We all know, or should know, that most people are murdered by people they know. I could look up the statistics, and if someone doubts this then I will, but for now I just want to stay on point and make sure it is clear that most people are not murdered by strangers.
It's important this is clear because I want to relate a statistic I just heard cited by DeRay McKesson of Black Lives Matter while speaking on Face the Nation: one third of people murdered by strangers are murdered by police officers.
This isn't a black or white issue. This is an every person issue. There are around 326 million people in this county. Any one person can only know so many people, maybe a few thousand at the very most, so by definition almost everyone in this country is a stranger. There are only about 1.2 million police officers in this country (full and part time), only 0.37% of the population. So despite police officers being at most only 0.37% of the strangers, they commit 33% of the murders of strangers.
Of course this statistic should be verified, but if DeRay McKesson is correct then police officers commit murders at a rate more than a hundred times greater than their proportion of the population.
As long as I'm posting, and this isn't about a shooting, but here's a video of a Baltimore police office assaulting a man who yelled at him and slapped his hand away. He put up no resistance. The officer has been suspended pending an investigation:
If there wasn't a video do you think the beaten man's complaint would have gone anywhere? It's the same with shootings. Anyone who believes it's just a coincidence that the only time police misbehave is when there's someone recording a video with a cell phone is living in a dream world. The evidence is telling us in stark terms that our police place as at greater rather than lesser risk too often to be tolerated.
The only information I used from DeRay McKesson was that one third of murders by strangers are committed by police. The rest was just me using the population of the country and the number of police to do a simple calculation, and that showed that if DeRay McKesson's claim was true then police officers commit murders at a rate more than a hundred times greater than their proportion of the population.
quote:(...)the estimate of 1,500 police homicides per year would mean that eight to ten per cent of all American homicide victims are killed by the police. Of all American homicide victims killed by people they don’t know, approximately one-third of them are victims of the police.
Taking the lower figure that 8% of murdered Americans are murdered by police so as not to overstate things, since police officers are 0.37% of the population, that means that police commit murders at a rate 21 times greater than their proportion of the population.
But 8%-10% of all homicides is not the same thing as the percentage of murders by strangers. Most people are murdered by people they know. We need the figure for what percent of people are murdered by people they don't know. The FBI webpage 2014 Crime in the United States tells us that that figure is 11%.
If we use the 8% figure from the webpage you found this actually creates a figure much worse for the police. Most people probably only know a few policemen at most, so the odds are tiny of being murdered by a policeman you know. The vast majority of those murdered by police must be murdered by police they don't know. So if police commit 8% of murders (almost all strangers), and if 11% of murders are of strangers, then police commit 72% of murders of strangers, not 33% as DeRay McKesson claims. I suspect your 8%-10% figure of murders being committed by police is too high. Either that or police are committing a great many murders of people they know, but I think that's very unlikely. Or maybe there's some other explanation, I don't know, I won't look into it unless that becomes the focus.
So where does DeRay McKesson's figure of 33% come from? It's explained in the article The Government Won’t Track Police Killings, So This 24-Year-Old Took the Lead. Sam Sinyangwe, a data scientist and activist, wondered if the available statistics about police violence could be trusted. Working with fellow activists DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie they developed the Mapping Police Violence website. The 33% figure comes out of data they gathered.
Read your post, I get it now. You've been differentiating between justifiable and unjustifiable homicides and I just wasn't picking up on it. Sorry about that. From what gets reported in the news it seems like the vast majority of police homicides get classified as justified, so the number of people murdered by police must be small.
Yet most times when a video turns up it turns out it wasn't justifiable or that at least there's doubt, so I just don't believe the police. I don't think DeRay McKesson believes the police, either, so he used the term murder instead of homicide.
But there's no proof of that, so let me restate my conclusion using the term "homicide": Police officers commit homicides at a rate more than a hundred times greater than their proportion of the population.
Let me apologize again. You were clear enough from the beginning, I don't know how I missed it.
Martha Al-Bsihara's daughter-in-law says she has dementia and only speaks Arabic. She was across the street from her home. After the tasing officers helped her up, arrested her, placed in in handcuffs, and took her down to the station house for booking. Her court appearance is scheduled for September 19th.
The officers said the tasing was justified because she failed to follow repeated instructions to drop the knife, including pantomimes of dropping a knife, and continued advancing toward officers - there were four. PERF (Police Executive Research Forum) suggests that jurisdictions prohibit taser use on the elderly.
I know what 87 and dementia looks like - there was no excuse for tasing this elderly woman. This taser use was criminal and I hope the family files charges.
Justin Contreras's mother contacted Nashua police requesting a welfare check for her son who she said was depressed and suicidal. They almost welfare checked him to death. In a stairway foyer a police officer encountered Contreras holding a revolver and immediately shot him. He survived. Contreras's gun was not loaded, and he did not point it at the police officer.
Seems to me that this officer should be charged with reckless endangerment and attempted homicide and whatever else seems appropriate. Police with their training should be well prepared to encounter depressed and suicidal people, especially when forewarned. They should expect that such people may well have in their possession the means to carry out their own demise, including potentially deadly weapons like knives and guns. Oh, what a surprise, we've found the suicidal person and he has a gun, let's shoot him.
But that's not the end of it. Contreras has been brought up on criminal charges whose nature has not been made public, and the Attorney General refuses to release any details of his investigation into the shooting of Contreras until the legal proceedings against him have run their course.
So let's summarize: Contreras is suicidal and depressed. His mother asks the police to conduct a welfare check. The police visit his residence and shoot him. The Attorney General brings Contreras up on criminal charges. No details are made public. Ah, New Hampshire, gotta love it: Live Free or Die (our state motto)
This incident is consistent with why there are so few police murders. It's because almost all police homicides are ruled justifiable (except, strangely enough, when there's a video available).
It's worth mentioning an incident from over 30 years ago that took place in the Nashua area. It might even have been Nashua, but I no longer remember. The police weren't involved, but the Attorney General was, which is why I mention it. Anyway, in a 3-story apartment building a man in a 2nd floor apartment was cleaning his gun at his kitchen table. The gun went off and killed a man sleeping on his couch on the floor above. The Attorney General conducted an investigation and no charges were filed.
This past Thursday in Los Angeles actress Vanessa Marquez, who appeared on 27 episodes of "ER", was shot by police at her apartment and later died in a hospital ER. Her landlord had called for a wellness check. Three police and a mental health clinician spoke with her for an hour and a half when she reached for what looked like a semiautomatic handgun but was just a BB gun. Police fired at least one shot, striking her in the torso.
This again calls into question the professionalism and adequacy of the training of our police force. Suicidal but afraid to pull the trigger? Now you don't have to. Just call the police, reach for your gun, and they'll do it for you. Police are evidently unable to handle suicide risks who possess lethal means.
It's important this is clear because I want to relate a statistic I just heard cited by DeRay McKesson of Black Lives Matter while speaking on Face the Nation: one third of people murdered by strangers are murdered by police officers.
Murdered or killed? Important distinction.
Caffeine already picked up on this - see my last reply to him in Message 129.
There are only about 1.2 million police officers in this country (full and part time), only 0.37% of the population. So despite police officers being at most only 0.37% of the strangers, they commit 33% of the murders of strangers.
Your mischaracterizations are astounding. Lets suppose those statistics are accurate. Even supposing they were on the low side, it's not at all surprising. See, unlike total strangers, who have an infinitesimally small chance of being involved in a homicide, justified or unjustified, police are 1. constantly patrolling and, 2. are the one's called to dangerous situations. So of course there would be a much higher likelihood that they were involved in a homicide.
Of course. But it shouldn't also be true that you'll have a much higher likelihood of being involved in a homicide if police are called to your house.
YouTube videos can be embedded in messages by saying [utube=tZbtWN1skkQ]. I'll check it out if you first explain the point that it is presumably being offered in support of.
As long as I'm posting, and this isn't about a shooting, but here's a video of a Baltimore police office assaulting a man who yelled at him and slapped his hand away. He put up no resistance. The officer has been suspended pending an investigation
As he should! The Baltimore Police Department is a notoriously corrupt force...
I guess I wasn't looking at this as a corruption problem but a police violence problem. Are you assuming the cop lied on his report? If so then I guess that's a low level form of police corruption. If his buddies backed up his false report then I guess that would be even more corrupt.
But corruption isn't the problem I had in mind. I'm talking about police shootings. Put a badge on a guy with a gun and, given how few police homicides are classified as unjustifiable, you're just legalizing murder.
But it is very obvious at this point that you are convinced this nonsense represents the overall profession when it doesn't even come close.
My view is that people (including the people in police uniform) are pretty much the same the world over. Any randomly selected set of people is going to include pretty much the same percentages of all types. Application forms, interview questions and psychology exams have not advanced to the point where future violence committers can be reliably identified. Therefore the percentage of police with the potential to commit murder is about the same as in the general population. Making things worse, as you made clear above, police much more often find themselves in uncertain and precarious situations.
Sensationalism is sensationalizing, Percy. You never see the millions of innocuous interactions with the public, so your perception is horribly skewed towards the statistically tiny fraction of shit head officers who disgrace the profession.
Except they're not shit head officers. They're you. They're me. They're everyone. They're "there but for the grace of God go I" people.
Maybe if you stepped down from the ivory tower to see what the real world is actually like, you'd have a greater appreciation of the nature of the job and all of its trappings.
The commensurate response is, "Maybe if you took off the rose-colored glasses you'd see the true harm committed by an armed police force," but where would that get us? The true problem is that the 2nd Amendment has saddled us with a nation of gun nuts, equally well represented in both the police and the general population.
Lol, how fortunate it must be for you to have the luxury of Monday-Morning Quarterbacking, as if they should have intrinsically known it was a BB gun.
I proposed no answers. It is simply my belief that police should never wellness check a person to death. Obviously a despondent person could very likely have available the means of causing their own demise, such as a gun or knife. If the only response police have for a despondent person reaching for a knife or gun is to shoot them, then clearly the police are the last people you should call for a wellness check.
So in your mind I guess this is just another justifiable police homicide.
This again calls into question the professionalism and adequacy of the training of our police force. Suicidal but afraid to pull the trigger? Now you don't have to. Just call the police, reach for your gun, and they'll do it for you. Police are evidently unable to handle suicide risks who possess lethal means.
Right, because who has ever heard of Suicide by Cop?' Probably never happened in history.
No, no, no, you're missing the point. In the old days you had to point your gun at the cops to commit "suicide by cop." But no more! With today's improved police forces all you have to do is reach for your gun and they'll shoot you.
There is no greater conduit for mental illness than the justice system,...
If you mean that it far too often happens that the mentally ill are inappropriately channelled into the legal system, then I agree.
...which is a testament to the overwhelming long-suffering that is exhibited towards those with mental illness.
If you mean the mentally ill are a long-suffering group at the hands of the legal system, then I agree.
But I don't agree that we have a justice system. What we have is a legal system. A justice system would allow evidence to be reconsidered upon appeal. A justice system wouldn't execute people. A justice system wouldn't have such a high failure rate, such as when old cases come up against DNA evidence. A justice system wouldn't employ plea bargaining as a means of coercion. A justice system wouldn't place much reliance upon eyewitness identifications. And a justice system would have outcomes independent of wealth.
Law enforcement, particularly in major cities, have contact with the mentally ill on a daily basis and provides them resources that they otherwise could not or would not do on their own. That's just a fact.
I believe the part about police having daily contact with the mentally ill, but not the part about them providing "resources that they otherwise could not or would not do on their own." I don't believe the police are much involved in providing services for the mentally ill unless such service might somehow overlap with police responsibility or be a special case, such as rounding up the homeless and taking them to shelters on frigid nights that could be life-threatening.
Your representation of things is that the police murder the mentally ill when in fact that the overwhelming interactions are to help them, not to hurt them.
And in the overwhelming number of times the drunk makes it home safely, but we still take away his license when we catch him, right? In the overwhelming number of times the police interact with the public they manage not to murder anyone, but that doesn't mean they should keep their guns? Right?
The basic facts are not in dispute. On September 6th an off duty but still in uniform Dallas policewoman walked into an apartment she believed her own and shot to death the man inside, the apartment's actual resident, Botham Shem Jean. She'd entered the wrong apartment. The policewoman has not yet been identified. There are a few obvious questions:
How did the policewoman open the door to an apartment not her own? This may or may not be a real issue. If the door to this apartment didn't shut right or if residents can set their doors to not automatically lock when closed of if Botham Shem Jean had left the door ajar to get more air into the apartment or to let a friend just walk in, or any other reasons along these lines, then the door being open isn't an issue. But what if the door was closed and locked? How did the policewoman gain entry?
Did the policewoman and Botham Shem Jean know each other? Had they ever had any interactions?
How did the policewoman not immediately realize she wasn't in her own apartment. This is analogous to trying to enter a car you think is yours but only looks like it. As soon as the car doesn't react to your key you take another look and immediately notice details that tell you it isn't your car. Or for those who have worked in cubicle farms, who hasn't turned into the wrong cubicle (often while reading a memo) and immediately realized they'ed turned a cubicle too early or too late. Not recognizing you're in the wrong apartment just doesn't ring true, unless the officer was under the heavy influence of drugs or alcohol. A blood sample was taken.
Every case is different, and this one just emphasizes once again that police are as human as the rest of us and are as dangerous with guns as everyone else, even more so since they commit a disproportionately large proportion of homicides compared to their tiny proportion of the population. As the article states:
quote:So far this year, at least 694 people have been shot and killed by police, according to a Washington Post database on police-involved shootings. However, those cases involve officers who were on duty at the time of the shootings.
I proposed no answers. It is simply my belief that police should never wellness check a person to death. Obviously a despondent person could very likely have available the means of causing their own demise, such as a gun or knife. If the only response police have for a despondent person reaching for a knife or gun is to shoot them, then clearly the police are the last people you should call for a wellness check.
Police don't respond to despondent people looking to kill them.
Original response after misinterpreting the above:
Police-conducted wellness checks are not about "despondent people looking to kill them."
New response after Faith clarified for me:
Of course they don't. No one's accusing the police of murderous intent.
Again, there are probably collectively 1,000 calls a for service everyday that result in said despondent person being safely referred to mental health specialists without any issues and others who have been literally saved by police officers at the risk of their own safety. Of those that make regrettable decisions, like going for a weapon, what would you suggest?
I would suggest not killing them.
You also forget that EMS, psychiatrists, negotiators, firefighters, refuse to go into situations with armed, suicidal subjects. And I'm guessing you wouldn't do it either, but cast all kinds of aspersions towards the one's that do.
It is not "casting all kinds of aspersions" to say that the police should never wellness check someone to death.
So in your mind I guess this is just another justifiable police homicide.
Absolutely. Why wouldn't it be? Pretty open and shut.
More evidence of the attitude making clear why police shouldn't have guns.
This again calls into question the professionalism and adequacy of the training of our police force. Suicidal but afraid to pull the trigger? Now you don't have to. Just call the police, reach for your gun, and they'll do it for you. Police are evidently unable to handle suicide risks who possess lethal means.
Many, many, many situations have been resolved using less-lethal means when it is reasonable to employ things like Tasers, bean bag rounds, pepper spray, tear gas canisters, or other means of incapacitation. The circumstances dictate that.
Great. So why did you conclude justifiable homicide instead of questioning why the officer didn't employ his Taser, bean bag rounds, pepper spray, tear gas or other means?
In the old days you had to point your gun at the cops to commit "suicide by cop." But no more! With today's improved police forces all you have to do is reach for your gun and they'll shoot you.
LMAO!!! I feel like you're trolling me - that you couldn't possibly be that obtuse. There's never been a 'good ole day' where a cop wouldn't shoot you for reaching for a weapon. Action is faster than reaction. A bullet travels thousands of feet per second. By the time it's pointed at you, you're already dead. Why should anyone ever wait to see if they point a firearm at them when the means, capability, proximity and intent is pretty clear at that point?
Point taken. Obviously I watch too many cop shows.
What we have is a legal system. A justice system would allow evidence to be reconsidered upon appeal. A justice system wouldn't execute people. A justice system wouldn't have such a high failure rate, such as when old cases come up against DNA evidence. A justice system wouldn't employ plea bargaining as a means of coercion. A justice system wouldn't place much reliance upon eyewitness identifications. And a justice system would have outcomes independent of wealth.
There is always room for a robust conversation about all of those topics, some we might find parity in. But it doesn't undermine the basic premise that a police force is a necessity, regardless of how loathsome you find that to be.
Who said anything about a police force being loathsome, whether armed or not? The concern is about an armed police force.
I believe the part about police having daily contact with the mentally ill, but not the part about them providing "resources that they otherwise could not or would not do on their own."
Yeah, of course not, because why see what it's actually like when you could just read a riveting, slanted article from Salon to confirm the preconceived notion?
If someone linked to a Salon article, I didn't see it. My views are neither preconceived nor knee jerk. They derive from the many news reports of unjustifiable police shootings, particularly of people of color. I think you may be too close to your profession to be objective, and that you've become inured to the possibility that perhaps improvements are possible.
Just about every department has a vested interest in training Mental Health Officers to deal with a litany of mental health crises that impacts both the mentally ill and the community at large. Go to Manchester and do a ride-along specifically with an MHO. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Mental Health Officers sound like a good idea, but I'd have to know more about them. It was three officers and a mental health clinician who were sent to Vanessa Marquez's apartment. Too many cooks, perhaps.
What makes you think Manchester has MHOs? Or that the Manchester Police Department provides ride-alongs to any random person who requests one? Or that I'd step into a vehicle with an armed individual? When I see a gun I go the other way.
And in the overwhelming number of times the drunk makes it home safely, but we still take away his license when we catch him, right? In the overwhelming number of times the police interact with the public they manage not to murder anyone, but that doesn't mean they should keep their guns? Right?
You won't find anyone to do the job, Percy. What you'll have is a lawless hell-hole where vigilante justice replaces a judicial system. In the process of trying to treat the symptom you'll inadvertently create an infinitely worse condition.
It's already difficult to find able-bodied, able-minded people now... adding that they can no longer sufficiently be able to adequately defend themselves is a bridge too far. A mass exodus and resignation would occur. And you might relish that thought for about 3 days until the impact of that decision manifests itself. You should be careful what you ask for... it just might get it.
Only special police units would be armed.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Fix formatting.
Edited by Percy, : Fix first response after Faith straightened me out.
Isn't it obvious Hyro meant that POLICE, in responding to despondent people, aren't looking to kill them?
Ah, thank you, of course, I shall fix my response. In my defense, this sub-discussion is about police responding to a despondent person that they actually did think was looking to kill them, so one fired his weapon and killed her.
This part of your message was amusing enough that I just had to respond now, I'll respond to the rest later:
Hyroglyphx writes:
It's my understanding that Manchester is the largest city in New England (excluding Boston).
To the rest of the country New England must seem like a jumble of tiny little states, and the details about the states themselves must seem incredibly obscure. I'm surprised you felt confident enough to venture a guess about how big Manchester is relative to other New England cities.
My guess is that Manchester is somewhere around the tenth largest city in New England, something like this (this is just a guess):
Boston, MA
Providence, RI
Hartford, CT
Worcester, MA
Springfield, MA
New Haven, CT
Bridgeport, CT
Waterbury, CT
Lowell, MA
Manchester, NH
Checking Demographics of New England it looks like I did sort of okay, but Manchester *is* around number ten. It's a very small city of around 110,000. Its police department has nothing resembling a mental health unit as far as I can tell from their website. The city's health department doesn't appear to have a mental health division.
Want to hear something really surprising about the size of a particular New England city? Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, has a population around 7500. It's the smallest state capital in the country and has a declining population.
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