Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Many US Police Forces employ something called the 21 foot rule, whereby if anyone has a weapon including a knife and is within 21 feet, which is deemed the necessary time to distance to stop them then they can shoot. The US Police have also been involved in a lot of controversial shootings, hence the creation of groups such as BLM.
The 21 Foot Rule is the reaction time for knives and clubs, not firearms. A cop will shoot you at a much greater distance if you have a firearm and refuse to drop it, or if you point it at him.
American cops shoot about 900 people per year and about twice as many whites are shot as blacks. The majority of those shot were armed with weapons and in the process of attacking police or civilians. Check out the Washington Post's database of police shootings and once you filter out armed attackers you'll find that fewer than 20 unarmed black men are shot every year. Dig a little deeper and you'll find that most of them were resisting arrest, fighting officers and/or trying to grab the officer's gun or reaching into their waistbands for what the officers thought were guns.
It's a tragedy when someone is wrongly shot by police, but it actually occurs very rarely indeed. It probably happens less than 10 times per year in this nation of 330 million people.
Status:
"“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”"
(set 3 days ago)
Location: Great Britain
27,180 posts, read 13,461,836 times
Reputation: 19488
Quote:
Originally Posted by DerpyDerp
The 21 Foot Rule is the reaction time for knives and clubs, not firearms. A cop will shoot you at a much greater distance if you have a firearm and refuse to drop it, or if you point it at him.
American cops shoot about 900 people per year and about twice as many whites are shot as blacks. The majority of those shot were armed with weapons and in the process of attacking police or civilians. Check out the Washington Post's database of police shootings and once you filter out armed attackers you'll find that fewer than 20 unarmed black men are shot every year. Dig a little deeper and you'll find that most of them were resisting arrest, fighting officers and/or trying to grab the officer's gun or reaching into their waistbands for what the officers thought were guns.
It's a tragedy when someone is wrongly shot by police, but it actually occurs very rarely indeed. It probably happens less than 10 times per year in this nation of 330 million people.
The Guardian has been keeping comprehensive figures and one in five people (20%) shot by police in the US is unarmed. Black African American people have a much geater chance of being shot by police indeed one in 65 deaths in relation to young Black Americans is due to being shot by police officers. The Mentally Ill also have a higher chance of being shot by the police in the US, whilst the 21 foot rule remains very controversial.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Guardian
Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year.
Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age.
Paired with official government mortality data, this new finding indicates that about one in every 65 deaths of a young African American man in the US is a killing by police.
Data collected by the Guardian this year highlighted the wide range of situations encountered by police officers across the US. Of the 1,134 people killed, about one in five were unarmed but another one in five fired shots of their own at officers before being killed. At least six innocent bystanders were killed by officers during violent incidents; eight police officers were killed by people who subsequently died and appeared in the database.
But what you said and what the Guardian said are two different things.
You said:
Quote:
The Guardian has been keeping comprehensive figures and one in five people (20%) shot by police in the US is unarmed.
The Grauniad said:
Quote:
Police killed up to 1,200 people in 2015
Those are two completely different things, since people killed by cops include incidents such as traffic accidents and other cases where the dead person would be unlikely to be armed. Filter their database to only include people shot by police and the number is halved to 10%. But wait, there's more.
In what I can only assume is an attempt at inflating the figures, the Guardian's database includes incidents involving off-duty officers, such as those who drove drunk in their personal vehicle and killed someone. There are also cases of off duty officers who killed burglars in their homes and, in one case that I noticed, an officer who shot someone in his home who was strangling a family member.
The Guardian also takes a very liberal approach to the term "armed". It would appear that they only consider a person to be armed if they actually have a weapon in their hand, but not if they're reaching for a weapon -- including a police officer's sidearm. That's the very definition of a justified shooting in a life-or-death struggle.
I also question the thoroughness of the Guardian's reporting, since I looked up one that happened locally last year and they listed him as unarmed, while every news story I read said that he was armed with a gun and fighting with officers.
Again, the number of unjustified shootings of unarmed Americans is actually very small. Take a look at the Washington Post's database, eliminate armed criminals, people who were attacking cops and/or civilians, people who reached for guns, people who refused commands at gunpoint and reached into vehicles, waistbands or pockets, and you'll find that the incidents number no more than a dozen or so. Those cases will break down to unfortunate incidents of mistakenly thinking an object is a gun, innocents hit by crossfire and a couple of incidents where the cops were flat out wrong and shot someone illegally. They'll typically be charged with manslaughter or murder.
Blacks in the UK are 3% of the population and 15% of the prison inmates. Blacks in the USA are 13% of the population and 40% of the inmates.
So a black person in the UK is more likely to be incarcerated than one in the USA.
Crime tends to be a feature of urban poverty. There is more white urban poverty in the UK than there is in the USA, where white poverty is more of a rural phenomenon. In addition the USA has its long sordid history of institutional racist oppression and much greater segregation by race.
So one would expect that blacks would be a lower % of prison inmates in the UK than in the USA. But blacks in the UK are more likely to be arrested, relative to a white person than is the case in the USA. The reason for that will be interesting. I expect the usual howls from the British about how the UK is this paradise for blacks, but for a few trouble makers. The more one digs the more it just doesn't seem to be the case.
So defining the issue narrowly around police shootings misses the point. In fact a criticism of the BLM is that they are immature and silly by their sole focus being built around police shootings. Police shootings are rare and are a symptom of a much larger problem and THAT should be the focus of the BLM. But being children deep analysis doesn't seem to be part of their skill set.
The larger issue in both the UK and the USA is a criminal justice system which treats black males as "suspects" before their guilt is proven. This then leads to adverse police/black community interactions where the police are often seen as an occupying force.
Blacks in both countries are more likely to arrested for minor offenses. In both countries the police often display rudeness with an intent to escalate the encounter to give an excuse for arrest. In both countries blacks serve longer sentences for similar arrests. In both countries the long term consequences for an arrest record for blacks is much more severe than it is for whites.
So yes there is a need for a conversation in the UK about how police interact with blacks as there is in the USA. Rest assured that if the police in the UK were as trigger happy as their US counterparts are the issue of the shooting of INNOCENT blacks would be as much of an issue.
In both countries the police often display rudeness with an intent to escalate the encounter to give an excuse for arrest.
I'm sure that's true in some cases, but it's not standard procedure. More arrests = more paperwork, so I doubt they're just trying to ramp up their numbers.
I've had both good and bad experiences with American police. When I was a long-haired teenager 35 years ago they let us off on a few occasions when we could have been arrested for minor infractions (alcohol and marijuana), but I also had a run-in in Orlando while I was standing on a sidewalk and trying to talk my friend's brother into climbing off a horse that he'd hopped on. I had guns pointed at me, lots of yelling, the cop purposely switched up my answers to his questions to make it look like I was confused/wasted and then he told me that there were a bunch of Cuban refugees in the jail who would love to rape me. I was also accused of punching a police horse (different incident) and was being hauled off in handcuffs until someone intervened, saying that he was a reporter and that I hadn't punched the horse. I was un-cuffed and thrown in a pile of empty beer cases.
But I've also had very pleasant interactions with cops in my older years, even when being pulled over with a handgun in the car. Very polite, very businesslike and I was on my way in a few minutes. My arrest record is still clean, but I can see that it might have been different had I been a young black man.
My interactions with cops in the UK have been perfectly pleasant, even when I decided to take a little snooze in a Tube station after having a few pints at the pub. They just woke me up and I walked back to my hotel with nothing but pleasant words exchanged.
Blacks in the UK are 3% of the population and 15% of the prison inmates. Blacks in the USA are 13% of the population and 40% of the inmates.
So a black person in the UK is more likely to be incarcerated than one in the USA.
If there were 10000 people on a UK island:
3% of them = 300. 15% of that = 45 in prison.
If there were 10000 people on a US island:
13% of them = 1300. 40% of that = 520 in prison.
45 * x = 520
x = 520/45 = 12
By these calculations, you are 12 more times likely to be incarcerated in the USA than the UK for being a black person. Yet you are saying they have it better in the USA.
I wouldn't fancy being a cop, especially in the States.
I have no doubt there is a small minority of cops who are trigger-happy psychos; but by and large police officers do a decent job in very difficult conditions; especially in hostile areas where shootings, high-level crime and murders are an every day occurrence.
Day in day out, going out on patrol and dealing with incredibly dangerous situations for 8-10 hours at a time, 5 or 6 days a week, month in month out.
A stressful job, not least trying to tread a fine line between being an enforcer, negotiator and being answerable to a sceptical public.
If there were 10000 people on a UK island:
3% of them = 300. 15% of that = 45 in prison.
If there were 10000 people on a US island:
13% of them = 1300. 40% of that = 520 in prison.
That's not the correct math. Caribny didn't say that 15% of blacks in the UK and 40% of the blacks in the U.S. were in prison, that's the percentage of the prison population for each nation.
If 3% of the UK is black and they make up 15% of the prison population, then they are overrepresented by a factor of 5. If 13% of Americans are black and they make up 40% of the inmate population, that means they're overrepresented by a factor of 3 -- a lesser figure than the UK's factor of 5.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
