do their damnest to arrest the person risking their lives if need be. If you're not prepared to do that then do not sign up for the police. As a police officer you definitely did not sign up to be judge, jury and executioner at the same time, 'Judge Dredd' is fiction, not an instruction manual.
        CompanionCuuube 9y ago
        Self defense doesn't give you the right to execute someone on the spot. On the other hand, what many in this discussion call "execution on the spot" might be legitimate self defense.
    - InclinedPlane 9y ago
      And that's the only circumstance where anyone is killed by police, right?
- mulmen 9y ago
  > How about we start talking about the devastating impact of crime in the communities to begin with ? What about the innocent people that are killed and injured by police? Acceptable collateral damage?
crispinb 9y ago
I'm trying to picture a nation in which public and cops, both armed-to-the-teeth, coexist within a culture totally smitten with violence, yet by some magic they don't end up shooting each other a lot. I can't do it. No-one can without being ideologically severed from physical reality. One of these states of affairs must prevail for the US, from most to least likely (and least to most desirable): (1) it continues to lose more of its people than any comparable wealthy nation to violence, (2) it hugely reduces the amount of ready-to-hand weaponry (on one side or both), or (3) it diminishes its love affair with violence. The last can nearly be discounted, as it is by now too deeply embedded in the US's economy, history, culture and ideology. (2) seems like a distant prospect for similar reasons. (1) would be a safe bet.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  4. We stop relying on the cultural paradigms that foster this mess and it gets better, likely for reasons people will not understand and will not credit. Einstein said No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. The odds are good that the current framing of the problem is part of the problem.
  - crispinb 9y ago
    I'd concur with less hesitation if not for the fact that many nations are so much more successful than the US (in this respect). There are alternate framings up the wazoo on offer, with hard examples to back them up. That caveat aside, I suspect you're right: America is stuck, and getting unstuck will need a novel stimulus of some sort. As to what that might be and where it will lead? Not necessarily 'upwards'.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      Other nations don't have our exact history and circumstances. I am not aware of another nation that historically used skin color to demarcate slaves from free.* The original pilgrims came here voluntarily because they could not fit in back in Europe, so comparing it to European norms isn't likely to ever work. If Americans could go along and get along with European norms, the country would have never been born. We are misfits and mavericks and we are coping with an ugly racial legacy that is quite challenging to fully resolve. And maybe part of the answer lies in the current calls for reparations to African Americans. Maybe that will both make Blacks less angry and Whites less likely to feel that Black anger is unjustified, thus ill behaved. Jane Jacobs wrote that eyes on the street is the key to safety. Fostering a safe and civilized climate means working on ideas like that. Confining these discussions to what should happen at the point where a cop has pulled a gun is pretty much guaranteed to fail to solve it. * http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/05/why_america_adopted_race_based_slavery.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_s...
steveeq1 9y ago
To put the problem of blacks being killed by racist white police officers into perspective. . . https://i.imgur.com/tOTcCRH.jpg https://i.imgur.com/tOTcCRH.jpg Mind you, that's "white people", much less "white people that also happen to be police officers". I think what is happening here is something called "availability bias" ( http://www.howtogetyourownway.com/biases/availability_bias http://www.howtogetyourownway.com/biases/availability_bias ). Basically, events that can be easily recalled are given additional weight in decision making than the alternatives that don't. Daniel Kahneman described it very well in his excellent book "Thinking Fast and Slow", which I highly recommend. The thing is is, "An unarmed black man shot and killed by white police officer" is often repeated in media stores because, well, there is money in it. And because the reporting is so frequent, our brains pair "black man" with "white police officer" and often we jump to the wrong conclusion. While no one is arguing that police brutality is a "problem", availability bias makes the problem seem far bigger than it actually is.
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  This is nonsense. You are comparing government officials (police officers) with murderers. Police should be held to a higher standard than murderers, period. Edit: ah, oh yes, I shouldn't have been shocked to find out you're a huge racist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078663
  - steveeq1 9y ago
    Obviously. But that's not my argument. The argument is that availability bias and media sensationalism makes the problem of "unarmed black man gets shot and killed by white police officer" seem a far bigger problem than it actually is.
    - InclinedPlane 9y ago
      That sounds like your argument, that somehow other causes of violent death are higher than systematized killings by law enforcement? By what metric are police shootings in America not a huge problem? They are one of the most common forms of homicide by a stranger (representing between 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 of all such killings). Nothing about this should be accepted as normal or unconcerning.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
As horrid as this problem is, it's also an extension of a much wider and more pervasive problem. One that is hugely corrosive to the foundational principles of rule of law and guarantees of liberty that this nation allegedly holds so dear. That problem is, for lack of a better term, street justice. In principle our criminal justice system works like so: an allegation is made, evidence is collected, a prosecutor decides to press charges, a defendant is placed in custody, a fair and speedy trial is performed, a verdict is made by a jury of peers, and if a guilty verdict was attained then the defendant simply serves out a sentence kept away from society at large with no "cruel or unusual punishments" performed. There are problems with this system but it has a lot of merits. However, today basically every aspect of this system is corrupted and destroyed beyond belief. Relevant here is that the police, with effectively the tacit approval of the public at large, have created an alternate criminal justice pipeline. One where punishment is not merely meted out at the end of a fair trial, but rather one where every aspect of the system itself is a punishment. Even in the best case scenarios being arrested and detained is a traumatic experience. Indeed, the police have often used just this alone, with or without any charges, as a means to punish. In more common worse case scenarios the police use brutal force and the most extreme dehumanizing and degrading methods of bringing someone into custody. You will be injured, you will be humiliated, you will be reduced to inconsequentiality within the meat grinder of the criminal justice system. It's designed to wear people down, to reduce their resistance, to serve as a punishment all on its own. And in the very most extreme examples the system extends this system of impromptu extra judicial justice dispensed by police officers to street executions. Failing to comply with police (regardless of the details) is a capital offense that can result in immediate summary execution. Running away from the police (regardless of the details) can be met with immediate summary execution. Talking back to the police can potentially result in immediate summary execution. Being a person of a body type or an ethnicity that causes a police officer to fear for their life can result in immediate summary execution. And for every example of a police officer being fired or, rarer still, brought to justice for these heinous acts there are countless more of police officers experiencing no consequences. For every objectively unjust street execution where the police kill someone "innocent" there are many more where the police unjustly execute a "bad guy" (rapist, thief, what-have-you) in a way that is much harder to prove as objectively unjust. And that's the core of the problem. The police are out on the street and they have tremendous power in their hands these days. The power to dispense "justice" through their own volition on the spur of the moment, even including executions. So the police spend a lot of time working on how to systematically categorize people on the street into the "good guy" or "bad guy" buckets. They don't have the luxury of letting the justice system figure it out, they are the justice system. Worse, they revel in it. Once the "bad guy" bit is flipped, everything is on the table, including summary street execution. For people with power fantasies this is a gold mine. And they've been living it out for years, decades. The system today is designed to encourage, coddle, and facilitate officers who act this way. If you are rough with the "bad guys" you're a hero. If you are aggressive on the street you will make your quotas. And so on. Today in the America of 2017 it is very difficult to argue with the fact that we live in a police state. It's a hard truth to swallow but every indication is that it's the case. The vast majority of executions (by maybe 10-20:1, statistics aren't even collected) happen extra-judicially by police, on the street. One third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police. One third. Legally, civilians have the right to resist unlawful police orders, even up to and including using lethal force against the police if necessary. As a practical matter however, that's a fiction, on the street civilians have no rights, you can be executed for the slightest infraction if you are unfortunate enough to come into conflict with the police in the wrong circumstances. P.S. Consider how much the popular culture has bought into this conception of the police. Look at the lionization of the "rogue cop" working outside the rules but doing what's right to take down the bad guys (Dirty Harry, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard). Look at the acceptance of allowing the law or norms of human decency to be bent or broken. From Jack Bauer to Batman our "heroes" are willing and able to use torture to extract information from the "villains", and we applaud them for it. All of this is just tacitly accepted by society without even the blink of an eye, we don't think "oh, but Jack Bauer isn't REALLY a good guy if he uses torture", we barely even care. And all of this absolutely does filter in to how the police are allowed to operate within society.
tzs 9y ago
> VICE News examined both fatal and nonfatal incidents to determine that cops in the 50 largest local departments shot at least 3,631 people from 2010 through 2016. But then right below that they give a graphic which covers the same period and breaks the shootings down into fatal (1378), nonfatal (2720), and unknown (283). That's a total of 4381, or 750 more than the number give in the paragraph above the graphic. Also, note that they say their data is for the 50 largest departments. They say 1378 fatal shootings for 2010 through 2016. Add in the 283 unknown shootings because they might have also been fatal, and that gives 1661 fatal shootings. It's interesting to compare to the data from killedbypolice.net. KBP data starts 2013-05-01, and here are the fatal shooting counts by year: 2013: 779 2014: 1114 2015: 1220 2016: 1165 That comes to 4278 in 43 months, or 99.5/month. Compare to Vice's 1661 in 84 months, or 19.8/month. Vice says their data covers about 148k police officers serving 54 million Americans. That's about 1/5th of all police officers [1], so it looks like the ratio of fatal shootings per month from all departments to those from the 50 largest departments is about the same as the ratio of number of offices to number of office in the 50 largest departments. That suggests there isn't much difference between large departments and small departments. [1] Based on numbers I Googled, although I was only able to find 2008 numbers.
Meekro 9y ago
In the past, I didn't buy into the Black Lives Matter message because I didn't like their poster child, Michael Brown. But recently I've become convinced that BLM was right, and the thing that changed my mind was the story of Daniel Shaver. Google it and watch the video if you haven't seen it yet -- it might change your mind, too. He wasn't armed, hadn't committed a crime earlier that day, didn't disrespect the officers, complied with police orders, and had the same skin color as the policeman who shot him. And they executed him anyway. A jury then acquitted his killer of all charges. I don't know what to think anymore.
- nlperguiy 9y ago
  That whole situation was a mess. A scared cop with an assault rifle, an intoxicated suspect. Instructions that are a mess, a victim that can't comply with the instructions because of intoxication. Then the victim reaches for the right pocket while crawling on the floor, despite the warnings that the hands need to be up, visible, or on the floor. Scared cop fires. I wouldn't really say that there's institutionalized conspiracy against blacks and that everyone is shooting them for no reason. There are obvious instances that individual police officers acted cruel but I wouldn't pin those instances as proof of a system wide corruption and conspiracy against blacks. BLM is definitely not right.
  - jaccarmac 9y ago
    Have you seen the video? It's clear beyond any doubt that the officer wasn't "scared", but a sadistic control freak. He had "You're Fucked" engraved into his rifle for God's sake, the guy is obviously far too immature or full of himself to be pointing a gun at anyone.
    - b6 9y ago
      I agree. But people have been fighting police brutality for years and years. That's not BLM's focus, or they'd be called Stop Police Brutality or something.
      - 9y ago
Growlzler 9y ago
I am concerned with the proclivity of police to "empty the clip" into an individual. At some point they seem to just make the switch to a violent video game without remorse or empathy for their actions. Shouldn't this be something that should be asked in gauging a police prospect before "arming" them with a license to kill?
RickJWagner 9y ago
Cops have a scary, dangerous job. There are all kinds of people just waiting to harm them, and now they are politicized. I've known several cops, they are without exception good people who would never harm someone intentionally. (I do believe there are a few bad ones, but I've never met them.) I can't wait for this issue to become de-politicized again. Cops are totally undercompensated, under appreciated and deserve much better than this.

72 points by jmaygarden 9y ago

Tips for criminals: if you don't want to get shot, change your vocation. > Beyond the numbers, interviews with dozens of current and former police officers, shooting survivors, activists, and independent experts described the devastating impact of police shootings on families and communities How about we start talking about the devastating impact of crime in the communities to begin with ? > There’s a common misconception that police will try to disable a suspect by aiming for the legs or arms, [...] This is Hollywood fantasy. Hit an artery (running along the legs or arms), and the suspect will bleed to death in minutes. > Bruce Franks Jr., a protester in Ferguson who now serves as a St. Louis representative in the Missouri legislature, said cops in his city shoot first and come up with reasons later. Too bad, in the case which made Ferguson relevant, it was established that Michael Brown tried to wrestle the officer and fired his weapon several time in the patrol vehicle...

InclinedPlane 9y ago
Would you mind pointing me towards the law showing which crimes, specifically, are capital offenses? And, if you would be so kind, under what circumstances a death sentence may be carried out on the streets without a trial for those crimes?
- steveeq1 9y ago
  > And, if you would be so kind, under what circumstances a death sentence may be carried out on the streets without a trial for those crimes? If a man shoots at an officer for no reason.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    I hate to break it to you but even in that case there is still something like due process to be followed and NO OFFICER HAS THE RIGHT TO EXECUTE THAT PERSON ON THE SPOT.
    - steveeq1 9y ago
      Sure they do, in the case of self defense.
      - jaccarmac 9y ago
        For self defense there usually needs to be some proof of a credible threat. Recent events indicate that this burden of proof is for some reason lower for police officers than for citizens.
        ratboy666 9y ago
        "What do we want?" "Dead Cops" "When do we want them?" "Now" Sure, bombastic hyperbole. But... http://www.newsweek.com/police-line-duty-deaths-increase-2017-636064 http://www.newsweek.com/police-line-duty-deaths-increase-201...
        jaccarmac 9y ago
        23 killed by firearms through June. Read the Vice article and compare those numbers to 23.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        No, in that case they should do their damnest to arrest the person risking their lives if need be. If you're not prepared to do that then do not sign up for the police. As a police officer you definitely did not sign up to be judge, jury and executioner at the same time, 'Judge Dredd' is fiction, not an instruction manual.
      - CompanionCuuube 9y ago
        Self defense doesn't give you the right to execute someone on the spot. On the other hand, what many in this discussion call "execution on the spot" might be legitimate self defense.
  - InclinedPlane 9y ago
    And that's the only circumstance where anyone is killed by police, right?
mulmen 9y ago
> How about we start talking about the devastating impact of crime in the communities to begin with ? What about the innocent people that are killed and injured by police? Acceptable collateral damage?

crispinb 9y ago

I'm trying to picture a nation in which public and cops, both armed-to-the-teeth, coexist within a culture totally smitten with violence, yet by some magic they don't end up shooting each other a lot. I can't do it. No-one can without being ideologically severed from physical reality. One of these states of affairs must prevail for the US, from most to least likely (and least to most desirable): (1) it continues to lose more of its people than any comparable wealthy nation to violence, (2) it hugely reduces the amount of ready-to-hand weaponry (on one side or both), or (3) it diminishes its love affair with violence. The last can nearly be discounted, as it is by now too deeply embedded in the US's economy, history, culture and ideology. (2) seems like a distant prospect for similar reasons. (1) would be a safe bet.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
4. We stop relying on the cultural paradigms that foster this mess and it gets better, likely for reasons people will not understand and will not credit. Einstein said No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. The odds are good that the current framing of the problem is part of the problem.
- crispinb 9y ago
  I'd concur with less hesitation if not for the fact that many nations are so much more successful than the US (in this respect). There are alternate framings up the wazoo on offer, with hard examples to back them up. That caveat aside, I suspect you're right: America is stuck, and getting unstuck will need a novel stimulus of some sort. As to what that might be and where it will lead? Not necessarily 'upwards'.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Other nations don't have our exact history and circumstances. I am not aware of another nation that historically used skin color to demarcate slaves from free.* The original pilgrims came here voluntarily because they could not fit in back in Europe, so comparing it to European norms isn't likely to ever work. If Americans could go along and get along with European norms, the country would have never been born. We are misfits and mavericks and we are coping with an ugly racial legacy that is quite challenging to fully resolve. And maybe part of the answer lies in the current calls for reparations to African Americans. Maybe that will both make Blacks less angry and Whites less likely to feel that Black anger is unjustified, thus ill behaved. Jane Jacobs wrote that eyes on the street is the key to safety. Fostering a safe and civilized climate means working on ideas like that. Confining these discussions to what should happen at the point where a cop has pulled a gun is pretty much guaranteed to fail to solve it. * http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/05/why_america_adopted_race_based_slavery.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_s...

steveeq1 9y ago

To put the problem of blacks being killed by racist white police officers into perspective. . . https://i.imgur.com/tOTcCRH.jpg https://i.imgur.com/tOTcCRH.jpg Mind you, that's "white people", much less "white people that also happen to be police officers". I think what is happening here is something called "availability bias" ( http://www.howtogetyourownway.com/biases/availability_bias http://www.howtogetyourownway.com/biases/availability_bias ). Basically, events that can be easily recalled are given additional weight in decision making than the alternatives that don't. Daniel Kahneman described it very well in his excellent book "Thinking Fast and Slow", which I highly recommend. The thing is is, "An unarmed black man shot and killed by white police officer" is often repeated in media stores because, well, there is money in it. And because the reporting is so frequent, our brains pair "black man" with "white police officer" and often we jump to the wrong conclusion. While no one is arguing that police brutality is a "problem", availability bias makes the problem seem far bigger than it actually is.

InclinedPlane 9y ago
This is nonsense. You are comparing government officials (police officers) with murderers. Police should be held to a higher standard than murderers, period. Edit: ah, oh yes, I shouldn't have been shocked to find out you're a huge racist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078663
- steveeq1 9y ago
  Obviously. But that's not my argument. The argument is that availability bias and media sensationalism makes the problem of "unarmed black man gets shot and killed by white police officer" seem a far bigger problem than it actually is.
  - InclinedPlane 9y ago
    That sounds like your argument, that somehow other causes of violent death are higher than systematized killings by law enforcement? By what metric are police shootings in America not a huge problem? They are one of the most common forms of homicide by a stranger (representing between 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 of all such killings). Nothing about this should be accepted as normal or unconcerning.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

As horrid as this problem is, it's also an extension of a much wider and more pervasive problem. One that is hugely corrosive to the foundational principles of rule of law and guarantees of liberty that this nation allegedly holds so dear. That problem is, for lack of a better term, street justice. In principle our criminal justice system works like so: an allegation is made, evidence is collected, a prosecutor decides to press charges, a defendant is placed in custody, a fair and speedy trial is performed, a verdict is made by a jury of peers, and if a guilty verdict was attained then the defendant simply serves out a sentence kept away from society at large with no "cruel or unusual punishments" performed. There are problems with this system but it has a lot of merits. However, today basically every aspect of this system is corrupted and destroyed beyond belief. Relevant here is that the police, with effectively the tacit approval of the public at large, have created an alternate criminal justice pipeline. One where punishment is not merely meted out at the end of a fair trial, but rather one where every aspect of the system itself is a punishment. Even in the best case scenarios being arrested and detained is a traumatic experience. Indeed, the police have often used just this alone, with or without any charges, as a means to punish. In more common worse case scenarios the police use brutal force and the most extreme dehumanizing and degrading methods of bringing someone into custody. You will be injured, you will be humiliated, you will be reduced to inconsequentiality within the meat grinder of the criminal justice system. It's designed to wear people down, to reduce their resistance, to serve as a punishment all on its own. And in the very most extreme examples the system extends this system of impromptu extra judicial justice dispensed by police officers to street executions. Failing to comply with police (regardless of the details) is a capital offense that can result in immediate summary execution. Running away from the police (regardless of the details) can be met with immediate summary execution. Talking back to the police can potentially result in immediate summary execution. Being a person of a body type or an ethnicity that causes a police officer to fear for their life can result in immediate summary execution. And for every example of a police officer being fired or, rarer still, brought to justice for these heinous acts there are countless more of police officers experiencing no consequences. For every objectively unjust street execution where the police kill someone "innocent" there are many more where the police unjustly execute a "bad guy" (rapist, thief, what-have-you) in a way that is much harder to prove as objectively unjust. And that's the core of the problem. The police are out on the street and they have tremendous power in their hands these days. The power to dispense "justice" through their own volition on the spur of the moment, even including executions. So the police spend a lot of time working on how to systematically categorize people on the street into the "good guy" or "bad guy" buckets. They don't have the luxury of letting the justice system figure it out, they are the justice system. Worse, they revel in it. Once the "bad guy" bit is flipped, everything is on the table, including summary street execution. For people with power fantasies this is a gold mine. And they've been living it out for years, decades. The system today is designed to encourage, coddle, and facilitate officers who act this way. If you are rough with the "bad guys" you're a hero. If you are aggressive on the street you will make your quotas. And so on. Today in the America of 2017 it is very difficult to argue with the fact that we live in a police state. It's a hard truth to swallow but every indication is that it's the case. The vast majority of executions (by maybe 10-20:1, statistics aren't even collected) happen extra-judicially by police, on the street. One third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police. One third. Legally, civilians have the right to resist unlawful police orders, even up to and including using lethal force against the police if necessary. As a practical matter however, that's a fiction, on the street civilians have no rights, you can be executed for the slightest infraction if you are unfortunate enough to come into conflict with the police in the wrong circumstances. P.S. Consider how much the popular culture has bought into this conception of the police. Look at the lionization of the "rogue cop" working outside the rules but doing what's right to take down the bad guys (Dirty Harry, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard). Look at the acceptance of allowing the law or norms of human decency to be bent or broken. From Jack Bauer to Batman our "heroes" are willing and able to use torture to extract information from the "villains", and we applaud them for it. All of this is just tacitly accepted by society without even the blink of an eye, we don't think "oh, but Jack Bauer isn't REALLY a good guy if he uses torture", we barely even care. And all of this absolutely does filter in to how the police are allowed to operate within society.

tzs 9y ago

> VICE News examined both fatal and nonfatal incidents to determine that cops in the 50 largest local departments shot at least 3,631 people from 2010 through 2016. But then right below that they give a graphic which covers the same period and breaks the shootings down into fatal (1378), nonfatal (2720), and unknown (283). That's a total of 4381, or 750 more than the number give in the paragraph above the graphic. Also, note that they say their data is for the 50 largest departments. They say 1378 fatal shootings for 2010 through 2016. Add in the 283 unknown shootings because they might have also been fatal, and that gives 1661 fatal shootings. It's interesting to compare to the data from killedbypolice.net. KBP data starts 2013-05-01, and here are the fatal shooting counts by year: 2013: 779 2014: 1114 2015: 1220 2016: 1165 That comes to 4278 in 43 months, or 99.5/month. Compare to Vice's 1661 in 84 months, or 19.8/month. Vice says their data covers about 148k police officers serving 54 million Americans. That's about 1/5th of all police officers [1], so it looks like the ratio of fatal shootings per month from all departments to those from the 50 largest departments is about the same as the ratio of number of offices to number of office in the 50 largest departments. That suggests there isn't much difference between large departments and small departments. [1] Based on numbers I Googled, although I was only able to find 2008 numbers.

Meekro 9y ago

In the past, I didn't buy into the Black Lives Matter message because I didn't like their poster child, Michael Brown. But recently I've become convinced that BLM was right, and the thing that changed my mind was the story of Daniel Shaver. Google it and watch the video if you haven't seen it yet -- it might change your mind, too. He wasn't armed, hadn't committed a crime earlier that day, didn't disrespect the officers, complied with police orders, and had the same skin color as the policeman who shot him. And they executed him anyway. A jury then acquitted his killer of all charges. I don't know what to think anymore.

nlperguiy 9y ago
That whole situation was a mess. A scared cop with an assault rifle, an intoxicated suspect. Instructions that are a mess, a victim that can't comply with the instructions because of intoxication. Then the victim reaches for the right pocket while crawling on the floor, despite the warnings that the hands need to be up, visible, or on the floor. Scared cop fires. I wouldn't really say that there's institutionalized conspiracy against blacks and that everyone is shooting them for no reason. There are obvious instances that individual police officers acted cruel but I wouldn't pin those instances as proof of a system wide corruption and conspiracy against blacks. BLM is definitely not right.
- jaccarmac 9y ago
  Have you seen the video? It's clear beyond any doubt that the officer wasn't "scared", but a sadistic control freak. He had "You're Fucked" engraved into his rifle for God's sake, the guy is obviously far too immature or full of himself to be pointing a gun at anyone.
  - b6 9y ago
    I agree. But people have been fighting police brutality for years and years. That's not BLM's focus, or they'd be called Stop Police Brutality or something.
    - 9y ago

Growlzler 9y ago

I am concerned with the proclivity of police to "empty the clip" into an individual. At some point they seem to just make the switch to a violent video game without remorse or empathy for their actions. Shouldn't this be something that should be asked in gauging a police prospect before "arming" them with a license to kill?

RickJWagner 9y ago

Cops have a scary, dangerous job. There are all kinds of people just waiting to harm them, and now they are politicized. I've known several cops, they are without exception good people who would never harm someone intentionally. (I do believe there are a few bad ones, but I've never met them.) I can't wait for this issue to become de-politicized again. Cops are totally undercompensated, under appreciated and deserve much better than this.