Of all Americans killed by strangers, 1/3 are killed by police

submitted by magnora7 from granta.com

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[–]magnora7[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Being American means you're 50x more likely to die by the police per capita as compared to a median developed country. Also 50% of the people killed by police are white, so it's not even a racial issue. Being black does increase the odds 2.5x, but this is 1/20th of the additional 50x risk that being American has.

This is a serious problem. The US has 1300 killed by police a year, and Brazil has about 4000. We're almost as bad as Brazil. A typical developed country will have 0-30. Even the ones that have guns.

Something is wrong with the way police are trained and hired. Something is wrong when there is consistent internal corruption that includes the highest levels of authority. There is no self-righting system, and in fact there is the opposite. Trying to weed out corruption is a way to be targeted, so it becomes self-reinforcing.

How do we solve this? It's absolutely out of control. Some countries seem to have mostly figured it out...

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Being black does increase the odds 2.5x, but this is 1/20th of the additional 50x risk that being American has.

Yes, thanks for doing the math. Pulitzer right here (or your acceptable equivalent of a Pulitzer).

The only solution type thing I'm aware of is citizen oversight boards that I think cities have to vote in. I'm not sure of their effectiveness.

I think a couple of cities have fired/disbanded their police force. Maybe a rebel city can do this and allow militia style keeping of the peace instead. Or fire everyone and re-form the police with radically different policies and transparency. This "us vs. them" mentality is everywhere though, generational, and is in health care and other public servant professions as well, probably fire fighting.

[–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What I am scared of is that they'll federalize all local police to combat corruption, and end up becoming more corrupt as a result. Same thing Mexico did a couple years ago.