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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 inst

by 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.
- jjk166 6y ago
  Killing fewer people than literal murderers is not an accomplishment worth celebrating. Similarly the odds of dying from a poorly performed surgery are much lower than the odds of dying from an untreated condition, but that doesn't mean we should ignore medical malpractice. Plane crashes may be rare but that does not make plane crashes acceptable, and likewise for police killings. Speaking in vague generalities about numbers of police and budgets and training is exactly the problem. Planes don't crash because maintaining planes is expensive, they crash because someone made a mistake, and corrective action should ensure that mistake can not be repeated. If you notice that bolts aren't tight enough, you don't have the mechanics promise to tighten them better, you make them use a torque wrench. Likewise if a veteran officer can grab a pistol and not immediately realize it's not a taser, you can talk all day about training and de-escalation and heat of the moment but the fact is some idiot thought buying tasers with pistol grips that felt the same as the department's guns was a good idea. That decision was not a judgement call made in the heat of the moment, there was no ethical calculus trading some lives for more, it was simply incompetence that killed a man. In any other industry there would be no one trying to make excuses to support the making of such a decision.
  - CountDrewku 6y ago
    "Killing fewer people than literal murderers is not an accomplishment worth celebrating." You're straw-manning and you know it. This is exactly what the above commenter was referring to.
    - jjk166 6y ago
      No, trying to compare the murder rate to the police killing rate and thus misconstruing the original proposal as focusing on police killings instead of preventing murder (when I had made no such claim) is the the straw man. GP comment made the claim that since fewer people are killed by police than murderers that therefore actions that decrease murder rates increase efficacy even if they also increase police killings. My comment refutes that.
      - 6y ago
dragonwriter 6y ago
> No one thinks the airline mechanic who didn't tighten down a bolt was trying to cause a plane crash. I dunno, if I found out a significant numbers of airline mechanics, their supervisors, and the people who investigate crashes were all members of groups hostile to certain airports, and crashes due to maintenance failures kept happening to flights to and from those airports without significant accountability, I might start thinking that, yeah, there are some problems with aircraft maintenance that go beyond neutral competence issues, and involve, if not necessarily intentionality, at a minimum bias-driven focusses neglect. Of course, there’s probably a reason that crash investigation universally involves people with no close common chain of command and operational dependence with pilots, airline mechanics, etc.
- jjk166 6y ago
  I think you misinterpret my comment. I'm saying if you eliminate everyone who does the job incorrectly, you also get rid of the people who intentionally do it incorrectly.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I think you misinterpret my comment. I'm saying if you eliminate everyone who does the job incorrectly, you also get rid of the people who intentionally do it incorrectly. I think you misinterpret my comment, which, is suggesting exactly why that doesn’t happen in policing in the status quo, and therefore what needs to change to achieve it.
    - jjk166 6y ago
      No I got what you were saying, it just doesn't make sense as a response to my comment unless you believe that all of society secretly wants police killings. I'm not talking about cops holding themselves accountable, I'm talking about people holding cops accountable.

by jjk166 6y ago

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.

jjk166 6y ago
Killing fewer people than literal murderers is not an accomplishment worth celebrating. Similarly the odds of dying from a poorly performed surgery are much lower than the odds of dying from an untreated condition, but that doesn't mean we should ignore medical malpractice. Plane crashes may be rare but that does not make plane crashes acceptable, and likewise for police killings. Speaking in vague generalities about numbers of police and budgets and training is exactly the problem. Planes don't crash because maintaining planes is expensive, they crash because someone made a mistake, and corrective action should ensure that mistake can not be repeated. If you notice that bolts aren't tight enough, you don't have the mechanics promise to tighten them better, you make them use a torque wrench. Likewise if a veteran officer can grab a pistol and not immediately realize it's not a taser, you can talk all day about training and de-escalation and heat of the moment but the fact is some idiot thought buying tasers with pistol grips that felt the same as the department's guns was a good idea. That decision was not a judgement call made in the heat of the moment, there was no ethical calculus trading some lives for more, it was simply incompetence that killed a man. In any other industry there would be no one trying to make excuses to support the making of such a decision.
- CountDrewku 6y ago
  "Killing fewer people than literal murderers is not an accomplishment worth celebrating." You're straw-manning and you know it. This is exactly what the above commenter was referring to.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    No, trying to compare the murder rate to the police killing rate and thus misconstruing the original proposal as focusing on police killings instead of preventing murder (when I had made no such claim) is the the straw man. GP comment made the claim that since fewer people are killed by police than murderers that therefore actions that decrease murder rates increase efficacy even if they also increase police killings. My comment refutes that.
    - 6y ago

dragonwriter 6y ago

> No one thinks the airline mechanic who didn't tighten down a bolt was trying to cause a plane crash. I dunno, if I found out a significant numbers of airline mechanics, their supervisors, and the people who investigate crashes were all members of groups hostile to certain airports, and crashes due to maintenance failures kept happening to flights to and from those airports without significant accountability, I might start thinking that, yeah, there are some problems with aircraft maintenance that go beyond neutral competence issues, and involve, if not necessarily intentionality, at a minimum bias-driven focusses neglect. Of course, there’s probably a reason that crash investigation universally involves people with no close common chain of command and operational dependence with pilots, airline mechanics, etc.

jjk166 6y ago
I think you misinterpret my comment. I'm saying if you eliminate everyone who does the job incorrectly, you also get rid of the people who intentionally do it incorrectly.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I think you misinterpret my comment. I'm saying if you eliminate everyone who does the job incorrectly, you also get rid of the people who intentionally do it incorrectly. I think you misinterpret my comment, which, is suggesting exactly why that doesn’t happen in policing in the status quo, and therefore what needs to change to achieve it.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    No I got what you were saying, it just doesn't make sense as a response to my comment unless you believe that all of society secretly wants police killings. I'm not talking about cops holding themselves accountable, I'm talking about people holding cops accountable.