6 ms·

Again and again we see questionable or outright illegal police shootings of dogs and people and nothing ever comes of it. The responsible parties are never cha

Again and again we see questionable or outright illegal police shootings of dogs and people and nothing ever comes of it. The responsible parties are never charged with manslaughter or even fired. I want to support the police, but the thin blue line bullshit has to stop! I get that police work is often dangerous but individuals that have shown poor judgement are retained on the force. That police officer that shot the dog 4 times had already shot and killed a developmentally disabled guy who was brandishing a knife but could have been tazed or bean-bagged. These are not the sorts of people to be handing out guns to.

ryguytilidie 13y ago
I think the thing that frustrates me the most is that in situations like the one you describe where developmentally disabled guy is killed and there were 100 ways to avoid it. Those ways simply are ignored after the fact because people feel such a need to defend the cop that they can't even acknowledge that they might have done something wrong. It creates a situation where improvement is pretty much impossible, because to improve one generally has to admit that there is a problem.
codyb 13y ago
The fact USPS receives training but our Police don't was astounding to me. "To serve and protect and kill you chihuahua if it barks at us wrong."
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - mds 13y ago
    I think he meant "training in dealing with barking dogs"
    - strathmeyer 13y ago
      No American police are generally resistant to training of any type, such as firearm training. They don't like other people telling them they don't know how to do their jobs, that would make them lose confidence. It's why they need to shoot at you sixty times in order to hit you once.
      - lostlogin 13y ago
        A refusal to take advice is asking for trouble and paints a bad picture of any profession. Always take the advice, you don't have to use is, but you do have to take it in. How do people get like that?
        jlgreco 13y ago
        They aren't exactly rocket scientists to begin with. Hell, the police in America have won the right to discriminate against candidates with high IQs...
      - Qantourisc 13y ago
        Also please not that shooting a gun under stress is probably not going to be easier. However, this should not be an excuse.
- RockyMcNuts 13y ago
  you mean aggressive dog training?
  - codyb 13y ago
    Ahh yes, I accidentally missed a few words there.
danbruc 13y ago
Are there any reliable statistics quantifying this? I found some numbers for Germany on Wikipedia [1] but not for the US. The article states that per year for the period of 2007 to 2011 the German police fired between 36 and 57 bullets at humans killing between 6 and 12 of them. Older numbers are less reliable but similar regarding the number of people killed (peak since 1970 24 in 1983) but with a larger number of bullets fired where reported. Are the numbers for the USA way worse after compensating for the difference in population? [1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_Deutschland http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_D...
- citizens 13y ago
  Some numbers from a 2011 NYPD report (only New York City): Situations where firearms were discharged 36 - Adversarial Conflict 36 - Animal Attack 15 - Unintentional Discharge 02 - Unauthorized Use 03 - Suicide Attempt --- 124 - Total officers firing 416 - Total shots fired 003 - Total officers shot and injured by subject 001 - Total officers shot and killed by subject 019 - Total subjects shot and injured by officer 009 - Total subjects shot and killed by officer http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/nypd_annual_firearms_discharge_report_2011.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_plan...
- hammerzeit 13y ago
  I'm astonished by the total lack of conversation around the actual data here. Both the article itself and the discussion below are predicated on the assumption that this is a rampant problem in the USA, but not a single subthread on the actual incidence of this. I'd expect better from Hacker News. For what it's worth, Wikipedia has a complete list of people killed by US Police Officers and the police reports from them. In 2012, there were 587 people killed by police [1]. This is much, much larger than in Germany, even accounting for population difference. I would argue that more relevant than pure population is differences in homicide rate. By the data you've given, approximately 1-2% of all homicides in Germany are by police officers (6-12 officer killings, 690 homicides in germany [2]). It's worth noting that in the USA, approximately 3% of all killings were by police officers (547/14748[2]) which seems in line with what my understanding would be -- it's worse in the USA but not ridiculously disproportionate. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforce... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
btilly 13y ago
That police officer that shot the dog 4 times had already shot and killed a developmentally disabled guy who was brandishing a knife but could have been tazed or bean-bagged. It gets worse. The person being arrested already had a lawsuit filed for police brutality. According to his lawyer on NBP, he recognized the police officer who killed his dog - that was one of the officers who had been part of giving him the beating that his lawsuit was about. Let's just say there is a history there.
doctorpangloss 13y ago
Police shoot dogs because black and brown people own dogs.[0] The developmentally disabled guy was black. Of the people raided by SWAT teams in the article, the ones who did not go to court (regardless of whether or not they won excessive force settlements) and had a violent or lethal encounter were all black or in that one case, hispanic. Police officers aren't punished because the victims of police brutality are overwhelmingly nonwhite. It's not that the victims are poor, or of mysterious sexual orientation. It's really because they are black and hispanic. To get a good grip on how segregated U.S. cities are, here is the Census rankings of "dissimilarity," or measure of how unmixed the population is geographically[2], of every metro area.[1] The lowest of all metro areas is 32%, which suggests that about 1/3 of black people would have to move to white parts of town to achieve balance. Routine brutality against blacks, as opposed to routine brutality against protesters (an equally heinous but different problem), is ignored because the victims don't live next to us. [0] http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+shoot+dog http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+shoot+dog [1] http://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_dissimilarity_white_black.html http://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_dissimilarity_white_black... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_dissimilarity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_dissimilarity
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  It's easier to mistreat minorities, but the behavior is no longer bounded to being perpetrated against minorities. Police, searching (in the wrong town) for a man wanted for an expired vehicle registration, shoot family dog while searching in a gated back yard for their suspect. http://www.wfaa.com/news/texas-news/212185641.html http://www.wfaa.com/news/texas-news/212185641.html >Leander Police say the officer never noticed the child, and it’s policy to use lethal force on any animal they think is attacking. Fortunately, they missed the child.

ryguytilidie 13y ago

I think the thing that frustrates me the most is that in situations like the one you describe where developmentally disabled guy is killed and there were 100 ways to avoid it. Those ways simply are ignored after the fact because people feel such a need to defend the cop that they can't even acknowledge that they might have done something wrong. It creates a situation where improvement is pretty much impossible, because to improve one generally has to admit that there is a problem.

codyb 13y ago

The fact USPS receives training but our Police don't was astounding to me. "To serve and protect and kill you chihuahua if it barks at us wrong."

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- mds 13y ago
  I think he meant "training in dealing with barking dogs"
  - strathmeyer 13y ago
    No American police are generally resistant to training of any type, such as firearm training. They don't like other people telling them they don't know how to do their jobs, that would make them lose confidence. It's why they need to shoot at you sixty times in order to hit you once.
    - lostlogin 13y ago
      A refusal to take advice is asking for trouble and paints a bad picture of any profession. Always take the advice, you don't have to use is, but you do have to take it in. How do people get like that?
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        They aren't exactly rocket scientists to begin with. Hell, the police in America have won the right to discriminate against candidates with high IQs...
    - Qantourisc 13y ago
      Also please not that shooting a gun under stress is probably not going to be easier. However, this should not be an excuse.
RockyMcNuts 13y ago
you mean aggressive dog training?
- codyb 13y ago
  Ahh yes, I accidentally missed a few words there.

danbruc 13y ago

Are there any reliable statistics quantifying this? I found some numbers for Germany on Wikipedia [1] but not for the US. The article states that per year for the period of 2007 to 2011 the German police fired between 36 and 57 bullets at humans killing between 6 and 12 of them. Older numbers are less reliable but similar regarding the number of people killed (peak since 1970 24 in 1983) but with a larger number of bullets fired where reported. Are the numbers for the USA way worse after compensating for the difference in population? [1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_Deutschland http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_D...

citizens 13y ago
Some numbers from a 2011 NYPD report (only New York City): Situations where firearms were discharged 36 - Adversarial Conflict 36 - Animal Attack 15 - Unintentional Discharge 02 - Unauthorized Use 03 - Suicide Attempt --- 124 - Total officers firing 416 - Total shots fired 003 - Total officers shot and injured by subject 001 - Total officers shot and killed by subject 019 - Total subjects shot and injured by officer 009 - Total subjects shot and killed by officer http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/nypd_annual_firearms_discharge_report_2011.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_plan...
hammerzeit 13y ago
I'm astonished by the total lack of conversation around the actual data here. Both the article itself and the discussion below are predicated on the assumption that this is a rampant problem in the USA, but not a single subthread on the actual incidence of this. I'd expect better from Hacker News. For what it's worth, Wikipedia has a complete list of people killed by US Police Officers and the police reports from them. In 2012, there were 587 people killed by police [1]. This is much, much larger than in Germany, even accounting for population difference. I would argue that more relevant than pure population is differences in homicide rate. By the data you've given, approximately 1-2% of all homicides in Germany are by police officers (6-12 officer killings, 690 homicides in germany [2]). It's worth noting that in the USA, approximately 3% of all killings were by police officers (547/14748[2]) which seems in line with what my understanding would be -- it's worse in the USA but not ridiculously disproportionate. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforce... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

btilly 13y ago

That police officer that shot the dog 4 times had already shot and killed a developmentally disabled guy who was brandishing a knife but could have been tazed or bean-bagged. It gets worse. The person being arrested already had a lawsuit filed for police brutality. According to his lawyer on NBP, he recognized the police officer who killed his dog - that was one of the officers who had been part of giving him the beating that his lawsuit was about. Let's just say there is a history there.

doctorpangloss 13y ago

Police shoot dogs because black and brown people own dogs.[0] The developmentally disabled guy was black. Of the people raided by SWAT teams in the article, the ones who did not go to court (regardless of whether or not they won excessive force settlements) and had a violent or lethal encounter were all black or in that one case, hispanic. Police officers aren't punished because the victims of police brutality are overwhelmingly nonwhite. It's not that the victims are poor, or of mysterious sexual orientation. It's really because they are black and hispanic. To get a good grip on how segregated U.S. cities are, here is the Census rankings of "dissimilarity," or measure of how unmixed the population is geographically[2], of every metro area.[1] The lowest of all metro areas is 32%, which suggests that about 1/3 of black people would have to move to white parts of town to achieve balance. Routine brutality against blacks, as opposed to routine brutality against protesters (an equally heinous but different problem), is ignored because the victims don't live next to us. [0] http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+shoot+dog http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+shoot+dog [1] http://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_dissimilarity_white_black.html http://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_dissimilarity_white_black... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_dissimilarity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_dissimilarity

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
It's easier to mistreat minorities, but the behavior is no longer bounded to being perpetrated against minorities. Police, searching (in the wrong town) for a man wanted for an expired vehicle registration, shoot family dog while searching in a gated back yard for their suspect. http://www.wfaa.com/news/texas-news/212185641.html http://www.wfaa.com/news/texas-news/212185641.html >Leander Police say the officer never noticed the child, and it’s policy to use lethal force on any animal they think is attacking. Fortunately, they missed the child.