4 ms·

I also hate that there seems to be a point of view that the US police and justice system is the worst in the world. I can attest that in most of the other coun

by hkai 6y ago

I also hate that there seems to be a point of view that the US police and justice system is the worst in the world. I can attest that in most of the other countries of the world, you can't point a gun at the police and get away with it. Most importantly, you can't even talk about this case in the media, you can't sue the government, you can't hire a lawyer to fight against the government, your family will be threatened and you surely won't receive a 5 million dollar settlement that all US shootings inevitably end up with.

jussij 6y ago
> I can attest that in most of the other countries of the world, I'm not sure to which countries you are referring. But in many countries around the world this problem is greatly reduced, if not eliminated only because these countries also have strict gun laws that stop this happening.
- josefx 6y ago
  It is interesting that the presence of guns is regarded as something that makes police work a lot harder and dangerous in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world, while the training of new officers is limited to weeks instead of years.
  - jussij 6y ago
    Too me it seems a fairly logical conclusion. A police office in the US has to assume the perpetrator will be armed with a weapon and that then leads to the 'shoot first ask questions later' approach to policing. Alternatively, places where guns are not so prevalent means that anxiety is greatly reduced. As an example the majority of English police (i.e. bobbies) do their patrol work while not carrying a gun.
pstrateman 6y ago
To be clear, do you think either of the victims in this incident did anything wrong? I do agree that in many cases both sides did something wrong, but in this case I can't imagine how you can find fault there.
- hkai 6y ago
  Sorry, I was thinking of some of the other similar cases. I removed that part of my comment now. Indeed, the victims in this case did nothing wrong, given the information that I have. I would probably shoot at the intruders too in that situation.
lukifer 6y ago
The US leads the world in prison population, compared to other democracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries#Comparison_to_OECD_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in... Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I don't live in China. But it's pretty embarrassing for the richest and most powerful country in the world (allegedly bearing the mantle of freedom and democracy and Enlightenment values), to have to compare ourselves to totalitarian dictatorships to feel better about ourselves, instead of other democracies, most of whom have yearly counts of deaths by law enforcement in the single digits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
- hkai 6y ago
  As for your second point, I've seen an article on CNN the other day that says US kills twice as many people (per 1M arrests) than Australia. It seems like a lot, but then consider that only 5% of people killed by police in the US were unarmed. The other 95% were armed, and most of those cases seem to be actual criminals rather than ordinary people like Breonna Taylor's boyfriend. I'm with you on the American police being quite distinct from other police forces, and there's a lot of criticism to be made about them - like failure to keep proper statistics about police killings - but I think it's also fair to consider the circumstances that they work in. As for your first point, many of the things can be true at the same time: US puts too many people into jails, there is too much crime in the US, and there are ways to obtain justice that are not available in most other countries (mass media, social media, courts).
  - ciceryadam 6y ago
    based on 2015 data it's closer to 30% - https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed
    - nl 6y ago
      I don't see that on this page. I see "police killed at least 104 unarmed black people in 2015", and "unarmed black people were killed at 5x the rate of unarmed whites in 2015". So I think that makes around 125-130 unarmed people killed by police. [1] says that there were 1,134 people killed that year by police. 125/1134 = 11% [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/the-counted-police-killings-2015-young-black-men https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/the-counted-...

by hkai 6y ago

jussij 6y ago

> I can attest that in most of the other countries of the world, I'm not sure to which countries you are referring. But in many countries around the world this problem is greatly reduced, if not eliminated only because these countries also have strict gun laws that stop this happening.

josefx 6y ago
It is interesting that the presence of guns is regarded as something that makes police work a lot harder and dangerous in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world, while the training of new officers is limited to weeks instead of years.
- jussij 6y ago
  Too me it seems a fairly logical conclusion. A police office in the US has to assume the perpetrator will be armed with a weapon and that then leads to the 'shoot first ask questions later' approach to policing. Alternatively, places where guns are not so prevalent means that anxiety is greatly reduced. As an example the majority of English police (i.e. bobbies) do their patrol work while not carrying a gun.

pstrateman 6y ago

To be clear, do you think either of the victims in this incident did anything wrong? I do agree that in many cases both sides did something wrong, but in this case I can't imagine how you can find fault there.

hkai 6y ago
Sorry, I was thinking of some of the other similar cases. I removed that part of my comment now. Indeed, the victims in this case did nothing wrong, given the information that I have. I would probably shoot at the intruders too in that situation.

lukifer 6y ago

The US leads the world in prison population, compared to other democracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries#Comparison_to_OECD_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in... Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I don't live in China. But it's pretty embarrassing for the richest and most powerful country in the world (allegedly bearing the mantle of freedom and democracy and Enlightenment values), to have to compare ourselves to totalitarian dictatorships to feel better about ourselves, instead of other democracies, most of whom have yearly counts of deaths by law enforcement in the single digits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...

hkai 6y ago
As for your second point, I've seen an article on CNN the other day that says US kills twice as many people (per 1M arrests) than Australia. It seems like a lot, but then consider that only 5% of people killed by police in the US were unarmed. The other 95% were armed, and most of those cases seem to be actual criminals rather than ordinary people like Breonna Taylor's boyfriend. I'm with you on the American police being quite distinct from other police forces, and there's a lot of criticism to be made about them - like failure to keep proper statistics about police killings - but I think it's also fair to consider the circumstances that they work in. As for your first point, many of the things can be true at the same time: US puts too many people into jails, there is too much crime in the US, and there are ways to obtain justice that are not available in most other countries (mass media, social media, courts).
- ciceryadam 6y ago
  based on 2015 data it's closer to 30% - https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed
  - nl 6y ago
    I don't see that on this page. I see "police killed at least 104 unarmed black people in 2015", and "unarmed black people were killed at 5x the rate of unarmed whites in 2015". So I think that makes around 125-130 unarmed people killed by police. [1] says that there were 1,134 people killed that year by police. 125/1134 = 11% [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/the-counted-police-killings-2015-young-black-men https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/the-counted-...