ADVERTISEMENT

How many innocent people are we ok with the police shooting?

BelemNole

HR Legend
Mar 29, 2002
39,266
84,506
113
Each year? As long as it’s less than our military losses would that be an acceptable number? Where is the point you decide it’s just the price we pay for living in the US?
 
That's an interesting question. I think we have something like 40 million police interactions a year with citizens. (I had looked it up a while back)

IIRC, we had something around 100-200 unarmed killings by cops last year. Perhaps more if you count people that had an object that appeared to be a gun.

What, realistically, can we expect in the society we live in? In a society with gun toting people? What's a realistic floor number?

I don't know.

I'd like to think we could cut that 100-200 figure down significantly through better training and police.

Of course the trick with that is to do so in a way that doesn't cause an uptick in crime and loss of life elsewhere. (i.e., we could just remove police altogether to rectify this problem, but we'd on balance, be much worse as a society for it)

I think Neil Degrasse Tyson had a good analogy; treat the issue like we do commercial airline safety. We set a very high standard for processes surrounding commercial flight in the US, and any incident is thoroughly investigated and learned from.

I'd be for that. It'd also mean spending lots more money on policing, likely.

Hopefully the grownups dig in on this issue.
 
That's an interesting question. I think we have something like 40 million police interactions a year with citizens. (I had looked it up a while back)

IIRC, we had something around 100-200 unarmed killings by cops last year. Perhaps more if you count people that had an object that appeared to be a gun.

What, realistically, can we expect in the society we live in? In a society with gun toting people? What's a realistic floor number?

I don't know.

I'd like to think we could cut that 100-200 figure down significantly through better training and police.

Of course the trick with that is to do so in a way that doesn't cause an uptick in crime and loss of life elsewhere. (i.e., we could just remove police altogether to rectify this problem, but we'd on balance, be much worse as a society for it)

I think Neil Degrasse Tyson had a good analogy; treat the issue like we do commercial airline safety. We set a very high standard for processes surrounding commercial flight in the US, and any incident is thoroughly investigated and learned from.

I'd be for that. It'd also mean spending lots more money on policing, likely.

Hopefully the grownups dig in on this issue.
So 2-4 times our war dead?

Where did you get your number of unarmed? Our police kill about 1200 a year on average, I’d be surprised if that many were armed honestly.
 
So 2-4 times our war dead?

Where did you get your number of unarmed? Our police kill about 1200 a year on average, I’d be surprised if that many were armed honestly.

Washington Post's police shooting database. Seems it's behind a pay wall right now.

When you said innocent, I associated it with unarmed. I'm not sure what else you'd want your definition to mean.

I'd like to think we could do better than 2-4 times our war dead. You tell me how much better it could be without increasing crime/death elsewhere in society. Hell of a question.
 
Washington Post's police shooting database. Seems it's behind a pay wall right now.

When you said innocent, I associated it with unarmed. I'm not sure what else you'd want your definition to mean.

I'd like to think we could do better than 2-4 times our war dead. You tell me how much better it could be without increasing crime/death elsewhere in society. Hell of a question.
Lol, you think we couldn’t do better?
Here is some fun reading.
 
Until innocent victims have a recourse besides civil settlements and suits, this will only go up in number. Tort law immunity and having county and district attorneys being butt buddies of the cops doesn't help. There has to be a pay wall between prosecutors and cops. And the rubber stamp grand jury system has to go. Not to mention most cops have fifteen extra chromosomes and are roid ridden testosterone snorting bozos so maybe better police can be selected. Until then, the only option is not a good option. But that option will come to the fore if the changes I mentioned aren't adopted. I view cops somewhere below dog excrement and garbage in terms of respect.
 
  • Like
Reactions: THE_DEVIL
So 2-4 times our war dead?

Give them armed drones and looser ROE and they could do better.
And call them something snappy, like ‘signature strikes’.
Then no one, least of all Belem, will care how many innocent people they kill.
 
Until innocent victims have a recourse besides civil settlements and suits, this will only go up in number. Tort law immunity and having county and district attorneys being butt buddies of the cops doesn't help. There has to be a pay wall between prosecutors and cops. And the rubber stamp grand jury system has to go. Not to mention most cops have fifteen extra chromosomes and are roid ridden testosterone snorting bozos so maybe better police can be selected. Until then, the only option is not a good option. But that option will come to the fore if the changes I mentioned aren't adopted. I view cops somewhere below dog excrement and garbage in terms of respect.

Hoping this is just a troll job.
 
Can we give this some context? By innocent, do you mean I’m a law abiding citizen innocently sitting on a park bench watching my kids play, and a police officer just walks up and shoots me for the hell of it, just because he’s bored? Or do you mean I’m a police officer attempting to arrest someone for committing a crime and, instead of complying with my simple instructions to put their hands behind their back, they put up a fight, attempt to wrestle me to the ground and take my weapon, giving me a split second to decide if I’m going to let him kill me or if I’m going to do what I have to do not let that happen?

All about context.
 
Each year? As long as it’s less than our military losses would that be an acceptable number? Where is the point you decide it’s just the price we pay for living in the US?

A far, far, and much further less number, than we are okay with black people shooting.
 
  • Like
Reactions: PerkyForHerky
Zero, of course, should be the goal.

We must demand accountability from our police officers and how they are investigated by grand juries then charged with the most serious of crimes if they shoot and kill innocent people.

To say conservatives don’t care is just plain wrong. This is not a political issue, this is a right and wrong issue that needs to be fixed now due to all the senseless killings.
 
Unarmed doesn’t equal innocent. Obviously zero is the only acceptable answer, but zero law enforcement officer deaths is also the only acceptable answer.

According to the FBI, 37 cops have been feloniously killed this year (as of 9/11/20) and 33 more accidentally killed. How many is too many? This includes 8 by ambush and 2 unprovoked.
 
Unarmed doesn’t equal innocent. Obviously zero is the only acceptable answer, but zero law enforcement officer deaths is also the only acceptable answer.

According to the FBI, 37 cops have been feloniously killed this year (as of 9/11/20) and 33 more accidentally killed. How many is too many? This includes 8 by ambush and 2 unprovoked.

Good answer.

We all want zero deaths but that isn't going to logically be feasible.
 
There's only one right answer, and that's zero. None are acceptable. Will some happen? Yes, because cops have guns and they are conditioned to use them. That doesn't make it right.

I have a friend who owns a private tactical shooting range. Appointments are required to go on the range. My friend is former special forces. He tells me that cops are generally worse on the range than military, former military, or the general public that have CCW.

The range includes a variety of people targets, designated good or bad, with variable spacing. Qualifying is rapid fire, alternating targets, and not shooting the good guys. Cops should be required to qualify on a tactical range, not just at a target range at 7 yards.
 
lol

You get shit because you're so far over the top it's not even funny. That's nowhere close to an accurate representative view of conservatives.

And you get shit because you don't recognize hyperbole.
 
This is a dumb question meant to get a rise out of the Conservatives on this board. The problem is that this issue has become political, which it should not be. Zero deaths should be the goal for all involved, whether guilty or innocent.

In an ideal world, we would have no crime and the Police Department may not be needed. As we see every day, we do not live in an ideal world, so the Police Department should not be defunded. They do need better training and should be compensated more fairly for the job that they are asked to do. There should also be better oversight to ensure the police are ready for the situations that they are put in and to weed out people who are not fit for the job.

On the flip side, people need to show the police more respect and not make their job more difficult. Our leaders need to understand this and set aside partisan politics and let everyone know that we need to work together to fix this situation.
 
everyone that puts the life of a cop in jeopardy. The problem is that none of us have any clue how we would react in situations cops are routinely put into.
That does not mean cops can't do a better job of diffusing situations peacefully. That does not mean cops can't be trained in better less leathal uses of force.
That also does not mean that we can't expect people to not follow the commands of a police officer. There seems to be just as big an epidemic of people that think that rules are for other people and that they don't apply to them.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mooresville hawk
If we take this board as a microcosm if society, it is easy to see the lack of respect we all have for each other. The constant name calling and throwing of insults because we do not agree with each other is easy to do on an anonymous message board, just like being in a crowd that begins to riot. All it takes is a few people to instigate and the rest follow.

We know that some people are smarter than others and that neither the right nor the left has the market cornered on stupidity. We should not allow those outliers to shape the message though. Most on the left are not in favor of defunding the police, rioting or looting. Most on the right are not OK with innocent people being killed by the police. We need to work together to limit these two extremes or continue to go around in circles.
 
ADVERTISEMENT