Police violence, regardless of race

I'm not gonna do your work for you FD. You want answers? Put yer little finnertips onna keyboard an go find'em.

 

Europe's crime rate and murder of cop by knife is much lower per capita. but you knew that.

 

Here we go again . . . Not to say I don't trust you FD, but I don't believe you can make that claim so quickly, and with so little apparent effort.

I Googled "killings of police per capita by nation" to check on your claim and, after pouring over the top 10 PAGES of hits, did not find a single link covering the killings of police . . . NOT ONE. Everything was about police killing civilians, despite the fact that an average of 163 officers have been killed in the line of duty every year over the past decade, and despite the fact that my search was specifically worded to find killings of police. A little skewed on the reporting end, YA THINK?

In short, you had a maximum of 27 minutes between our posts to research and respond and, I seriously doubt you found data to support your claim. Want to prove me wrong? Take all the time you want, and point me to the substance backing your statement.

 

I found this at least comparing U.S. and U.K.



You'd still have to adjust for population and police force size, but the amount of cops killed in the UK is pretty negligible.

Per capita per nation is more of an elusive statistic it would seem. I'm interested now so I'm going to keep looking.

 

On a per capita basis, considering only the data above comparing the UK & US, the police in the US are killed at a rate roughly 20 times that in the UK . . . TWENTY times!

 

Yes, that's the point. Knife killings of police (primary lethal weapon in the UK) are miniscule. Showing there is in fact a way to disarm knife attackers without shooting them to death.

 

Interesting then, is it not, that so many of the cases I find involving stabbing incidents in Europe end with the suspect being fatally shot by police . . .

https://amp.france24.com/en/2020020...ror-shoot-dead-streatham-stab-stabbing-police

https://www.voanews.com/europe/french-police-kill-suspect-after-fatal-stabbing-outside-paris

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/paris-attack-intl/index.html

 

Well, I can't speak to France yet, but here's an article about a knife crackdown in the UK:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...1000-knives-seized-in-week-of-knife-crackdown

7 days
Over 10000 knives seized
Almost 1400 people arrested
None killed

 

This is not a comparable situation . . . This was a street-sweeping operation, not at all like confrontations with suspects actively committing violent crimes at the time.

 

You think in 1400 arrests with ~600 for knife crimes there were no confrontations?

Here's it being done with pepper spray and batons:



Here's someone swinging a machete at them

 

My read on that article is that those arrests took place after searching felons forbidden from carrying a knife and discovering them to be in possession of one.

As for the first video incident above, the officers in the depicted arrest are lucky to be alive . . . "One of the officers told the BBC the knife struck him and was just inches from his neck".

In the second video, I see no fewer than 20 officers reporting to the scene to disarm and apprehend that suspect. Sorry, but there are not that many officers on duty in most towns in America, not accounting for their need to be elsewhere at the time.

Is it possible to disarm someone with a knife? Of course. Is it perilous duty for a police officer? Absolutely. Should the suspect be threatening with a deadly weapon of any kind in the first place? Absolutely not . . . and that is where this all begins . . . end of story.

 

I think as you said before, we may just be too far apart on this issue. Dangerous yes, but it's their job to take people in alive. It's definitely not a job for everyone, and it shouldn't be.

 

It's also the perp's job not to tempt fate . . . I think you're too hung up on radicals having "the right to resist arrest" . . . they have no such right.

 

Not the right, but I do think there's a reasonable expectation it could happen during any arrest. As the responsible authority involved, I would just expect officers should be trained to handle reasonably expected situations without jumping to lethal force.

 

I don't think a suspect turning a deadly weapon on a police officer is a reasonable expectation . . . that's where you and I differ.

 

To clarify, I'm not implying that it's a reasonable thing to do, just that it happens often enough that officers should reasonably expect it could happen and be prepared to handle it without taking a life.

On that note, no one seems to talk about this, but in a way I'm making a pro-cop argument. Can you imagine the mental stress it would put on a person to have killed a human? Even in self-defense, to have taken a life is not easy. I have to euthanize a lot of animals for work and even that isn't easy.

That mental damage could be avoided with better ways to take down dangerous suspects.

 

I don't think any officer believes when they initially draw their gun that they will be taking a life. It is a defensive measure. They surely want to exhaust all other possibilities before firing on another person. Ultimately, some come to the conclusion that other less extreme options will not work, and they fire the gun.

Will they feel remorse? Of course. Will they later question whether they could have handled the situation differently? Yes again, as any Monday morning quarterback would do. But those facts do not detract from the quality of decision made in the heat of the moment, when, threatened with bodily harm, even loss of life, and having precious little time to think, one resorts to the most effective solution at hand.

True, but the time taken, and the less effective measures employed may cost the life of yet another police officer who was not breaking the law . . . at the hands of someone who was.