(More seriously, it's an interesting problem how to deal with threads like this. It seems almost deterministic based on a comment's initial wording. I guess the only effective approach is manual moderation, but I can't help but wonder if it'll be the same solution in 200 years.)
Part of me really wants to try to train an ML model to auto detect such comments. Every time I see a pattern, I think "ML might be able to solve this..."
But I know from experience that such feelings are often illusory.
If you stick with the article all the way to the bottom, it admits as much:
> The relative stability of the annual number of fatal shootings does not mean the total is unchangeable. Wheeler said societal interventions, such as new policies around use of force, could shift the total from its expected range.
Makes you wonder what agenda the headline writer is trying to push.
Since coroners lie to protect Police Departments, the number is far higher than just ~1000/year. An earlier study showed the actual number murdered was roughly ~2000/year.
For comparison: 14 or 15 killings by police in Germany in 2019 (depending on the source). Germany has ~80 million inhabitants, compared to the ~330 million in the US, so you'd expect roughly 60 killings by police in the US if the level of violence was similar.
There are so many guns in the USA the police simply shoot first and ask questions later rather than trying to de-escalate and become victims in the process. We just had two cops shot dead in the Bronx responding to a domestic dispute between a middle aged man and his elderly mother. This is the grim reality we've been building in the USA.
The number of people who don't follow basic instructions is. "Put your hands on the wheel. Or put your hands up.
Also, the number who want to argue and resist. If you've been told to drop the gun on the ground in front of you, but choose to wave it instead, you should expect you will be disarmed, even if it results in your death. Reaction time kills.
I've watched numerous bodycam videos where people were told to do something to make themselves and the officers safer. They mostly show the ones that go bad. How often do you see a posted video where a person laid down the weapon and followed instructions? Rarely, because they rarely go bad.
Not saying there aren't screwups, because obviously there are. Amir Locke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWCpkPBKFR0) for example appears to be a terrible result of a poor practice, No knock warrants.
I've been watching https://www.youtube.com/c/PoliceActivity/videos (publisher of police body-cam deadly-force-used incident videos) for a long time, and from that sampling it seems that the number of police shootings (a significant proportion of which result in a non-police fatality) that can be reasonably labeled "suicide by cop" (or similar mental health related) is disturbingly high. A recurring scenario: 911 call of suspect brandishing a knife -> suspect charges responding police officers while brandishing the knife in an attacking manner and yelling "shoot me". Police policy and training clearly allows (supports) officers in this situation to shoot their attacker, and also clearly enables them to continue firing until there is no doubt that said attacker is absolutely no threat to anyone in the vicinity.
literally all of the videos in that search are coming from broadcast media sources. have you considered that police are also much less likely to release bodycam footage to the media if it portrays them in a negative light?
That's not data though, that's anecdotes. A handful of videos is hardly a fair sampling of a thousand incidents per year. The videos that percolate up are going to be the exceptional circumstances either way. Are there hard numbers you can point to that are published by folks other than the departments themselves?
I'm sorry, but this sounds like someone who has never been to another country or seen how police works in other countries. I'm of course talking about comparable western countries (which are all way safer than the US, I believe). Instead of looking how the police could be improved you really think it's the people who interact with police?
It doesn't have anything to do with the lousy few weeks of training police get? The fact that they're often uneducated, the fact that bad behavior goes unpunished and everything else that is wrong with the US' system? It's the people?
I've been to Germany, Austria, England, Mexico, most of the Caribbean. What I've observed in other countries is a general higher level of civility and respect for police. People don't curse at them, generally. And police typically don't put up with what US police often do. You want the police to improve. I want society to improve. That includes the police. And improvement doesn't mean teaching everybody to whip out a cellphone to try and catch an officer not being perfect.
It's too bad they stopped creating the interactive version of this like they used to[1] (unless I missed it). It was really instructive to visualize some of the not so obvious truths in the data. For instance, white males are more likely to be shot by police than their percentage of the overall population would suggest (along with black males and hispanic males).
Whereas asian males, and females of all races (including black females) are less likely to be killed than their percentage of the population would suggest. This isn't the narrative portrayed in the media, and I wonder if this is what led to them changing how they present the data.. It suggests that the problem is actually gender-based, not race-based.
Interestingly enough, it also shows a significant correlation to violent crime rates by demographic groups (white, black and hispanic males committing violent crime at higher rates than asian males and females of all races, which would likely lead to more potentially dangerous interactions with police.
33 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 72.9 ms ] threadIt's like TCAS: "Whoop whoop, don't reply! Whoop whoop, don't reply!"
(More seriously, it's an interesting problem how to deal with threads like this. It seems almost deterministic based on a comment's initial wording. I guess the only effective approach is manual moderation, but I can't help but wonder if it'll be the same solution in 200 years.)
But I know from experience that such feelings are often illusory.
So not such a huge escalation, since "tracking began" in 2015.
> The relative stability of the annual number of fatal shootings does not mean the total is unchangeable. Wheeler said societal interventions, such as new policies around use of force, could shift the total from its expected range.
Makes you wonder what agenda the headline writer is trying to push.
Strange world you seem to want to live in. I pray your family never becomes a victim of your nonsense.
Gunviolence claims it's more like ~1300 for police gun homicides in 2021 https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls.
I'm still trusting the CDC a bit more on these statistics then media outlets of varying political agendas.
The English Wikipedia entry lists the circumstances for each killing by German police forces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
The German version talks of 15 killings for 2019.
The number of people who don't follow basic instructions is. "Put your hands on the wheel. Or put your hands up.
Also, the number who want to argue and resist. If you've been told to drop the gun on the ground in front of you, but choose to wave it instead, you should expect you will be disarmed, even if it results in your death. Reaction time kills.
Not saying there aren't screwups, because obviously there are. Amir Locke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWCpkPBKFR0) for example appears to be a terrible result of a poor practice, No knock warrants.
This one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ1mo-ecOzI) is an example of not following direction.
There is no shortage of evidence if you look for it instead of having it spoon-fed by the media. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cops+shoots
literally all of the videos in that search are coming from broadcast media sources. have you considered that police are also much less likely to release bodycam footage to the media if it portrays them in a negative light?
It doesn't have anything to do with the lousy few weeks of training police get? The fact that they're often uneducated, the fact that bad behavior goes unpunished and everything else that is wrong with the US' system? It's the people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
Whereas asian males, and females of all races (including black females) are less likely to be killed than their percentage of the population would suggest. This isn't the narrative portrayed in the media, and I wonder if this is what led to them changing how they present the data.. It suggests that the problem is actually gender-based, not race-based.
Interestingly enough, it also shows a significant correlation to violent crime rates by demographic groups (white, black and hispanic males committing violent crime at higher rates than asian males and females of all races, which would likely lead to more potentially dangerous interactions with police.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...