zlacker

>>dtagam+(OP)
There are lots and lots of mishaps in many professions, sometimes with deadly consequences. The United States is a country of 330 million people. Suppose an event is so unlikely it only has 1 in a billion chance of happening--it will happen once ever 4 days on average!

Medical errors, for example, are estimated to cause as many as 250,000 deaths per year [1].

There are millions and millions of daily interactions between police and civilians every year. Sadly, there will be some mistakes, some of which will be caught on camera.

It's important to be aware that what the media can be random, and media coverage is not always correlated with how important or prevalent a problem is.

[1] Johns Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...

>>marcel+Oq
There are lots and lots of mishaps in many professions, sometimes with deadly consequences. The United States is a country of 330 million people. Suppose an event is so unlikely it only has 1 in a billion chance of happening--it will happen once ever 4 days on average!

I think the issue people are rioting about is that it's not a 1 in a billion chance for everyone. It's more like 1 in a quintillion for a rich white person, and 1 in a million for a person of color. That inequality stems from systemic racism in the police force. What you're saying is that it would be less of a problem if the deaths were evenly distributed across the population. That may be true, but I don't think many people would suggest it as a viable solution to the problem.

>>onion2+vA
Based on the data, deaths are relatively distributed across the population. 25% of people killed by police are black. They make up 12% of the population, so based on this it seems like they are twice as likely as normal to be killed by the police, but after normalizing for violent crime rates (for a variety of reasons including discrimination, black people commit over 50% of the homicides) police killings seem roughly similar for all races.