That is everywhere. For that matter every interaction with someone with a little martial arts training (even what you can find on the internet, though you will also find bad training) can be potential deadly. Most people have the ability to kill another human, few attempt it.

Risk of death during interaction with the police is practically zero where I live. Whenever that happens, it’s on the media for months or years.

It is practically zero almost everywhere. Iran is the only exception I can think of, and even then it is only protesters. (I'm sure there are other corrupt countries that I'm not aware of)

Likewise, the probability of dying from smoking a cigarette is effectively zero. This is a poor measure for evaluating harm and risk.

This strikes me as crazy. Every interaction with any human or inanimate object bears the risk of death, it's just so low it's not worth thinking about it.

U.S. police kill about ~1000 people per year, and the vast majority of those aren't at all questionable. If there are 330,000,000 people in the U.S., that's 0.000303% of the population per year. Each person has, on average, maybe 10 contentious police interactions in a lifetime of 75 years? That's 0.134 interactions per year.

So, given on this Fermi estimate, you have about a 0.00226% chance of being killed per contentious police interaction if we spread it completely evenly, or 2.26 in 100,000. And spreading it evenly doesn't make any sense at all.

So, if you're young, black, male, and running around Chicago dealing drugs carrying an illegal gun--yeah, maybe worry about it. For everyone here on HN, it's a stupid thing to worry about. Worry about your sedentary lifestyle. Worry about driving safely if you drive a lot. Worry about diabetes. Worry about whether your relationships with friends and family are good. Worry about your diet. Worry about exercise. Worry about falling down the stairs. The cops aren't going to kill you.

Okay, sure. What are the statistics behind TFA; how many moms are getting jailed for their kids walking to school? Should anybody care?

I think it makes sense for third parties (us) to "care" when something like the headline happens. We should make it clear to those involved that it's not acceptable (we should try to punish them), and we should try to help aggrieved parties.

But no, you should not "care" in the sense of worrying about it happening to yourself. The probability is so small it's not worth it, along with an infinity of other freak occurrences.

I don't know what TFA is.

The [Fine] Article

> We should make it clear to those involved that it's not acceptable (we should try to punish them), and we should try to help aggrieved parties.

Here, we agree. But when you cite statistics in the manner you did, you're arguing against cloistering myself and my child in our home, quaking in fear of the improbable: beating on a straw-man.

If you re-read the last line of my first comment, you may notice that the "law and order" mentality that I'm railing against is fear-based governance. We have equipped and trained our police to be paramilitary forces that are nearly unaccountable for their misbehavior: a resounding success of fear-based governance. De-escalating the cycle of violence requires vacating fear-based governance -- convincing the police to over-react less, convincing citizens to call the authorities less; convincing voters to react to broken windows with investment in fixing windows rather than jail time and extrajudicial killings. And in the meantime, we need to hold people accountable for perpetrating administrative violence against innocent people like in TFA.

Yep, we need to make the police more public servants and less a paramilitary force. I think it's probably going to mean we build a society that shares more values in order for that to happen. That's going to be hard. In my mind, a lot of the problem is that the U.S. is a very large country with very different sub-populations with very different values. It's a challenge. Running New Zealand or Norway is way easier.

> the vast majority of those aren't at all questionable

Citation needed

Sorry, I don't have one to hand. It's a reasonable request, though. I've gone through the data carefully in the past, and I can say the vast majority are variations on, "Knife-wielding man shot down by police after stabbing two". They don't make national news because they make perfect sense. It's just cops doing what they're supposed to be doing. The ones that do make the news are killings where there are indications of impropriety, and those make up the set of examples you carry around in your head, which is why you're suspicious.

> This strikes me as crazy.

Yes, it's basically bullshit in most of the US. Even knowing that the media feeds on clickbait and routinely hypes up everything that even smells like it could be controversial, people just lap it up. Even people here on HN.

The worry about police violence is really misplaced worry about the effects of a broken justice system. It's not just that police kill unarmed, non-violent black teens. It's that "they" (the justice system as a whole) also lock people up for non-violent drug offenses, put a felony on their record, condemning them to a life without job opportunities. Then "they" kick them out of their homes when they're late on their rent. Then they forcibly break up homeless encampments so people without homes can never feel safe or settled or have somewhere to sleep.

Police shootings are just a potent symbol for a much larger issue with the Justice System. The problem is that conversations about complex systemic issues become circular and conversations about symbols often don't.

I think we agree. The justice system could be a lot better. We should incarcerate many fewer people. The War on Drugs should end. We need to figure out a way to reduce crime in black communities that doesn't involve intense policing and locking so many people up.

As for police shootings being a symbol, I see your point. I would make the alteration that it's unjust police shootings that are the symbols. Most are some variation on, "Crazed knife-wielding man shot down by police after stabbing two".

> So, if you're young, black, male, and running around Chicago

I did this without the drugs and guns part, and had guns drawn on me three times growing up in Chicago for the crime of walking. If I had been killed, I'm sure it would have been coded in a way for you not to see it as a problem.

My point is exactly that your experience is very unusual

It’s unusual for white people. Every black and Hispanic person I know has stories about how they had to worry about violence while living their lives normally.

For example, a friend’s partner shared a story about the time he went to a big conference (maybe the VMware one?) in Atlanta. He was fairly senior at HP and no more threatening looking than any other middle-aged IT guy … and was the only pulled over on the way back to his hotel by a cop who was suspicious about a black man driving a nice rental car. His evening involved a very tense hour sitting on the side of the road while a southern cop straight out of a stereotype asked a ton of questions and “asked” to inspect the car while patting his gun.

Here's actual data: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf

Table 3, "Residents who experienced nonfatal threats or use of force during contacts with police, by demographic characteristics, 2015 and 2018"

Of people who report having police contact within the last year (~18% of people), 2.0% report "Experienced threats or force at any time during the year". 1.5% for white people, 3.8% for black. This is 2018.

Any way you slice it, having a gun drawn on you by a cop is exceedingly rare--even for black Americans. And, of course, "gun drawn" is going to be a small subset of that 3.8%.

No, his experience isn't necessarily very unusual. You are comparing apples (deaths) and oranges (guns drawn) here. I'm willing to bet an order of magnitude of people more have had the police draw on them vs. shoot them. No one in my family has been killed by the police, but I, my mother, and my uncle have all certainly been drawn on.

I think you're making the argument that GP's experience isn't necessarily unusual conditional on being black, male, etc.. It's not the point that I was making. I was making the point that GP's experience is unusual for people in general, or for HNers in general.