Things I would like to know about police violence in the US

[Recursion]

1. How many Americans were actually killed by police officers in 2014?
2. How many Americans were killed by police officers in past years?
3. What percentage of potentially-violent interactions with police actually become violent?
4. How does that percentage compare to percentages in the past?
5. What is the disparity of that escalation based on the race of the civilian?
6. What was that disparity in the past?

Frankly, we don't even have reliable numbers on question 1, let alone the rest. Are cops doing better in 2014 than they were in, say 1994? 2004? We don't know (though my personal suspicion is that they are doing better, killing fewer people, and disproportionately targeting minorities less now than they were 20 years ago).

Any talk about reform needs these questions to be answered (because it's important to know if what we've been doing has been making things better or worse before we decide what to do now), but we don't have even these basic data.

[djean111]

1. Amazingly enough, those figures are not reported to a central place, and so they can only

be extrapolated or guesstimated. Your #3 is totally non-quantifiable, really. Matter of opinion, I think.
Looks, sometimes, like the police are just as adept at flying under the radar as the NSA and the CIA and the FBI.

[Adam051188]

2. that information would be readily available in any nation...

....that could reasonably be described as a democracy.

[Igel]

7. Why?

It requires a lot of centralization of data and required reporting. It requires, in some sense, for the top guy in DC to have some authority over every single federal, state, county, city, and town employee.

The more centralized the authority, the greater the support for a strong leader, the less likely that authority remains with the population and with local control and the more likely it is that local citizenry will have much say over much of anything.

Given US history, where threats to some groups have been primarily and regionally local while the knights in white have been strangers that say the right things, this makes sense. The outsiders grant you power--typically in exchange for getting the votes or support of those they've helped. Ultimately it's trusting a central authority to be moral and uncorruptible and assuming that those around you are less moral and more antagonistic. It's rooted in what's often a well-founded lack of social trust and capital and institutionalized ill-will.

However, the more central authority there is, the more the motivation to try to control it and manipulate it. The more motivation for lobbyists. For deadlock over life-and-death control of power. The more motivation for those involved to increase their power and the greater their ability to thwart political enemies and pander, to coerce and compel people to do what those in power want or believe.

I just don't see the link between ultra-centralized reporting and democracy. Now, the link between social control and micromanaging, wresting political power and using it as a cudgel by "we the people" against all those other apparently non-people citizens ... That I see.

[Adam051188]

11. accesibility of information is absolutely a top priority in any democratic organization.

majority rule doesn't work when the majority isn't well informed.

cataloging public data in a centralized fashion doesn't inherently imply, at least to me, any sort of authoritarian agenda. we know how many people in the u.s. caught "ebola" this year, but we don't know how many died because of an encounter with law enforcement? seems inconsistent. inconsistencies in policy are rarely random.

[Sunlei]

3. Not even kill, how many people have they kicked or bone breaking punched in the face? countless.

I'll start. I witnessed a NJ state trooper full out punch my friend in the face and broke his nose. One hit really fast. Of course no one said a word. All future medical problems related to the broken nose were on the abused citizen to pay.


Police will never self-reform or State-reform, they are way to out of control for self regulation.

Any new "Reform Rules" have to come from the Federal Level and there has to be severe consequences to the police/prison guard who breaks those 'rules'.

[etherealtruth]

5. To me that is an extremely important point

Police brutality can't be measured solely by the number of people they "kill" (a number can't differentiate between 'suicide by cop' or police brutality).

A good place to start are body cam's and cruiser cams.... this is a place to begin the process of revamping the way 'we' police in the US.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Dec 12th Congress passed the Death In Custody Reporting Act which will require the gathering of

much of the data you speak of on a national basis. This law has been stuck in Congress since 2006. Democratic Underground seems largely unaware of the passage of or fight to pass this bill, which is ironic for a political website that appears to have a great deal of interest in the subject. It sort of amazes me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/11/congress-decides-to-get-serious-about-tracking-police-shootings/

[Downwinder]

6. The Death in Custody Reporting Act was originally passed in 2000,

[Bluenorthwest]

10. Yep, and it expired in 2006 prior to the first data being complied, and it sat for 7 years until

last week. At least you knew it existed.

[Igel]

8. Yes. The info would be good.

It would allow for the use of data instead of anecdotes and biased reports.

It might make for reasonable and reasoned discussion of public policy issues that doesn't pick pseudo-data based on outrage or motivated thinking.

[Comrade Grumpy]

9. I actually follow police killings as part of my job.

I'm not keeping a running count, but it seems like two or three every day. That would put the annual total somewhere between 700 and 1000, something like that.

The number each year seems to be slowly increasing.

I think there were something like 15 million crimes reported to the FBI in the last UCR, so the number of interactions that result in a death is a tiny fraction of all interactions.

And lots of black guys get killed by cops. I mean they would appear to make up a disproportionate number of the people killed by police.