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Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice, it never ceases to puzzle me how the solution to any s

by lb1lf 9y ago

Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice, it never ceases to puzzle me how the solution to any situation appears to be to shoot anything that moves on the flimsiest of assumptions, then figure out what happened afterwards. Now, I appreciate that the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does; this surely goes some way towards explaining their apparent eagerness to shoot first, then ask questions later. However, what puzzles me most is this - if the police around here shot but one innocent, there'd be cries for resignations, perhaps even going all the way to the secretary of justice; we collectively would expect - nah, demand - that the police come up with policies and training which would make it less likely that another, similar incident would ever occur, &c. So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect? Say, requiring better people skills, more use of non-lethal weapons (and, if sufficiently effective non-lethal weapons do not yet exist - to have them developed), more passive safety for police officers (say, if you are wearing body armour which will stop a cal. 50-round, maybe you do not have to fire the first shot) etc?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
qaq 9y ago
All good points except for the last one even if you could even theoretically develop practical armor that could stop cal. 50 round it would still be able to kill a person through the impact force damaging internal organs.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  Not true at all. If the person firing the round can survive the momentum imparted into their shoulder from the rifle, then the person on the receiving end can survive it if they're wearing armor that spreads out the imparted momentum similarly. Basic Newton's Third Law. Also, there are .50 BMG handguns (and no, I'm not mistakenly referring to .50 AE, I mean .50 BMG). They are stupidly impractical, but they exist. You're making this out to be some mythical projectile when it's really just a bigger bullet. It's not like getting hit by a tank shell. The real flaw with this scenario is that full body armor required to stop .50 BMG would be so bulky and heavy that you wouldn't be able to move. The imparted momentum isn't the problem, it's stopping the penetration of the round. It's also worth pointing out that this conversation is pointlessly academic, as .50 BMG has not been used in a murder once. Ever. In the entire history of the United States. Out of over one million gun murders total. It's ridiculously impractical for that purpose.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Large rifles work better than pushing all the recoil into the shooter. https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2016/4/29/the-barrett-model-82a1-rifle/ https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2016/4/29/the-barr... Pretty hard to put a muzzle brake on your body armor.
  - j9461701 9y ago
    The killer is not the momentum, but the impulse. Let's do some simple kinematics: The M82 has a barrel length of 20 inches (51 cm, .051 meters) and fires a 45 gram bullet that, at the end of that time, is going 900 m/s. Meaning the bullet goes from having zero momentum to 41 Newton-seconds in 1.13 milliseconds. Meaning the shooter feels over that 1.13 millisecond period of ~36,000 Newtons of force on his shoulder. The person getting shot has to make that bullet go from 900 m/s to 0, but he has to do it over say 2 inches of distance or his organs start getting smushed. Meaning he's experiencing, over that 110 microsecond period, ~360,000 Netwons of force. The exact same momentum, but in the shooter's case it's like getting punched and in the shootee's case it's like getting your torso gummed on by a T-rex. This is why going from 0 to 100 in a car can either be no big deal (if done over 60 seconds) or kill you six ways from sunday (if done in a few milliseconds when you crash into a wall or something). We're also not getting into the power of a good muzzle break or the weight of the rifle itself, both of which considerably reduce the felt impulse by the shooter. You can look up people rapid-firing 50 cal rifles from the hip on youtube for an illustration of just how much you can tame the recoil of these guns.
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      A typical body armor plate has much more surface area in contact with the body than a rifle butt does though -- we're talking roughly an entire square foot. Said body armor plate, if it's to stop a .50 BMG round, also will be thick enough to weigh as much as an M82. This makes up for the fact that the acceleration happens over a reduced distance. Also keep in mind that a rifle needs to be comfortable enough for many repeated shots, while body armor only needs to be survivable. Note that you're at ~80 pounds from wearing just two plates to protect most of your chest and back; you'll collapse under the weight by the time you've armored your entire body.
marktangotango 9y ago
Non US'ers should understand that Europe, and Scandinavian countries in particular, is a different world than the US. No social safety net, lack of public transportation, exorbitant health care costs, tragically ineffective 'war on drugs', guns, violent crime, poverty. Honestly, the US really kinda sucks now, for most people living here.
- tonmoy 9y ago
  Just because there are hundreds of other problems does not mean we can’t focus on and try to solve one of them.
- avar 9y ago
  Iceland has even shittier public transportation than the US and is culturally Scandinavian. Let's not confuse different issues here.
v64 9y ago
> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect? I'm from the southern US, which is historically more conservative than the rest of the country. I'm not in any way claiming that the following viewpoints are universal and accepted in this region, but a large enough portion of the population holds these viewpoints, preventing further progress: 1) Anyone who gets shot by cops must have done something to warrant being shot. Even for people who get shot during traffic stops, that person did something to get pulled over in the first place. If they had a criminal record in the past, even if they didn't commit an offense during the situation where they were killed, there's a good chance they would have offended again, and this preemptive killing probably prevented a future crime. 2) In the case of this swatting incident, the blame lies 100% on the person who made the false police report. No false report, no shooting. The cop had reason to believe based on the report that the man who emerged from the door claimed to have a gun and had killed in the last hour, so it was plausible to believe he may try to retaliate and the appropriate force was used. No time for fact checking during an active shooter situation. "Shoot first, ask questions later" is considered an appropriate way for the police to deal with criminals. Obviously there are numerous refutations, and that isn't lost on people. Many people will justify it by saying that regardless of the circumstances, the police put their lives on the line every day, so that gives them a pass when they make mistakes. Many people would view your suggestions as weakening the police, and the militarization of US police is viewed by many as making us safer, not less safe.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Its a very different world if you're not white and live in the American South. Easy to believe the best, when you are relatively safe.
  - jmaygarden 9y ago
    Police violence is a universal problem. A Harvard study has shown that white people in the US are statistically more likely encounter lethal force from police than people of color [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a-massive-new-study-on-police-shootings-of-whites-and-blacks-is-so-controversial/?utm_term=.f6ccfcf56d2d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a...
tuna-piano 9y ago
Just a side note, because you’re from Norway, that may be surprising to some. The US is #1 with 1.01 guns per capita, and Norway is #9 with .31 guns per capita. In any case, i don’t think the number of guns per capita explains the difference in gun crime rates between the two. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per...
- dopamean 9y ago
  You're absolutely right. The difference is that we are a more violent society. Violence is something we value here. Just look at entertainment for children. You're way more likely to find parents more amenable to letting their children watch scenes of people being hurt than people making love. One gets a pass and the other is considered obscene.
  - analog31 9y ago
    Indeed, I was at an activity with my son, and there was a TV in the lounge, showing a cartoon program. The program involved an evil scheming person trying to take over the world, and culminated in a literal war, with cartoon soldiers, guns, tanks, and so forth, killing one another.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    I don't think that's uniquely American. As a child I consumed plenty of violent media (mostly American, in fact!) but in my country very few people get shot.
    - sago 9y ago
      I think most of us would agree here that "violent media creates violent people" is false. But violent media can still be a problem, if it is caused and enabled by a pathological society, a symptom of that pathology. I personally think it is, and I think that's the point the post you were responding to was making. I don't think it is any coincidence that most of the violent gun-laden media you consumed as a child was American. Killing is a* fundamental problem-solving strategy in American culture (both domestically consumed and exported). And the overwhelming most common method of killing is a gun. This is why it is very rare to find a film or TV show with any kind of action/adventure/thriller/crime/mystery plot without guns, usually on the poster. When this is true in other countries, it is usually because they are intentionally aping American media. I think it has never occurred to most Americans that there is any alternative to 'kill the bad guys'. * On reflection it is probably 'the' fundamental problem-solving strategy in American media.
glenstein 9y ago
To your point about non-lethal weapons: it seems to me that we haven't yet claimed the low-hanging fruit in the US when it comes to this problem. Why not indulge the most base impulses of both silicon valley and police militarization with high tech, non lethal weapons? It will probably introduce new problems, such as even more unnecessary use of force. It addresses absolutely none of the cultural or institutional problems. But it may also save lives and better maintain justice. A family of a person wrongly tazed has been afforded more justice than a family of a person wrongly shot and killed. People who hold out for either a panacea or nothing will be unsatisfied. But if we can at least separate incapacitation from lethality, we may be able to save lives while still satisfying the cultural and institutional lust for violence.
- qaq 9y ago
  I'd rather be unnecessarily tasered vs being unnecessarily shot at
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  "Why not indulge the most base impulses of both silicon valley and police militarization with high tech, non lethal weapons?" You're leaving witnesses and complicating any potential legal cases in the aftermath.
- adrianN 9y ago
  There are only "less lethal" weapons. People can very well die from being tasered for example.
  - smithhallam 9y ago
    Yes, but it is less likely that they will die from being tasered than from being shot.
  - glenstein 9y ago
    And in special circumstances a butter knife could probably kill someone. But I don't think getting trapped in a continuum fallacy represents forward motion in this kind of conversation. Maybe a tazer should count as lethal and should be excluded. Let's draw the line somewhere, most definitely. But I'm not any closer to understanding whether you merely object to that example or the principle itself, and the latter is the pertinent thing.
oconnor663 9y ago
> the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does Number of guns is a contributor to the difference, yes, but a more direct measure might be number of officers killed. The first source I find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Police_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Police_Service) says that 10 Norwegian police officers have been killed since 1945, or something like 0.14 per year. The US figure (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297) is something like 50 per year, though that's actually way down since the 80's. Running with those numbers and dividing by population today, the US has almost six times as many officer deaths per capita. And that's an average; there are many places where it's as safe as Norway, and some places where it's a hundred times more dangerous.
drtillberg 9y ago
At one time, police in the U.S. were trained that to shoot to kill-- only. If the officer discharged the weapon at all, she emptied the magazine and aimed to kill. No warning shots, no shots to disable, that would be against training. Thus confusion, inattention, or misunderstanding in the face of commands from a self-identified officer easily can be a lethal situation.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  If you haven't done anything wrong, and then one day your home is surrounded by a paramilitary force barking instructions at you and threatening your life, confusion, inattention and misunderstanding are inevitable. If police procedures don't allow for that, they are fundamentally broken. This tragic outcome could have been avoided many times, and in most of those cases, the difference would have been in the behaviour of the police.
Dove 9y ago
I don't think it's reasonable or effective to entirely expect police to solve this problem. Here is the account from the article: Livingston said when the door opened, officers gave Finch commands to put his hands up and walk toward them. He complied for a "very short time" and put his hands back down. He raised them again, and then lowered them for a second time, Livingston said. "The male then turned towards the officers on the east side of the residence, lowered his hands to the waistband again, then suddenly pulled them back up towards those officers at the east," he said. "The officers on the north side of the street feared the male pulled a weapon from his waistband, retrieved a gun and was in the process of pointing it at the officers to the east. Fearing for those officers’ safety, the officer on the north side fired one round." From my perspective, they are describing a very threatening movement. Stuff that looks like that is how officers die. Asking them to not react when someone does that puts them in pretty serious danger. A sudden movement like that is how gunfights start. It's tragic that it's also something a panicked innocent citizen might do! But that doesn't change the fact that it's a genuinely threatening thing to do. I think probably the most effective way to solve the problem would be to make people better aware of what makes you appear threatening and non-threatening in a confrontation. Some of us have been insulated from violence for so long that we don't know what it looks like. We have no reason to know that innocent sudden movements can just like dangerous sudden movements. I'm not saying the guy's death is his fault. The whole thing is a tragic misunderstanding between good people. But I am saying he could have been educated to prevent it. I don't think it's realistic to ask police to solve the problem at great risk to themselves when regular people can solve it by learning that the best way to avoid misunderstandings and snap reactions is to move slowly and deliberately in any confrontation.
- dmitrygr 9y ago
  They accept that risk by signing on the dotted line and picking up their badge. Cops should have a policy of never shooting first unless someone who isn't a cop is in immediate clear danger. That's what we pay them for. Any bozo can shoot first and ask questions later. A trained, well-paid professional's job is precisely not doing that.
- Miner49er 9y ago
  Have you watched the video? It looks far less threatening when you watch the video. This was straight up murder.
sjg007 9y ago
There is no viable feedback loop at this time. The FBI will get involved if there is a consent decree. This provides oversight, but that requires a Justice department that will investigate police departments. You see this happen after a litany of civil rights violations. But Sessions and Trump have made it clear that that won't happen. Maybe Congress will get involved after the midterms if things change or if there are mass protests. However, since police departments are local you might be able to put pressure on city councils and the mayor / maybe governor to make some progress. But there should be better training but that will probably only happen if juries start to decide that "being fearful for your life" is not a sufficient defense.
protomyth 9y ago
> Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice Actually, they don't spend a lot of time doing gun practice which is a problem. Police firearms training budgets are lacking in most states. They also don't do a lot (if at all) training to deal with dogs unless their has been public outrage. A growing separation from the community they police is also a factor. SWAT is a whole different problem. The overuse of SWAT to do the simple things like serve warrants and the whole war on drugs has been a disaster. Its isn't the populace with guns, its the lack of real training, a cover everyone's butt attitude, and a percentage of people on a power trip. Look at the incident with the nurse in Utah. No guns just CYA[1]. 1) http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/health/nurse-arrested-police-protocol/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/health/nurse-arrested-police-p...
Chathamization 9y ago
> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect? Keep in mind that most people in the U.S. care about issues like this in an abstract way. They think that improvements should be made, but when, say, the time comes to vote they won't bother taking 10 minutes to see where their representatives stand on this issue and vote accordingly. If you ask people who they voted for the day after a primary, most will have a hard time even recalling the names in the downballot races, let alone what the positions were. The people who do tend to vote for these positions tend to be extremely focused on particular policies - they only care if the politician supports or opposes some obscure regulation that benefits them personally. So in the end you really are talking about a very small number of activists and groups that are trying to bring about change, and they're fighting against entrenched groups opposed to said change - or more often than not, just general political inertia (why rock the boat if most voters don't care?). There has been traction in the effort to get more body cameras, though, so there have been some improvements. But there doesn't yet seem to be enough people who care and act accordingly to bring about the big changes that are needed.
- nitrogen 9y ago
  They think that improvements should be made, but when, say, the time comes to vote they won't bother taking 10 minutes to see where their representatives stand on this issue and vote accordingly. IMO this is backward. Representatives should choose their issues by the voice of the people, or people should vote on issues and the appropriate candidate suggested automatically. We will always get suboptimal results when people are forced to commingle their opinions on everything from science to security into a single binary choice.
  - Chathamization 9y ago
    In places that allow ballot initiatives you can target specific issues. That's how marijuana legalization has been happening. There are places where majority of the people support it, but they vote in politicians who don't bother to legalize it, so activists take the issue directly to the voters. Even still, though, it's a small number of people who bother collecting the signatures and informing people about the initiative. The vast majority of people are extremely disengaged and won't bother working on changing things.
moogly 9y ago
> is there any significant push It'll be business as per usual: "shit happens", "thoughts & prayers" etc. Just another one of the "periodic plagues from the gods" [paraphrased] that you can't do anything about.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by lb1lf 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

qaq 9y ago

All good points except for the last one even if you could even theoretically develop practical armor that could stop cal. 50 round it would still be able to kill a person through the impact force damaging internal organs.

CydeWeys 9y ago
Not true at all. If the person firing the round can survive the momentum imparted into their shoulder from the rifle, then the person on the receiving end can survive it if they're wearing armor that spreads out the imparted momentum similarly. Basic Newton's Third Law. Also, there are .50 BMG handguns (and no, I'm not mistakenly referring to .50 AE, I mean .50 BMG). They are stupidly impractical, but they exist. You're making this out to be some mythical projectile when it's really just a bigger bullet. It's not like getting hit by a tank shell. The real flaw with this scenario is that full body armor required to stop .50 BMG would be so bulky and heavy that you wouldn't be able to move. The imparted momentum isn't the problem, it's stopping the penetration of the round. It's also worth pointing out that this conversation is pointlessly academic, as .50 BMG has not been used in a murder once. Ever. In the entire history of the United States. Out of over one million gun murders total. It's ridiculously impractical for that purpose.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Large rifles work better than pushing all the recoil into the shooter. https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2016/4/29/the-barrett-model-82a1-rifle/ https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2016/4/29/the-barr... Pretty hard to put a muzzle brake on your body armor.
- j9461701 9y ago
  The killer is not the momentum, but the impulse. Let's do some simple kinematics: The M82 has a barrel length of 20 inches (51 cm, .051 meters) and fires a 45 gram bullet that, at the end of that time, is going 900 m/s. Meaning the bullet goes from having zero momentum to 41 Newton-seconds in 1.13 milliseconds. Meaning the shooter feels over that 1.13 millisecond period of ~36,000 Newtons of force on his shoulder. The person getting shot has to make that bullet go from 900 m/s to 0, but he has to do it over say 2 inches of distance or his organs start getting smushed. Meaning he's experiencing, over that 110 microsecond period, ~360,000 Netwons of force. The exact same momentum, but in the shooter's case it's like getting punched and in the shootee's case it's like getting your torso gummed on by a T-rex. This is why going from 0 to 100 in a car can either be no big deal (if done over 60 seconds) or kill you six ways from sunday (if done in a few milliseconds when you crash into a wall or something). We're also not getting into the power of a good muzzle break or the weight of the rifle itself, both of which considerably reduce the felt impulse by the shooter. You can look up people rapid-firing 50 cal rifles from the hip on youtube for an illustration of just how much you can tame the recoil of these guns.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    A typical body armor plate has much more surface area in contact with the body than a rifle butt does though -- we're talking roughly an entire square foot. Said body armor plate, if it's to stop a .50 BMG round, also will be thick enough to weigh as much as an M82. This makes up for the fact that the acceleration happens over a reduced distance. Also keep in mind that a rifle needs to be comfortable enough for many repeated shots, while body armor only needs to be survivable. Note that you're at ~80 pounds from wearing just two plates to protect most of your chest and back; you'll collapse under the weight by the time you've armored your entire body.

marktangotango 9y ago

Non US'ers should understand that Europe, and Scandinavian countries in particular, is a different world than the US. No social safety net, lack of public transportation, exorbitant health care costs, tragically ineffective 'war on drugs', guns, violent crime, poverty. Honestly, the US really kinda sucks now, for most people living here.

tonmoy 9y ago
Just because there are hundreds of other problems does not mean we can’t focus on and try to solve one of them.
avar 9y ago
Iceland has even shittier public transportation than the US and is culturally Scandinavian. Let's not confuse different issues here.

v64 9y ago

> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect? I'm from the southern US, which is historically more conservative than the rest of the country. I'm not in any way claiming that the following viewpoints are universal and accepted in this region, but a large enough portion of the population holds these viewpoints, preventing further progress: 1) Anyone who gets shot by cops must have done something to warrant being shot. Even for people who get shot during traffic stops, that person did something to get pulled over in the first place. If they had a criminal record in the past, even if they didn't commit an offense during the situation where they were killed, there's a good chance they would have offended again, and this preemptive killing probably prevented a future crime. 2) In the case of this swatting incident, the blame lies 100% on the person who made the false police report. No false report, no shooting. The cop had reason to believe based on the report that the man who emerged from the door claimed to have a gun and had killed in the last hour, so it was plausible to believe he may try to retaliate and the appropriate force was used. No time for fact checking during an active shooter situation. "Shoot first, ask questions later" is considered an appropriate way for the police to deal with criminals. Obviously there are numerous refutations, and that isn't lost on people. Many people will justify it by saying that regardless of the circumstances, the police put their lives on the line every day, so that gives them a pass when they make mistakes. Many people would view your suggestions as weakening the police, and the militarization of US police is viewed by many as making us safer, not less safe.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Its a very different world if you're not white and live in the American South. Easy to believe the best, when you are relatively safe.
- jmaygarden 9y ago
  Police violence is a universal problem. A Harvard study has shown that white people in the US are statistically more likely encounter lethal force from police than people of color [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a-massive-new-study-on-police-shootings-of-whites-and-blacks-is-so-controversial/?utm_term=.f6ccfcf56d2d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a...

tuna-piano 9y ago

Just a side note, because you’re from Norway, that may be surprising to some. The US is #1 with 1.01 guns per capita, and Norway is #9 with .31 guns per capita. In any case, i don’t think the number of guns per capita explains the difference in gun crime rates between the two. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per...

dopamean 9y ago
You're absolutely right. The difference is that we are a more violent society. Violence is something we value here. Just look at entertainment for children. You're way more likely to find parents more amenable to letting their children watch scenes of people being hurt than people making love. One gets a pass and the other is considered obscene.
- analog31 9y ago
  Indeed, I was at an activity with my son, and there was a TV in the lounge, showing a cartoon program. The program involved an evil scheming person trying to take over the world, and culminated in a literal war, with cartoon soldiers, guns, tanks, and so forth, killing one another.
- adrianN 9y ago
  I don't think that's uniquely American. As a child I consumed plenty of violent media (mostly American, in fact!) but in my country very few people get shot.
  - sago 9y ago
    I think most of us would agree here that "violent media creates violent people" is false. But violent media can still be a problem, if it is caused and enabled by a pathological society, a symptom of that pathology. I personally think it is, and I think that's the point the post you were responding to was making. I don't think it is any coincidence that most of the violent gun-laden media you consumed as a child was American. Killing is a* fundamental problem-solving strategy in American culture (both domestically consumed and exported). And the overwhelming most common method of killing is a gun. This is why it is very rare to find a film or TV show with any kind of action/adventure/thriller/crime/mystery plot without guns, usually on the poster. When this is true in other countries, it is usually because they are intentionally aping American media. I think it has never occurred to most Americans that there is any alternative to 'kill the bad guys'. * On reflection it is probably 'the' fundamental problem-solving strategy in American media.

glenstein 9y ago

To your point about non-lethal weapons: it seems to me that we haven't yet claimed the low-hanging fruit in the US when it comes to this problem. Why not indulge the most base impulses of both silicon valley and police militarization with high tech, non lethal weapons? It will probably introduce new problems, such as even more unnecessary use of force. It addresses absolutely none of the cultural or institutional problems. But it may also save lives and better maintain justice. A family of a person wrongly tazed has been afforded more justice than a family of a person wrongly shot and killed. People who hold out for either a panacea or nothing will be unsatisfied. But if we can at least separate incapacitation from lethality, we may be able to save lives while still satisfying the cultural and institutional lust for violence.

qaq 9y ago
I'd rather be unnecessarily tasered vs being unnecessarily shot at
mgkimsal 9y ago
"Why not indulge the most base impulses of both silicon valley and police militarization with high tech, non lethal weapons?" You're leaving witnesses and complicating any potential legal cases in the aftermath.
adrianN 9y ago
There are only "less lethal" weapons. People can very well die from being tasered for example.
- smithhallam 9y ago
  Yes, but it is less likely that they will die from being tasered than from being shot.
- glenstein 9y ago
  And in special circumstances a butter knife could probably kill someone. But I don't think getting trapped in a continuum fallacy represents forward motion in this kind of conversation. Maybe a tazer should count as lethal and should be excluded. Let's draw the line somewhere, most definitely. But I'm not any closer to understanding whether you merely object to that example or the principle itself, and the latter is the pertinent thing.

oconnor663 9y ago

> the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does Number of guns is a contributor to the difference, yes, but a more direct measure might be number of officers killed. The first source I find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Police_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Police_Service) says that 10 Norwegian police officers have been killed since 1945, or something like 0.14 per year. The US figure (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297) is something like 50 per year, though that's actually way down since the 80's. Running with those numbers and dividing by population today, the US has almost six times as many officer deaths per capita. And that's an average; there are many places where it's as safe as Norway, and some places where it's a hundred times more dangerous.

drtillberg 9y ago

At one time, police in the U.S. were trained that to shoot to kill-- only. If the officer discharged the weapon at all, she emptied the magazine and aimed to kill. No warning shots, no shots to disable, that would be against training. Thus confusion, inattention, or misunderstanding in the face of commands from a self-identified officer easily can be a lethal situation.

Silhouette 9y ago
If you haven't done anything wrong, and then one day your home is surrounded by a paramilitary force barking instructions at you and threatening your life, confusion, inattention and misunderstanding are inevitable. If police procedures don't allow for that, they are fundamentally broken. This tragic outcome could have been avoided many times, and in most of those cases, the difference would have been in the behaviour of the police.

Dove 9y ago

I don't think it's reasonable or effective to entirely expect police to solve this problem. Here is the account from the article: Livingston said when the door opened, officers gave Finch commands to put his hands up and walk toward them. He complied for a "very short time" and put his hands back down. He raised them again, and then lowered them for a second time, Livingston said. "The male then turned towards the officers on the east side of the residence, lowered his hands to the waistband again, then suddenly pulled them back up towards those officers at the east," he said. "The officers on the north side of the street feared the male pulled a weapon from his waistband, retrieved a gun and was in the process of pointing it at the officers to the east. Fearing for those officers’ safety, the officer on the north side fired one round." From my perspective, they are describing a very threatening movement. Stuff that looks like that is how officers die. Asking them to not react when someone does that puts them in pretty serious danger. A sudden movement like that is how gunfights start. It's tragic that it's also something a panicked innocent citizen might do! But that doesn't change the fact that it's a genuinely threatening thing to do. I think probably the most effective way to solve the problem would be to make people better aware of what makes you appear threatening and non-threatening in a confrontation. Some of us have been insulated from violence for so long that we don't know what it looks like. We have no reason to know that innocent sudden movements can just like dangerous sudden movements. I'm not saying the guy's death is his fault. The whole thing is a tragic misunderstanding between good people. But I am saying he could have been educated to prevent it. I don't think it's realistic to ask police to solve the problem at great risk to themselves when regular people can solve it by learning that the best way to avoid misunderstandings and snap reactions is to move slowly and deliberately in any confrontation.

dmitrygr 9y ago
They accept that risk by signing on the dotted line and picking up their badge. Cops should have a policy of never shooting first unless someone who isn't a cop is in immediate clear danger. That's what we pay them for. Any bozo can shoot first and ask questions later. A trained, well-paid professional's job is precisely not doing that.
Miner49er 9y ago
Have you watched the video? It looks far less threatening when you watch the video. This was straight up murder.

sjg007 9y ago

There is no viable feedback loop at this time. The FBI will get involved if there is a consent decree. This provides oversight, but that requires a Justice department that will investigate police departments. You see this happen after a litany of civil rights violations. But Sessions and Trump have made it clear that that won't happen. Maybe Congress will get involved after the midterms if things change or if there are mass protests. However, since police departments are local you might be able to put pressure on city councils and the mayor / maybe governor to make some progress. But there should be better training but that will probably only happen if juries start to decide that "being fearful for your life" is not a sufficient defense.

protomyth 9y ago

> Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice Actually, they don't spend a lot of time doing gun practice which is a problem. Police firearms training budgets are lacking in most states. They also don't do a lot (if at all) training to deal with dogs unless their has been public outrage. A growing separation from the community they police is also a factor. SWAT is a whole different problem. The overuse of SWAT to do the simple things like serve warrants and the whole war on drugs has been a disaster. Its isn't the populace with guns, its the lack of real training, a cover everyone's butt attitude, and a percentage of people on a power trip. Look at the incident with the nurse in Utah. No guns just CYA[1]. 1) http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/health/nurse-arrested-police-protocol/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/health/nurse-arrested-police-p...

Chathamization 9y ago

> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect? Keep in mind that most people in the U.S. care about issues like this in an abstract way. They think that improvements should be made, but when, say, the time comes to vote they won't bother taking 10 minutes to see where their representatives stand on this issue and vote accordingly. If you ask people who they voted for the day after a primary, most will have a hard time even recalling the names in the downballot races, let alone what the positions were. The people who do tend to vote for these positions tend to be extremely focused on particular policies - they only care if the politician supports or opposes some obscure regulation that benefits them personally. So in the end you really are talking about a very small number of activists and groups that are trying to bring about change, and they're fighting against entrenched groups opposed to said change - or more often than not, just general political inertia (why rock the boat if most voters don't care?). There has been traction in the effort to get more body cameras, though, so there have been some improvements. But there doesn't yet seem to be enough people who care and act accordingly to bring about the big changes that are needed.

nitrogen 9y ago
They think that improvements should be made, but when, say, the time comes to vote they won't bother taking 10 minutes to see where their representatives stand on this issue and vote accordingly. IMO this is backward. Representatives should choose their issues by the voice of the people, or people should vote on issues and the appropriate candidate suggested automatically. We will always get suboptimal results when people are forced to commingle their opinions on everything from science to security into a single binary choice.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  In places that allow ballot initiatives you can target specific issues. That's how marijuana legalization has been happening. There are places where majority of the people support it, but they vote in politicians who don't bother to legalize it, so activists take the issue directly to the voters. Even still, though, it's a small number of people who bother collecting the signatures and informing people about the initiative. The vast majority of people are extremely disengaged and won't bother working on changing things.

moogly 9y ago

> is there any significant push It'll be business as per usual: "shit happens", "thoughts & prayers" etc. Just another one of the "periodic plagues from the gods" [paraphrased] that you can't do anything about.

deleted 9y ago

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