Cops. Can’t live with ‘em, too screwed up, twisted and scared to live without ‘em. That’s the United States, and we’re anything but united on virtually every subject out there, including law enforcement.
While some worry the overt militarization of “peace” officers has led the country into a seeming pandemic of police brutality, others, sometimes known as “badge lickers,” side with bloodthirsty cops as automatically as parroting support for our troops. They’ll tie a ribbon to any damn thing in order to show their support to God and country, and somehow that includes honorary support for the troops, police officers and fire fighters, too.
Folks even argue over whether the violent discord between police officers and community members is the fault of the community or the police officers. Who is killed by the other more often? Do police kill more civilians, or do civilians kill more police? What socio-economic and cultural factors may be at play in deaths against either group by the other?
Well, the folks over at digg have a couple of graphics from Vocativ that will help you visualize the reality of citizen/cop murders versus cop/citizen murders in 17 months’ time, from Jan. 1, 2014 – May 12, 2015.
Below shows the murders of police officers in that time, amounting to 102:
(Image courtesy of digg)
Now, compare that to the murders of civilians by police in that same timeframe and the reason we have had demonstrations, marches, protests and riots in the streets all over the country, and indeed all over the world, since last August becomes pretty clear. See for yourself. All 1,500 are below:
See the difference?
The deaths of police officers will never take a permanent, significant step down until the deaths of civilians by police diminishes significantly. In order to do that, America will have to be willing to honestly examine some pretty enormous subjects, such as systemic racism, in order to earnestly address the cultural issues that have led to a class society with a rigged economic structure designed to keep certain groups of people down. From there, we can begin to reshape society into a more egalitarian existence that might free us up from such blatant, regular use of violence against citizens by the police. With a greater sense of justice and equality amongst us all, perhaps we will not kill each other in the streets so much. Perhaps less fear will abound and the police will give us more than a second’s notice before they shoot us dead.
And without that constant sense of harassment by police officers, without seeing headlines in the news every few weeks about another unarmed citizen gunned down over an extremely minor crime, the police will eventually be gunned down less often, themselves.
Hey, one can dream, right?
Featured image: via cdn.meme.am
how about cops without guns or punish a whole department if a policeman kills someone in town make all cops go without guns for a month
It’s been two days now and that remains one of the dumbest statements I’ve read on the internet. How does making everyone else less safe accomplish anything?
It both amuses me and makes me wonder. What if they did do it in one area as a trial test. A fair amount of year on year incidents of the police killing civilians or if you must criminals. And see once that rule is put into place if there is a dramatic down tick in such? After all they will still have their guns until they do something wrong, and will retain their guns as long as their use of said is legal. Just a steep penalty if not. Body camera’s should be used and one’s that have to be on while the officer is on duty no ability on the individuals officers part to turn them off.
Pagan jim
How many of those people killed by police were a danger to the officers or others? How many of those killings were justified, or would be considered justified if the full evidence were known? People don’t call the cops because they’re having a great day and just want to sit down and share some cookies. Cops get called because something bad has happened, or because something bad is about to happen, or might happen.
Unless you look at the circumstances, the comparison is pointless - it’s comparing apples and donuts.
In the last 15 years, NOT ONE police shooting in Florida has been ruled unjustified.
Think about the odds of that happening for a bit. Then realize that prosecutors have to work with the police every day, so unless something gets on video and is released outside of the department’s control…
I’m not saying all those citizens were Boy Scouts. But the odds of every last one of them being a dangerous felon is equally ludicrous.
You don’t have to be a dangerous felon to put yourself in a position where the use of deadly force against you is justified. I don’t know a single one of the cases, but you have to consider what information was available. You’re right about one thing - the fact that prosecutors are expected to work with and for those same officers they then are called to investigate gives the impression of a ridiculous conflict of interest. We definitely need to come up with a better way to investigate police use of force.
The information available is that a cop killing a civilian is justified. It doesn’t matter how. Wake up.
Sorry, Ken, but your remark is not borne out by the truth.
“It’s very rare that an officer gets charged with a homicide offense resulting from their on-duty conduct even though people are killed on a fairly regular basis,” said Philip Stinson, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green who received a federal grant to study arrests of police officers. The study covers more than 6,700 cases of police officers arrested for any crime across all states.
It may be rare, but it does happen. One thing you should keep in mind is the standard is pretty high to charge an officer. The standard for whether deadly force is justified or not hinges on the actions of a reasonable officer with the information available at that time. It’s a split-second decision and is evaluated as such. Whether a person is unarmed is often brought out after the fact. The question is, “Was the officer in fear for his life or the life of others at the moment deadly force was used?”
Do you have the citation for Stinson’s quote? I’d like to read more.
Sorry Eric, I don’t just talk and Stinson is not the only one.
Yeah you never know when a rogue Pool Party is about to break out and you so NEED cops!!
Pagan jim
Eric, we ARE looking at the circumstances, especially when we have videos of what is going on. And they show an unacceptable level of abuse of authority.
Come on North Dakota, are you even TRYING?