3 ms·

Huge majority of people shot by police is armed. Only very small fraction is unarmed. This is well known to anyone familiar with statistics on police use of for

by xyzzyz 4y ago

Huge majority of people shot by police is armed. Only very small fraction is unarmed. This is well known to anyone familiar with statistics on police use of force. FBI publishes this data. You act very confidently, but you are clearly not familiar with the data, and in fact seem to be more interested in second guessing it, because it doesn’t fit your preconceptions.

jfengel 4y ago
The problem is that the number of unarmed people shot by police should be zero. There are bizarre, exceptional circumstances, but they should be numbered in the handfuls, not in "small fractions". Once it gets beyond a rounding error, you get a vicious cycle. An armed criminal now has to make a judgment call: if they disarm, will they be shot anyway? An unarmed civilian has to watch every cop to wonder if this is the one with a bad attitude and a gun. And now the police are worried, too: every single person has to be treated as if they are armed, and has to be prepared to shoot them on very short notice if they are. Exacerbating matters is that there is a large contingent of people who will excuse every single unarmed shooting. There is no circumstance so egregious that won't bring out a lot of people finding excuses for it, no matter how absurd. So people believe that each unjustified shooting is prelude to even more, because you never get a unanimous "This was a bad thing and we need that to not happen again". Instead, we hear loudly "This was an OK thing and could happen to you." So people are reacting rationally to a "very small fraction" of shootings, because the consequences are so bad. It doesn't matter that the overall number is small: it's enormous when it's you, and that enormity overshadows many people who want nothing more than to have it not be them.

3 ms·

Huge majority of people shot by police is armed. Only very small fraction is unarmed. This is well known to anyone familiar with statistics on police use of for

by xyzzyz 4y ago

jfengel 4y ago
The problem is that the number of unarmed people shot by police should be zero. There are bizarre, exceptional circumstances, but they should be numbered in the handfuls, not in "small fractions". Once it gets beyond a rounding error, you get a vicious cycle. An armed criminal now has to make a judgment call: if they disarm, will they be shot anyway? An unarmed civilian has to watch every cop to wonder if this is the one with a bad attitude and a gun. And now the police are worried, too: every single person has to be treated as if they are armed, and has to be prepared to shoot them on very short notice if they are. Exacerbating matters is that there is a large contingent of people who will excuse every single unarmed shooting. There is no circumstance so egregious that won't bring out a lot of people finding excuses for it, no matter how absurd. So people believe that each unjustified shooting is prelude to even more, because you never get a unanimous "This was a bad thing and we need that to not happen again". Instead, we hear loudly "This was an OK thing and could happen to you." So people are reacting rationally to a "very small fraction" of shootings, because the consequences are so bad. It doesn't matter that the overall number is small: it's enormous when it's you, and that enormity overshadows many people who want nothing more than to have it not be them.