<story><title>FBI director calls lack of data on police shootings &quot;ridiculous,&quot; &quot;embarrassing&quot;</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fbi-director-calls-lack-of-data-on-police-shootings-ridiculous-embarrassing/2015/10/07/c0ebaf7a-6d16-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>saulrh</author><text>Let me plagiarize a reddit comment here:&lt;p&gt;America&amp;#x27;s LEOs may kill way people per capita, but our LEOs also &lt;i&gt;get killed by&lt;/i&gt; people way more per capita. Even the most unhelpful lists of killings by police officers have an overwhelmingly common trend: &amp;quot;Officers arrived. Suspect drew gun. Suspect didn&amp;#x27;t drop gun when ordered to. Suspect pointed gun at officers. Officers opened fire.&amp;quot; There are dozens or hundreds of people that are on killed-by-LEO lists only because they &lt;i&gt;shot second&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Compare Canada to the US:
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;canada.odmp.org&amp;#x2F;year.php?year=2014&amp;amp;Submit=Go&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;canada.odmp.org&amp;#x2F;year.php?year=2014&amp;amp;Submit=Go&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.odmp.org&amp;#x2F;search&amp;#x2F;year&amp;#x2F;2014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.odmp.org&amp;#x2F;search&amp;#x2F;year&amp;#x2F;2014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you look at Sweden&amp;#x27;s first-ever police killing from a few years ago, the story isn&amp;#x27;t about police dying heroically because they&amp;#x27;re sacrificing themselves rather than killing criminals. It&amp;#x27;s that they don&amp;#x27;t have to kill anybody because nobody needs to be killed in order to defend others. &amp;quot;Violent crime is almost non-existent there.&amp;quot; No violent crime, no violent police. No problem.&lt;p&gt;So let&amp;#x27;s not blame officers. They&amp;#x27;re probably doing the best they can with a bad situation. Let&amp;#x27;s blame the politicians who criminalize everything, the socioeconomic system that screws with poor people&amp;#x27;s minds, the macho culture that drives gun nuttery and &amp;#x27;stand-your-ground&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;fuck-tha-police&amp;#x27; sentiments, and violence in general. Until we get rid of those we&amp;#x27;re not going to be able to fix the police because, for the most part, the police aren&amp;#x27;t broken.</text></item><item><author>matt4077</author><text>Let me just throw these tangentially relevant facts into this thread:&lt;p&gt;Deaths by police&lt;p&gt;in California: about 100 p.a.&lt;p&gt;in Germany: 8 in 2014&lt;p&gt;Population:&lt;p&gt;California: 39 Million&lt;p&gt;Germany: 82 Million&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;police-in-california-killed-more-than-610-people-over-6-years&amp;#x2F;407326&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;police-i...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>copsarebastards</author><text>&amp;gt; So let&amp;#x27;s not blame officers. They&amp;#x27;re probably doing the best they can with a bad situation.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how you come to this conclusion from the data you&amp;#x27;re citing.&lt;p&gt;You seem to be claiming that LEOs kill more people because more people attack LEOs with guns; i.e. you&amp;#x27;re arguing that LEOs kill more people in self-defense. But you&amp;#x27;re far from proving that point.&lt;p&gt;In fact, the easiest way to prove this point would be to have data on police shootings: if every officer had body-cam footage of every time they fired in self-defense, your argument would be proven. Yet the majority of police officers are resistant to wearing body cams. If LEOs are really firing in defense of self or others, why are they so opposed to proving it?&lt;p&gt;One could make the opposite argument: that people who use guns against LEOs are doing so in self-defense. The fuck-the-police attitude is equally explained by this: if the police are murdering your fathers, brothers, and friends, &lt;i&gt;of course&lt;/i&gt; you&amp;#x27;re going to thing &amp;quot;fuck the police&amp;quot;. And this would explain why LEOs in the US are so resistant to body cams: if they are the aggressors in these situations, then they aren&amp;#x27;t going to want footage showing their crimes.&lt;p&gt;I think that the evidence better supports the latter argument. But of course, we&amp;#x27;re short on evidence: we&amp;#x27;re a long way from proving &lt;i&gt;either&lt;/i&gt; point. This is why we need more evidence. If, as you claim, LEOs are acting in self-defense, the evidence will only exonerate them.</text></comment>
<story><title>FBI director calls lack of data on police shootings &quot;ridiculous,&quot; &quot;embarrassing&quot;</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fbi-director-calls-lack-of-data-on-police-shootings-ridiculous-embarrassing/2015/10/07/c0ebaf7a-6d16-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>saulrh</author><text>Let me plagiarize a reddit comment here:&lt;p&gt;America&amp;#x27;s LEOs may kill way people per capita, but our LEOs also &lt;i&gt;get killed by&lt;/i&gt; people way more per capita. Even the most unhelpful lists of killings by police officers have an overwhelmingly common trend: &amp;quot;Officers arrived. Suspect drew gun. Suspect didn&amp;#x27;t drop gun when ordered to. Suspect pointed gun at officers. Officers opened fire.&amp;quot; There are dozens or hundreds of people that are on killed-by-LEO lists only because they &lt;i&gt;shot second&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Compare Canada to the US:
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;canada.odmp.org&amp;#x2F;year.php?year=2014&amp;amp;Submit=Go&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;canada.odmp.org&amp;#x2F;year.php?year=2014&amp;amp;Submit=Go&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.odmp.org&amp;#x2F;search&amp;#x2F;year&amp;#x2F;2014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.odmp.org&amp;#x2F;search&amp;#x2F;year&amp;#x2F;2014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you look at Sweden&amp;#x27;s first-ever police killing from a few years ago, the story isn&amp;#x27;t about police dying heroically because they&amp;#x27;re sacrificing themselves rather than killing criminals. It&amp;#x27;s that they don&amp;#x27;t have to kill anybody because nobody needs to be killed in order to defend others. &amp;quot;Violent crime is almost non-existent there.&amp;quot; No violent crime, no violent police. No problem.&lt;p&gt;So let&amp;#x27;s not blame officers. They&amp;#x27;re probably doing the best they can with a bad situation. Let&amp;#x27;s blame the politicians who criminalize everything, the socioeconomic system that screws with poor people&amp;#x27;s minds, the macho culture that drives gun nuttery and &amp;#x27;stand-your-ground&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;fuck-tha-police&amp;#x27; sentiments, and violence in general. Until we get rid of those we&amp;#x27;re not going to be able to fix the police because, for the most part, the police aren&amp;#x27;t broken.</text></item><item><author>matt4077</author><text>Let me just throw these tangentially relevant facts into this thread:&lt;p&gt;Deaths by police&lt;p&gt;in California: about 100 p.a.&lt;p&gt;in Germany: 8 in 2014&lt;p&gt;Population:&lt;p&gt;California: 39 Million&lt;p&gt;Germany: 82 Million&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;police-in-california-killed-more-than-610-people-over-6-years&amp;#x2F;407326&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;police-i...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hackuser</author><text>I think you raise some good points. Another issue is the prevelance of guns. From a recent article (I don&amp;#x27;t know enough to vouch for these numbers in any way) [1]&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;America has 4.4 percent of the world&amp;#x27;s population but almost half of its civilian-owned guns.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;In 2013, the US had 106.4 gun deaths per million people. In 2011, the last year for which we have numbers, the UK endured 146 gun deaths total - or 2.3 gun deaths per million people.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;Plenty of research has found a strong correlation between the amount of guns in an area and its gun homicide rate&amp;quot; ... &amp;quot;Perhaps the single most supported contention in all of gun research is that more guns mean more gun deaths.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; let&amp;#x27;s not blame officers. They&amp;#x27;re probably doing the best they can with a bad situation.&lt;p&gt;If by &amp;quot;blame officers&amp;quot; you mean assign group guilt to all individual police officers, I&amp;#x27;d agree, but it&amp;#x27;s just as mistaken to say all police officers are doing the best they can. We have many examples of specific police officers harming civillians, including outright murder (something clearly not related to threats to police and not happening in Sweden). Whole classes of Americans see the police as a threat. As these problems occur in many places, I think we can say there is a systemic problem with policing in the U.S.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;5&amp;#x2F;9454161&amp;#x2F;gun-violence-solution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;5&amp;#x2F;9454161&amp;#x2F;gun-violence-solution&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>