Re: Cops 4: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The problem with the statement that "instances where cops shoot or kill a suspect are extremely rare" is no one really knows this because no accurate statistics are compiled.
The government can tell you how many shark attacks there are every year. They can tell you how many pigs there are on all the pig farms. They can certainly tell you how many law enforcement officers are killed in any year. But since there is no requirement for every agency out there (and there are 18,000 of them) no one can tell me if the number of people shot by the police is rare, extremely rare, common, or frequent. We don't know if this number is trending up or down.
What we seem to know is anecdotally it appears that the number is more frequent now. That could be the prevalence of social media. It could be that its juicy news right now and much like CNN milking a plane crash for all it is worth for weeks on end, police shootings have the same potential. Or it could be because it happens more now.
The Washington Post has reported that some independent researchers and academics have claimed the number of people killed by law enforcement each year to hover around as many as 1000 a year. Something that happens 1000 times a year is not extremely rare.
On the other hand we DO know that fewer police officers decade by decade and generally year by year, are dying on the job. We also know that overall crime, and violent crime in particular, is going down, and those trends decade by decade have been fairly steady as well. It seems to me that the crime statistics should make both the public AND the police less fearful of being the victim of violence. I'd like to know if their responses have kept track. Are they shooting and killing fewer now than before? Until we demand some comprehensive accounting, all we will ever have to go on the highly suspect anecdotal evidence.
Originally posted by SJHovey
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The government can tell you how many shark attacks there are every year. They can tell you how many pigs there are on all the pig farms. They can certainly tell you how many law enforcement officers are killed in any year. But since there is no requirement for every agency out there (and there are 18,000 of them) no one can tell me if the number of people shot by the police is rare, extremely rare, common, or frequent. We don't know if this number is trending up or down.
What we seem to know is anecdotally it appears that the number is more frequent now. That could be the prevalence of social media. It could be that its juicy news right now and much like CNN milking a plane crash for all it is worth for weeks on end, police shootings have the same potential. Or it could be because it happens more now.
The Washington Post has reported that some independent researchers and academics have claimed the number of people killed by law enforcement each year to hover around as many as 1000 a year. Something that happens 1000 times a year is not extremely rare.
On the other hand we DO know that fewer police officers decade by decade and generally year by year, are dying on the job. We also know that overall crime, and violent crime in particular, is going down, and those trends decade by decade have been fairly steady as well. It seems to me that the crime statistics should make both the public AND the police less fearful of being the victim of violence. I'd like to know if their responses have kept track. Are they shooting and killing fewer now than before? Until we demand some comprehensive accounting, all we will ever have to go on the highly suspect anecdotal evidence.
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