Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

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> Can police lethality be significantly reduced without fundamentally changing opinions on gun regulation?

Yes. Start giving the officers and the organizations that represent the officers (departments, unions) good reasons to kick out people who are a high risk of shooting people unreasonably.

Mandatory individual liability insurance would go a long ways. Holding police to the same standard as the rest of us would also go a long ways. Pretty much anything is better than nothing.

Cops shoot people dead in situations where normal armed citizens wouldn't even think about pulling a gun. Seriously, I can't even begin to convey how massive the double standard is here. Stuff that's justifiable when the cops do it would be an instant manslaughter if not murder charge for a regular person.

Unnecessary police killings are one of those areas where pretty much everyone pro-gun and anti-gun agrees that guns aren't the problem, it's hothead officers who don't de-escalate and pull the trigger at the drop of the hat that are the problem.

  pretty much everyone pro-gun and anti-gun
  agrees that guns aren't the problem, it's
  hothead officers who don't de-escalate

I don't think it's realistic for America to get rid of guns.

But it seems to me a lot of American police practices that make de-escalating hard come from officer safety concerns, which come in part from the availability of weapons*

Pointing your gun at someone from 20 feet away and not getting closer until they lie face down on the floor is probably great for officer safety - but not exactly conductive to non-shouted conversations or de-escalating.

* Of course knives are also an issue, so a gun ban wouldn't eliminate the problem even if such a thing was possible.

I think when the police's top priority is to get home to their families rather then protect and serve... That speaks volumes.

The danger of being shot every time they get a call to a scene is very real. This creates the mentality of shooting first and asking questions later.

Hot headed officers?! In a country where everybody can own a gun there is a real fear of getting shot. The only worse profession is to be in the army.

Surprisingly other countries have armed police as well, but somehow they wont pull the trigger that often then the Americans. Wonder why... Oh wait, maybe because there is a minuscule chance of being shot by another person?

>The danger of being shot every time they get a call to a scene is very real. This creates the mentality of shooting first and asking questions later.

>Hot headed officers?! In a country where everybody can own a gun there is a real fear of getting shot. The only worse profession is to be in the army.

>Surprisingly other countries have armed police as well, but somehow they wont pull the trigger that often then the Americans. Wonder why... Oh wait, maybe because there is a minuscule chance of being shot by another person?

Oh piss off. The danger of being shot is not nearly what the training videos and boot-lickers will have you believe. Cops don't even crack the top ten for dangerous jobs. As far as well paying blue collar jobs you can get with a highschool diploma goes it's one of the safer ones. Teenagers with light machine guns have no problem working under far more restrictive rules of engagement than the cops have. I think the cops can be reasonably expected to hold their fire until they see a gun or get charged by an armed individual. At the very least they have a responsibility to not unnecessarily escalate situations. This isn't a guns issue, it's an officers too eager to use force issue (as can be seen with how they use tasers and pepper spray).

Thanks, but why don't you piss of instead?

Also by the time you see a gun, it's already too late. Have you thought about a second, maybe?

If a person has the intention to shoot a police officer, he wont hesitate to do so. Maybe that's why they don't like to wait until they see a gun? Or do you think the raging person will ask politely first, if he can shoot at them or not?

Maybe you should think about both sides in a situation? Maybe understand how a situation can escalate quickly into a shooting spree? And maybe that's the reason why officers don't risk it at all and rather shoot first?

At the end of the day, they are people too. If you can't understand that then why don't you go and be a police officer and show us idiots how it's done.

No, it is not just the risk inherent to their job.

In France, the police officer, since the Paris attack, got more and more power, and can now carry their work firearm outside of service.

Since this decision has been made, the number of people shot by a police officer (in or out of service) has increase by +54% in one year.

But their job didn't get any more dangerous, there is no significant increase in firearm possession or, globally, criminality between 2016 and 2017. Nothing at least that would be close to a +54% increase in one year.

But, on the other end, officer are more and more protected and usually don't even end up in court, even when they blatantly violated the police instruction.

This tend to show one thing, that I thing have been proven time and time again: Give more power to someone and none of the responsibilities that should come with it, and you get people who will abuse their power over and over again.

EDIT: Source for the +54% (in French): https://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2018/06/27/le-...

EDIT2: The +54% is the increase in firearm usage by the police, not the number of people shot.

There are certain government reactions which are nonsense, I agree. Like the reaction to 911 in the US and creating the massive hysteria around airport security, which failed miserably, but still nobody does anything about it. I am not justifying stupid laws and decisions made by governments here.

I am not an advocate of how the police and law enforcement works in the US, bit I see the relation why it works like that or at least what would be one of the main causes of it.

Whilst people are crying about giving less control and force to the police, there is no counter measure on the civilian side regarding the ownership of guns in the US.

> The danger of being shot every time they get a call to a scene is very real... In a country where everybody can own a gun there is a real fear of getting shot. The only worse profession is to be in the army.

Police officers aren't even in the top ten most dangerous professions [1]. They rank far under such notoriously dangerous jobs as "Grounds Maintenance Workers". According to that source, the BLS, "Police officers incurred 51 homicides in 2016". That's not nothing, but let's not blow it out of proportion to push our views.

Additionally, if a police officer can't handle the stress of a potential threat inherent in their job without killing citizens, they're not qualified to do their job. You mentioned being in the Army being a worse threat than being a police officer. How are Army personnel handled when they are involved in an unjustified shooting?

1: Warning PDF https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf

Yes, there are probably a lot of people who aren't fit to be police officers equipped with weapons. But how many civilians are in the US who aren't fit to have weapons and they still have them? And then the police officer has to deal with them.

Let's not take into account other work injuries OK? It would be similar to say, that cars can kill people, why don't we ban cars then? It is their job to go to scenes where is high chance of being shot. You can't say that of a construction worker can you? Also they have safety measures which are getting better as we learn from mistakes. How does that even translate to the police? Every situation is different, every person acts different.

> I think when the police's top priority is to get home to their families rather then protect and serve... That speaks volumes.

No, that's not a problem, that's everyone's priority. But if shooting innocent citizens got policemen into jail, which is far from home and their family, they'd probably think twice about using guns, cattle prods, or poisonous chemicals.

I haven't said, it is a problem. I said that this shows the problem. The problem that a police officer is more afraid for his/hers own safety then actually protecting and serving others. For me this shows why US police is trigger happy. Where they are trained always for the worst, where they always expect the worst. No wonder a lot of them can't tell right from wrong. Also, when you have to deal with mentally ill people, in certain cases for an untrained person might be really hard to identify and know the difference between a person suffering from mental illness, or being high on crystal meth and ready to chew your face off.

If the civil population wouldn't have all these guns and gun crimes wouldn't be the top concern in the country, maybe then the police could change it's training to be more calm and helping in diffusing dangerous situation rather then go in guns blazing.

Not going to say, that having guns is the No. 1 cause, but it certainly makes the whole situation worse.

Oh, come on! It's decision theory, plain and simple. As an officer, I have two options: (1) shoot first, (2) talk to the victim. The cost in case (1) is ZERO (well, actually a couple bullets...) and in case (2) it is somewhat higher, because I run a small risk of dying on duty. Since \epsilon > zero, I shoot until the mag is empty, then empty the spare mag, too.

The values in this line of reasoning change depending on whether the victim has a nuclear bomb, a gun, a knife, bare hands, or nothing at all. The conclusion does not. Any small risk is still bigger than no risk.

It is obvious to me, that reducing the cost to the officer who chooses option (2), by taking guns away from citizens, does not work, because the cost won't become negative. Instead, the cost in case (1) has to be increased, and that means prosecuting trigger happy cops as the murderers they are.

Decisions are based on experience. If you are trained to expect the worst and you have experience on that, you will decide for the most favourable outcome for yourself. Not to get killed and pull the trigger sooner as the other person, even without the knowledge of him having a gun or not.

And there is a reason why cops became murderers. So instead finding the cause and fixing it, you say that they should go to jail and end of story?

The problem is, that this is how our current prosecution system works and it fails on so many levels. So why do you think it would work on them? It doesn't make the world a better place and there aren't less criminals because of it. Then why do you think there will be less trigger happy cops on the force?

People still commit crimes even with the risk of getting in to jail. Cops will still shoot people, because they will rather go to jail then be dead. Even if there is no gun, it is much safer for them shooting first and asking later.

> So instead finding the cause and fixing it

The cause for cops murdering innocent civilians is that the cost for doing so is zero. Increase the cost and the problem goes away. Moreover, bad cops are bullies who thrive on bossing people around without consequences. Introduce consequences, and these lowlives who shouldn't be cops find a more suitable profession.

> this is how our current prosecution system works and it fails on so many levels.

It deters me from killing people who pissed me off.

> Cops will still shoot people, because they will rather go to jail then be dead.

And guess what, that's fine. There is probably no perfect solution, you know, the kind where nobody gets shot and no cop goes to jail. It's almost as if the real world requires some sort of compromise. Who would have thought?

> The cause for cops murdering innocent civilians is that the cost for doing so is zero.

Usually this falls under self defence. As far as I know, if someone is on your property and you shoot them, you can say it was self defence and you have the chance to get away with it clean. I heard so many stories about this, like where a guy shot a teenager dead because the kid was drunk and wanted to steal a garden gnome or something.

> It deters me from killing people who pissed me off.

Well, I don't know what your job is, but I presume it doesn't involve guns in any shape or form, or the possibility to go to a place and get shot at. And hey it deters you, but there are a couple of other million people whom it does not. With this mentality we wouldn't have mass shootings and gun crimes at all, not even a simple robbery.

> There is probably no perfect solution

Yup, that is very true.

Anyway, all I think is that the US gun laws are responsible in some extent for police brutality. Take away guns from civilian hands and you can have a much more relaxed and non-lethal approach to law enforcement. This might not work 100%, or it might not work at all, but it would be worth a try. Too many people are shot to death in the US. Sooner or later people get to used to it and then nothing will change.

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