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Killing because ......

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  • TJ
    2016-01-10 11:40:54 AM
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    I have recently read that US cops have killed more persons since Christmas than British cops have in the last 5 years. I think this is sad. Why chase a young man when it's quicker and easier to shoot him in the back ? I have no answers but where we are is not near where we need to be. Opinions ? Ideas ? It's just how it is is the initial thought. I'm told in Australia they have very few guns and people are rarely shot and killed. An area we should aspire to achieve. Today is Jan 10. Story dated Jan 2.

    (Since 1990, police officers in the United Kingdom have killed exactly 58 people.

    Since the 14th of December, police in America have killed 60 citizens — It took English cops 25 years to do what American cops have done in the last two weeks of December.)

    rawstory.com/2016/01/us-police-have-alr...
  • iolo
    2016-01-12 08:31:49 AM
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    I doubt very much if the figures relate specifically to England. Obviously, the fact that we don't insist on arming our population to the teeth or put our police on a war footing has a lot to do with the figures here in the UK, which are much, much too high even so. Why should the police kill anyone?
  • Dutch
    2016-01-12 09:00:56 AM
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    iolo Wrote: I doubt very much if the figures relate specifically to England. Obviously, the fact that we don't insist on arming our population to the teeth or put our police on a war footing has a lot to do with the figures here in the UK, which are much, much too high even so. Why should the police kill anyone?
    The difference between the UK and the US is quite simple; in the past the "bobby's" had only a "nightstick" no guns. Also they were trained to "serve", not like here where they hire mostly ex-military and train military style as well learn to shoot to kill. That is the huge difference. Furthermore the British population has much less ownership of private guns, so there is less confrontation with guns on both sides. The same applies for a lot of European countries. Our problem with guns as well the police is as I said many times that this is an self inflicted wound due to our "militarism" and a misused/wrongly interpreted Constitution.
  • iolo
    2016-01-13 08:43:57 AM
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    Dutch Wrote:
    iolo Wrote: I doubt very much if the figures relate specifically to England. Obviously, the fact that we don't insist on arming our population to the teeth or put our police on a war footing has a lot to do with the figures here in the UK, which are much, much too high even so. Why should the police kill anyone?
    The difference between the UK and the US is quite simple; in the past the "bobby's" had only a "nightstick" no guns. Also they were trained to "serve", not like here where they hire mostly ex-military and train military style as well learn to shoot to kill. That is the huge difference. Furthermore the British population has much less ownership of private guns, so there is less confrontation with guns on both sides. The same applies for a lot of European countries. Our problem with guns as well the police is as I said many times that this is an self inflicted wound due to our "militarism" and a misused/wrongly interpreted Constitution.
    It is interesting to know why it turned out like that. One thing is that freedom from a continental police state was regarded as fundamental to British liberty, whereas over there it seems to be based on bang-bangs, and when the police were finally formed here they made the great mistake of acting like the continental ones and killing people, ending up themselves locked away. The 'Beaux Gendarmes' which mocks the continental swaggerers got thirty-six encores when first performed.
  • TJ
    2016-01-14 01:54:02 PM
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    Interesting article by WSJ has good facts. Look at some of the numbers in this article.

    wsj.com/articles/u-s-leads-world-in-mas...
  • Zach F
    2016-01-15 09:40:46 PM
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    The U.S. has nearly 7 times the population of England. Comparing straight numbers is misleading.

    Also, we must rule out 'justified' killings. Cops firing in self-defense, etc. The U.S. guns laws are ridiculously lenient in the U.S. so the American criminals have access to a lot more guns than British criminals. 117 U.S. cops died in 2015 in the line of duty compared to just 1 U.K cop. Adjusting for population, a U.S. police officer is 18 times more likely to die in the line of duty than a U.K. one. It's reasonable to assume that U.S. must act in self-defense more often that Bristish ones.

    So, if we want to be accurate instead of hyperbolic, we need to compare the number of 'unjustified' deaths due to police in both countries and adjust for population. I'm sure the numbers are still really sad. And we absolutely need to hold out police officers to the standard of the law, but the numbers provided in the RawStory article are quite skewed and don't show the complexity of the actual situation.
  • iolo
    2016-01-16 09:18:25 AM
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    No it's not - you do it per head, and England doesn't come in to it - we compare the UK with the US. If you arm your police, they kill people. We don't. And if you throw guns around like confetti, tens of thousands die. We don't. Americans trying to defend their love of killing are truly pathetic.
  • Zach F
    2016-01-16 11:10:31 AM
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    iolo Wrote: No it's not - you do it per head, and England doesn't come in to it - we compare the UK with the US. If you arm your police, they kill people. We don't. And if you throw guns around like confetti, tens of thousands die. We don't. Americans trying to defend their love of killing are truly pathetic.

    My apologies, the population of the U.K. is 64 million compared to the 54 million of just England. That shifts my rough numbers down a little bit.

    I'm not defending killings. I'm saying that situation is FAR more complex than just a bunch of bad cops like the article implies. You can't just say we have a bunch of bad cops and then lump in statistics where the officer had no other choice but to fire back. That is wrong, misleading, and undercuts the over all argument.

    An accurate comparison between U.K. and U.S. would be unjustified killings by cop per capita. This compares just bad cops to other bad cops. Which is the focus of the original article

    Another good discussion would be killings is general. You can bring justified killings by cops into this but you would also have to address America's shitty gun laws. Criminals having easy access to guns makes self-defence killings by officers far more likely. That's not a violent cop, persay, it's a violent society or shitty law. Make sense?
  • iolo
    2016-01-17 08:17:32 AM
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    Zach F Wrote:
    iolo Wrote: No it's not - you do it per head, and England doesn't come in to it - we compare the UK with the US. If you arm your police, they kill people. We don't. And if you throw guns around like confetti, tens of thousands die. We don't. Americans trying to defend their love of killing are truly pathetic.

    My apologies, the population of the U.K. is 64 million compared to the 54 million of just England. That shifts my rough numbers down a little bit.

    I'm not defending killings. I'm saying that situation is FAR more complex than just a bunch of bad cops like the article implies. You can't just say we have a bunch of bad cops and then lump in statistics where the officer had no other choice but to fire back. That is wrong, misleading, and undercuts the over all argument.

    An accurate comparison between U.K. and U.S. would be unjustified killings by cop per capita. This compares just bad cops to other bad cops. Which is the focus of the original article

    Another good discussion would be killings is general. You can bring justified killings by cops into this but you would also have to address America's shitty gun laws. Criminals having easy access to guns makes self-defence killings by officers far more likely. That's not a violent cop, persay, it's a violent society or shitty law. Make sense?

    More sense, certainly. It is difficult to know how you overcome the omnipresent NRA lying propaganda, but I think you could at least teach police that they have more to do than simply defend themselves from any perceived/imagined threat by killing. For a start, why not make it compulsory for any policemen who kills anyone, ever, to appear in court to justify the killing, which is presumed to be murder until he proves otherwise?
  • Dutch
    2016-01-17 08:37:48 AM
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    As I said many times, the training and hiring here compared to the UK makes all the difference. The "militaristic" influence and hiring of ex-military creates the "shoot to kill" attitude. I talked to my neighbor who is a State trooper; he says the same; they only train to shoot at the corpse and the head. Also the public is seen as an "enemy" in a gun involvement situation, like the military, you've got to get rid of the treat. The percentage of ex-military in the police forces in Europe is an lot less than here. Also they train focused on more civil interface instead of learning to kill.
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