zlacker

Cops are not soldiers. They are not fighting a war. Look to any other western nation. America may be a little more violent, a little less stable, but the cop-citizen relationship isn't fundamentally different than in any number of other nations. There is no need for US cops to take that attitude. There is no reason for them to be killing as many people as they do.

A thousand people a year are killed by US cops. Canada, with 10% of the population, sees maybe 25 in a bad year.

>>sandwo+(OP)
Your perspective is skewed, and the example is arguably irrelevant. It’s not difficult to find examples where the situation is far worse than the US.

There is no reason for them to be killing as many people as they do.

Yes, there is absolutely a reason. There is a reason for everything. If you want to fix it, you need to set your emotions aside and get to the root cause of that reason. If you continue to deny that there is a reason, you can expect the same tragic result.

>>lawnch+z2
Please, enlighten us. Why is "shot by police" the leading cause of death among black men?

What is your proposed solution?

>>lawnch+z2
> Yes, there is absolutely a reason.

Your point is valid, but reading "there is no reason" literally misses the intended meaning, which is "this is unacceptable and cannot stand".

>>mulmen+Li
It isn’t. Not even remotely close. What a silly stat to invent.

For what it’s worth, black men kill more cops than cops kill unarmed black men.

>>mulmen+Li
Homicide is the leading cause of death among non-Hispanic black males under 44 (taken in total, it’s not) [0]. In the same year as the CDC statistics above, 223 black men were killed by police [1].

It’s tragic, but many orders of magnitude away from your claim.

It’s not the quantity that makes it horrible, tragic, and infuriating. It is all those things because it’s evidence of a larger systemic issue which includes lots of other awful things that fall short of homocide; and it’s largely unnecessary.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-b...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

>>lawnch+BB
Apologies, I misread [1] and didn't apply the sniff test. It's the sixth leading cause of death, not the first. And it's 2.5x the rate of whites.

Regarding your second claim, I can't find those numbers. The closest thing I can find is this newsweek piece [2] with data from 2013 and 2014. That suggests most people who kill police are white. But it also includes prison guards as police.

[1]: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-08-15/police-shoo...

[2]: https://www.newsweek.com/who-kills-police-officers-315701

>>cgrisw+VC
Thanks, I misread the source and didn't think about it.

You're right the quantity isn't specifically important but it does illustrate that there is a problem. Even if it is not the #1 cause of death it is disproportionately higher.