NYPD subdue armed mentally disturbed man. Nobody seriously hurt. That’s the headline you should read every now and then. But you rarely do. I’m not a big fan of the Taser, but this seems to me exactly what it is designed for. What’s odd, at least to me, is that here is a perfect use…
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It’s long been “known” among police that anybody with a knife or edged weapon within 21 feet is a lethal threat. This so-called “rule” has long been a big pet-peeve of mine. This anybody-within-21-feet-is-a-threat mentality does result in a lot of crazy people getting shot. And don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with…
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Best I can figure, it was invented (or at least inspired by) the Taser corporation (correct me if I’m wrong here). But it’s not a real cause of death. That being said, it’s usually used to get cops off the hood when someone dies after being Tased. But now some high guy dies and the…
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One of the things that keeps coming out of the Ferguson shooting is that Michael Brown was “unarmed.” As if “unarmed” people cannot be a threat to cop. That’s bullshit. Now I’m not talking about whether Michael Brown was or was not a threat. I do not know. But the fact that he was “unarmed”…
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OK, my cop friends: please tell me what I’m missing here or how any of this (from February) is defensible. It’s so rare I can watch a video and not understand or at least empathize with the police. These Bloomfield, New Jersey cops are going to end up in jail right? And is the salary…
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Fact 7: What about hispanics? Hard to tell because many police departments don’t keep track. Half of all homicides (justifiable police homicides) have no “ethic origin” listed. When it is listed, 1/3 of those killed are hispanic, which strikes me as very high. Overall, including all the missing data, hispanics come out at 16 percent.…
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Fact 6: Black police officers do kill white people. This really isn’t surprising, but I mention it because I’ve seen a few people on twitter doubt this fact. Black officers (about 1 in 7 of all police) kill about 27 blacks and 9.4 whites per year. White police (of whom there are many more) kill…
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Fact 5: Black officers are disproportionately more likely than white police to kill black people. But this should come as little surprise since black officers are much more likely to work in black areas and in cities where there are more blacks. Again, given the bad data, take all this with a huge grain of…
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Fact 4: Police-involved killings are going up. This one surprised me. Because police-involved shootings are generally correlated with overall homicides. But homicides are more or less steady right now, and down 10,000 since 1998 (14,000 in 1998, 13,000 in 2012). The trend is about five more killings a year, for the past 15 years. Keep…
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[Update: Using better data, the number is more like three a day.] Fact 3: UCR data on justified police-homicides are notorious incomplete. These numbers are an undercount. But given the data we have, as reported (or not) to the DOJ by local police departments, police kill at least one person a day (426 in 2012,…
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