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This is the first response to my post by what appears to be an intelligent person. You make a valid point. In fact this rendered the OP as a pointless post as it has incomplete information to make any sort of assessment.
I won't take that personally
Quote:
Originally Posted by austinnerd
But again, it is a logical error to consider ALL instances where someone is unarmed an 'error'. Unarmed does not mean "not a threat" as you should well know. The opposite is also true, simply because someone is 'armed', does not mean that their killing in a given situation was warranted. And unless whoever is coming up with these numbers also counts vehicles as "weapons", that you do isn't really relevant.
It doesn't appear that the article the OP linked to had an 'error rate.' It just listed percentages broken down by race, and whether they are armed or unarmed.
TexasLawyer2000 and I already did that dance, guess it's good that they are becoming aware of how misleading that statement was.
But people are pulled over for various reasons other than committing crime.
My trust is the the officer isn't having a bad day. But he can take my life either through a mistake or because he's a prick on a power trip, and get paid leave.
We do put trust into the police, which is why they must be held to a high accountability. They have are part of a system, and that system must keep them in check.
If you don’t become defiant and make threatening motions toward the cop, he isn’t going to take your life. The odds of you losing your life to a cop you are obeying politely are exponentially smaller than the odds are of you being in a fatal accident in the drive home from the grocery store.
This false narrative that cops are dangerous people out to get blacks is going to be the downfall of this country.
An unarmed 200+ lb man can still be quite dangerous when resisting arrest, especially if they're drugged up.
Not to mention it completely ignores situations where someone else's life is in imminent danger and lethal force could be required to stop the threat even if no weapons are being used. IE, drugged out father is about to slam his infant son into the ground, bitter boyfriend is about to shove ex onto the subway tracks with a train incoming. Both situations that involve no "weapons" but lethal force may be the only sure way to stop a threat with only a couple of seconds to act.
You made a mistake. The article said "2% of the people who were killed by an officer were unarmed and black".
2% OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE KILLED.
Not 2% error rate.
For example, .01 error rate resulting in death of unarmed man, out of 1 million encounters, 100 would be killed, 2 of them were unarmed and black.
That makes a significant difference. These errors are exceedingly rare, and that low rate is a testament to the good judgment and quick wits of 99% of cops. Once in a rare while, you get a bad one.
This is a good point. Police officers (per the OP) have a 2% error rate in regards to life and death situations (if just considering unarmed black people). That's very high. If a Ford engineer had a 2% error rate with parts they produced, they would be fired. Murder is much worse.
Engineers are making such decisions in less than a second?
Engineers are making such decisions in less than a second?
All the time for some engineers (not necessarily at Ford).
Were we trained as police officers to deal with these situations over and over, yes we were. There's some good posts by others in this thread, I suggest you read them.
I was actually just reading about a family who requested a wellness check. The guy they were checking was 17, he was backing out the minivan out of his family's garage, the cop opens fire on the kid, killing him..
That cop should be dealt with accordingly. And I am sorry to disappoint you, it doesn't make the news, but, they usually are either civilly, criminally or with discipline within the police department.
With due process rather than reading about it in a newspaper. Who knows what the facts were.
That makes a significant difference. These errors are exceedingly rare, and that low rate is a testament to the good judgment and quick wits of 99% of cops. Once in a rare while, you get a bad one.
Sorry for the confusion, I wasn't claiming .01% was the error rate. I used an example to illustrate the computation to show what that 2% was referring to.
I do recall the number of people killed in police custody is about 1000 per year. But that includes those who died from medical conditions, drug overdose and those who were armed, etc. Not all of them would be police errors.
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