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A Distinctly American Problem, Police Killings, Needs Systematic Investigation

api 6y ago
You could start with police training: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-man-who-teaches-our-cops-to-kill/id1373812661?i=1000476406446 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-man-who-teaches-ou...
- dls2016 6y ago
  The uniformity of police violence is almost completely unexamined in the large news outlets. Why do our tax dollars go towards "killology" bullshit?
  - api 6y ago
    That was my point that apparently nobody got. Cops in the USA are often trained to deploy more violence than is necessary.
    - dls2016 6y ago
      People are very unaware of the egregiousness of this "training".
- AussieWog93 6y ago
  Don't know why this is downvoted. We have gradually increased training and qualifications of the police force in Victoria (Australia) and from what I understand it's been quite effective at reducing police violence.
  - Uehreka 6y ago
    Probably because in the US, often when one of these killings happens, it comes out that the officer who killed had in fact passed the trainings put in place the last time an officer killed someone. If you’re not following these things super closely you could be forgiven for not knowing this, but for those of us who do, the suggestion of “just train them better” generally feels pretty hollow at this point. It might work elsewhere, but it hasn’t worked here.
  - p49k 6y ago
    I agree it shouldn’t have been downvoted, but the point OP is making is different from your point. In the US, the most famous police trainer is a guy that basically tells police that they are justified in shooting almost anyone in any circumstance and even developed his own pseudoscience around it. That’s what the podcast is about.
CountDrewku 6y ago
Except police killings are not a "distinctly" American problem. Just because it doesn't happen as often in other wealthier western countries doesn't mean it only happens in the US. Moreover, statistically it's still very rare despite the increase in sensationalized media coverage.
- dls2016 6y ago
  > Just because it doesn't happen as often in other wealthier western countries doesn't mean it only happens in the US. Ok, but you're looking at the rank #1 member of a power law distribution. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/ > Moreover, statistically it's still very rare despite the increase in sensationalized media coverage. Police killings are just the tip of the spear. The US also locks up an enormous swath of its population... comparable to El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Rawanda... even 2x the rate of the country we're told is so dangerously authoritarian: Iran.
  - spazrunaway 6y ago
    Because an enormous swath of its population is dangerous, unfortunately. The only way in recent history the US managed to lower its violent crime rate was by locking up more people via the 1994 crime bill, which is now panned as "racist". America has an underincarceration problem, and is seeing double to triple digit increases in murder over the past year following bail reform and prosecutorial discretion putting more future recidivists into the streets instead of jail.
    - dls2016 6y ago
      > Because an enormous swath of its population is dangerous, unfortunately. I know! Wage thieves, environmental criminals, bankers, the Sacklers...
      - spazrunaway 6y ago
        I'd love to lock them up too.
throwaway823882 6y ago
Funny, "Police Killings" sounds like the issue is police being killed. For such a verbose language we sure do communicate dissatisfactorily.
- pelagicAustral 6y ago
  I thought 'suicide by cop' was the preferred nomenclature.
  - jjj123 6y ago
    Suicide by cop is different, and refers to when the person killed wanted to die at the hands of the police. No idea how common it is, I’ve only seen it in media.
- gnu8 6y ago
  A better term for it might be “Police Lynching”. Most of these incidents seem to revolve around a black (but not necessarily) person failing to show the correct level of subservience to a police officer and provoking a visceral reaction of extreme violence. Not saying all of them are racist, but to some police, everyone is the wrong color (not blue).
  - culot 6y ago
    >A better term for it might be “Police Lynching”. No, it wouldn't. That is unnecessary hyperbole. Unjustified police killings, instances where the police were at fault, are a rarity. The big problem here is not lack of police training nor overreach, but violent, uncooperative suspects. >failing to show the correct level of subservience While there are some grotesque examples of that, like with Daniel Shaver, most police killings, the overwhelming majority of them, are due to them being attacked by someone or being confronted with an armed suspect who refuses to disarm. >Not saying all of them are racist, but to some police, everyone is the wrong color (not blue). Are there any actual instances of racism being the driving impetus for police killings at any time in recent decades? I cannot think of any offhand.
mcphage 6y ago
I'm not sure there will be any meaningful change without making police accountable for their crimes. That's part of what fuels the rage against the system—not only are the police killing people, but everybody knows they probably won't be held accountable. Until we start doing that, nothing will improve.
jjk166 6y ago
I believe a big reason for this problem is in how we discuss these events. We need to stop questioning whether a killing is justified or murder, we need to instead think in terms of competence. No one thinks the airline mechanic who didn't tighten down a bolt was trying to cause a plane crash. No one thinks the surgeon who left a tool inside a patient was trying to kill them. No one believes the engineer who didn't account for wind wanted a bridge to collapse. We all know these were mistakes - but mistakes still have consequences. The mechanic who can't keep track of the bolts they've tightened isn't going to remain a mechanic for long, the surgeon who can't keep track of their tools won't be a surgeon for long, the engineer who doesn't double check their math won't be designing things for long. In any profession where people can die if you do things incorrectly, incompetence must be weeded out quickly and making a wrong decision, even without the slightest malice, must come at great personal cost to the professional and the institutions to which they belong. If one of these professionals ever acted like they intended to cause harm, we would unanimously label them monsters. It is absurd that we do not treat the policing profession the same way. It is absurd that anyone should consider "it was a mistake" to be a valid defense. Whether you're knocking on the wrong door, or grabbing the wrong weapon, or misjudging whether someone can survive you kneeling on them, there is life-threatening incompetence. And just like with any other profession, if you find someone being incompetent you need to find out how they were in a position to be. Why wasn't there a procedure to double check the address? Why did no one question buying tasers with a pistol grip that could not be distinguished easily from a gun? Why did no one step in and tell the officer their use of force method was not compliant with department policy? Heads should be rolling at multiple levels just from asking how this happened before we ever get to why. We should never even need to consider the appalling possibility that some of these tragedies may not have been entirely unintentional. This topic routinely turns into a culture war between those for and against the police, and thus nothing gets done. Progress requires transforming it into a discussion of police efficacy, which no sane person can oppose.
- lacker 6y ago
  Progress requires transforming it into a discussion of police efficacy. The problem is, once you look at it as a problem of efficacy, it becomes pretty obvious that police killings are already quite rare compared to other failures of policing. There are around 15,000 murders a year in the US, and around 50 cases where a police officer kills an unarmed person. If you are purely concerned with the statistical impact of the police, it makes a lot more sense to focus on how the police can prevent more crimes, rather than focusing on how the police can kill fewer people. There is an argument that hiring more police will reduce crime. But hiring more police is expensive. Perhaps we could save money by training police officers less, and use the money saved to hire more police officers. One cost of that could be an increased rate of police mistakenly killing people. But if it reduces crime, perhaps that is worth it. Or perhaps not, perhaps the answer simply is better police training. As you say, this topic almost always turns into a culture war. I don't think many people on either side are willing to take a neutral view, like one life equals one life whether it's someone shot by the police, or someone shot by a random civilian, or someone dying of the flu. I believe once people do take a neutral view they will realize that police killings should be deprioritized as an issue because they are not very frequent.
bassman9000 6y ago
Distinctly American At this very moment there's got to be at least 100 countries with far worse police abuse than the US. Historically, any soviet/socialist country in the last 50 years would have been far, far worse. Either journalists have never left the US, and know nothing about the world, and history, or they're willfully misleading. Don't know what's worse. The most constructive way that the federal government responds to avoidable loss of life is arguably in its treatment of aviation. Whenever a plane crash occurs, big or small, headline-grabbing or obscure, a team of experts is dispatched to reconstruct exactly what happened. The aim isn’t to advance a legal process or punish wrongdoers, but to figure out which changes, if any, could prevent it from happening again. We got trials. We're having one. And a Democratic representative went to the streets to ask for push, in case the outcome wasn't the desired one. The author doesn't want investigation. The author wants an outcome.
Bancakes 6y ago
What about police killings in the sense of officers getting shot? Plenty of sad cases.

api 6y ago

You could start with police training: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-man-who-teaches-our-cops-to-kill/id1373812661?i=1000476406446 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-man-who-teaches-ou...

dls2016 6y ago
The uniformity of police violence is almost completely unexamined in the large news outlets. Why do our tax dollars go towards "killology" bullshit?
- api 6y ago
  That was my point that apparently nobody got. Cops in the USA are often trained to deploy more violence than is necessary.
  - dls2016 6y ago
    People are very unaware of the egregiousness of this "training".
AussieWog93 6y ago
Don't know why this is downvoted. We have gradually increased training and qualifications of the police force in Victoria (Australia) and from what I understand it's been quite effective at reducing police violence.
- Uehreka 6y ago
  Probably because in the US, often when one of these killings happens, it comes out that the officer who killed had in fact passed the trainings put in place the last time an officer killed someone. If you’re not following these things super closely you could be forgiven for not knowing this, but for those of us who do, the suggestion of “just train them better” generally feels pretty hollow at this point. It might work elsewhere, but it hasn’t worked here.
- p49k 6y ago
  I agree it shouldn’t have been downvoted, but the point OP is making is different from your point. In the US, the most famous police trainer is a guy that basically tells police that they are justified in shooting almost anyone in any circumstance and even developed his own pseudoscience around it. That’s what the podcast is about.

CountDrewku 6y ago

Except police killings are not a "distinctly" American problem. Just because it doesn't happen as often in other wealthier western countries doesn't mean it only happens in the US. Moreover, statistically it's still very rare despite the increase in sensationalized media coverage.

dls2016 6y ago
> Just because it doesn't happen as often in other wealthier western countries doesn't mean it only happens in the US. Ok, but you're looking at the rank #1 member of a power law distribution. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/ > Moreover, statistically it's still very rare despite the increase in sensationalized media coverage. Police killings are just the tip of the spear. The US also locks up an enormous swath of its population... comparable to El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Rawanda... even 2x the rate of the country we're told is so dangerously authoritarian: Iran.
- spazrunaway 6y ago
  Because an enormous swath of its population is dangerous, unfortunately. The only way in recent history the US managed to lower its violent crime rate was by locking up more people via the 1994 crime bill, which is now panned as "racist". America has an underincarceration problem, and is seeing double to triple digit increases in murder over the past year following bail reform and prosecutorial discretion putting more future recidivists into the streets instead of jail.
  - dls2016 6y ago
    > Because an enormous swath of its population is dangerous, unfortunately. I know! Wage thieves, environmental criminals, bankers, the Sacklers...
    - spazrunaway 6y ago
      I'd love to lock them up too.

throwaway823882 6y ago

Funny, "Police Killings" sounds like the issue is police being killed. For such a verbose language we sure do communicate dissatisfactorily.

pelagicAustral 6y ago
I thought 'suicide by cop' was the preferred nomenclature.
- jjj123 6y ago
  Suicide by cop is different, and refers to when the person killed wanted to die at the hands of the police. No idea how common it is, I’ve only seen it in media.
gnu8 6y ago
A better term for it might be “Police Lynching”. Most of these incidents seem to revolve around a black (but not necessarily) person failing to show the correct level of subservience to a police officer and provoking a visceral reaction of extreme violence. Not saying all of them are racist, but to some police, everyone is the wrong color (not blue).
- culot 6y ago
  >A better term for it might be “Police Lynching”. No, it wouldn't. That is unnecessary hyperbole. Unjustified police killings, instances where the police were at fault, are a rarity. The big problem here is not lack of police training nor overreach, but violent, uncooperative suspects. >failing to show the correct level of subservience While there are some grotesque examples of that, like with Daniel Shaver, most police killings, the overwhelming majority of them, are due to them being attacked by someone or being confronted with an armed suspect who refuses to disarm. >Not saying all of them are racist, but to some police, everyone is the wrong color (not blue). Are there any actual instances of racism being the driving impetus for police killings at any time in recent decades? I cannot think of any offhand.

mcphage 6y ago

I'm not sure there will be any meaningful change without making police accountable for their crimes. That's part of what fuels the rage against the system—not only are the police killing people, but everybody knows they probably won't be held accountable. Until we start doing that, nothing will improve.

jjk166 6y ago

I believe a big reason for this problem is in how we discuss these events. We need to stop questioning whether a killing is justified or murder, we need to instead think in terms of competence. No one thinks the airline mechanic who didn't tighten down a bolt was trying to cause a plane crash. No one thinks the surgeon who left a tool inside a patient was trying to kill them. No one believes the engineer who didn't account for wind wanted a bridge to collapse. We all know these were mistakes - but mistakes still have consequences. The mechanic who can't keep track of the bolts they've tightened isn't going to remain a mechanic for long, the surgeon who can't keep track of their tools won't be a surgeon for long, the engineer who doesn't double check their math won't be designing things for long. In any profession where people can die if you do things incorrectly, incompetence must be weeded out quickly and making a wrong decision, even without the slightest malice, must come at great personal cost to the professional and the institutions to which they belong. If one of these professionals ever acted like they intended to cause harm, we would unanimously label them monsters. It is absurd that we do not treat the policing profession the same way. It is absurd that anyone should consider "it was a mistake" to be a valid defense. Whether you're knocking on the wrong door, or grabbing the wrong weapon, or misjudging whether someone can survive you kneeling on them, there is life-threatening incompetence. And just like with any other profession, if you find someone being incompetent you need to find out how they were in a position to be. Why wasn't there a procedure to double check the address? Why did no one question buying tasers with a pistol grip that could not be distinguished easily from a gun? Why did no one step in and tell the officer their use of force method was not compliant with department policy? Heads should be rolling at multiple levels just from asking how this happened before we ever get to why. We should never even need to consider the appalling possibility that some of these tragedies may not have been entirely unintentional. This topic routinely turns into a culture war between those for and against the police, and thus nothing gets done. Progress requires transforming it into a discussion of police efficacy, which no sane person can oppose.

lacker 6y ago
Progress requires transforming it into a discussion of police efficacy. The problem is, once you look at it as a problem of efficacy, it becomes pretty obvious that police killings are already quite rare compared to other failures of policing. There are around 15,000 murders a year in the US, and around 50 cases where a police officer kills an unarmed person. If you are purely concerned with the statistical impact of the police, it makes a lot more sense to focus on how the police can prevent more crimes, rather than focusing on how the police can kill fewer people. There is an argument that hiring more police will reduce crime. But hiring more police is expensive. Perhaps we could save money by training police officers less, and use the money saved to hire more police officers. One cost of that could be an increased rate of police mistakenly killing people. But if it reduces crime, perhaps that is worth it. Or perhaps not, perhaps the answer simply is better police training. As you say, this topic almost always turns into a culture war. I don't think many people on either side are willing to take a neutral view, like one life equals one life whether it's someone shot by the police, or someone shot by a random civilian, or someone dying of the flu. I believe once people do take a neutral view they will realize that police killings should be deprioritized as an issue because they are not very frequent.

bassman9000 6y ago

Distinctly American At this very moment there's got to be at least 100 countries with far worse police abuse than the US. Historically, any soviet/socialist country in the last 50 years would have been far, far worse. Either journalists have never left the US, and know nothing about the world, and history, or they're willfully misleading. Don't know what's worse. The most constructive way that the federal government responds to avoidable loss of life is arguably in its treatment of aviation. Whenever a plane crash occurs, big or small, headline-grabbing or obscure, a team of experts is dispatched to reconstruct exactly what happened. The aim isn’t to advance a legal process or punish wrongdoers, but to figure out which changes, if any, could prevent it from happening again. We got trials. We're having one. And a Democratic representative went to the streets to ask for push, in case the outcome wasn't the desired one. The author doesn't want investigation. The author wants an outcome.

Bancakes 6y ago

What about police killings in the sense of officers getting shot? Plenty of sad cases.