Police Start to Reconsider Longstanding Rules on Using Force

Re:Police Start to Reconsider Longstanding Rules on Using Force by grecy on Monday May 04, 2015 @06:16PM (#9489602)

Police in the US have killed 398 so far in 2015 [1]

German Police used only 85 bullets against people in all of 2011. [2]

Germany Population: 81 million USA population: 323 million (3.99x bigger)

So, if the USA were like Germany, Police would only use 340 bullets against people PER YEAR.

Not 398 deaths in 6 months, but 340 bullets used for an entire year!

Something is very different about the way the Police in the US approach situations.

[1] http://killedbypolice.net/

[2] http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-police-used-onl...

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Re:Police Start to Reconsider Longstanding Rules on Using Force by mod on Monday May 04, 2015 @06:24PM (#9489650)

And police in the UK went two years without fatally shooting anyone. [1]

Something is very different about the way the Police in Germany approach situations...

You're not wrong, certainly--US police do approach things differently. Perhaps US citizens respond differently. I think there's more to think about than the very surface of the data.

[1] http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/police-in-england-and-wal...

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Re:Police Start to Reconsider Longstanding Rules on Using Force by rhino369 on Monday May 04, 2015 @06:35PM (#9489711)

You can't just go by population. America is just a vastly more violent nation. America has a 6X higher murder rate.

America has higher handgun ownership, which is a cause of many of the police shootings.

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Re:Police Start to Reconsider Longstanding Rules on Using Force by frandroid on Monday May 04, 2015 @07:03PM (#9489807)

Fine, take Switzerland, where every home pretty much has a rifle...

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Re:Police Start to Reconsider Longstanding Rules on Using Force by vacri on Monday May 04, 2015 @07:50PM (#9490020)

A government-issued rifle kept in the home, with sealed ammunition that is checked and can only be used in peacetime at a training event. A bit different from handguns that can be easily concealed while walking around the streets.

Two-thirds of the US's annual homicides (about 12k total at the moment) are committed with handguns. Homicides with longarms aren't trivial (total firearm is around three quarters, from memory), but they're a much smaller proportion than handgun murders.

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Re:Police Start to Reconsider Longstanding Rules on Using Force by dmishe on Monday May 04, 2015 @06:30PM (#9489688)

Let's include gun ownership stats in this, some state or a city maybe.

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Re:Police Start to Reconsider Longstanding Rules on Using Force by rbcgerard on Monday May 04, 2015 @06:37PM (#9489718)

agreed - comparing the UK's relatively unarmed populace is not a good comparison.

The problem is that the U.S. is very heterogeneous when it comes to crime and gun laws: Hawaii (strict gun laws, and safe) Illinois (strict gun laws, unsafe) Vermont (loose gun laws, safe) Louisiana (loose gun laws, unsafe)

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