The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[garbon]

Here's from FBI in 2019.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2019-statistics-on-law-enforcement-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty

FBI Releases 2019 Statistics on Law Enforcement Officers Killed in the Line of Duty

The 48 felonious deaths occurred in 19 states and in Puerto Rico. The number of officers killed as a result of criminal acts in 2019 was 8 less than the 56 officers who were feloniously killed in 2018. The 5- and 10-year comparisons show an increase of 7 felonious deaths compared with the 2015 figure (41 officers) and a decrease of 7 deaths compared with 2010 data (55 officers).

Circumstances. Of the 48 officers feloniously killed:

15 died as a result of investigative or law enforcement activities
6 were conducting traffic violation stops
4 were performing investigative activities
2 were drug-related matters
2 were interacting with wanted persons
1 was investigating suspicious person or circumstance

9 were involved in tactical situations
3 were barricaded/hostage situations
3 were serving, or attempting to serve, search warrants
2 were serving, or attempting to serve, arrest warrants
1 was reported in the category titled "other tactical situation"


5 were involved in unprovoked attacks

4 were responding to crimes in progress
2 were robberies
1 was larceny-theft
1 was reported in the category titled "other crime against property"

3 were involved in arrest situations and were attempting to restrain/control/handcuff the offender(s) during the arrest situations

3 were assisting other law enforcement officers
2 with vehicular pursuits
1 with foot pursuit

3 were responding to disorders or disturbances
2 were responding to disturbances (disorderly subjects, fights, etc.)
1 was responding to a domestic violence call

3 were involved in vehicular pursuits

2 were ambushed (entrapment/premeditation)

1 was serving, or attempting to serve, a court order (eviction notice, subpoena, etc.).

[merithyn]

Data from Axios:

Do they have a similar graphic for cop deaths?  That would be interesting to look at.

Here's the best I can find from 15 second of googling:

Total Line of Duty Deaths: 359

9/11 related illness14
Aircraft accident 1
Assault 1
Automobile crash 19
COVID19 231
Drowned 4
Duty related illness 5
Gunfire 45
Gunfire (Inadvertent) 4
Heart attack 7
Heatstroke 1
Motorcycle crash 4
Struck by vehicle 8
Vehicle pursuit 2
Vehicular assault 13

https://www.odmp.org/search/year/2020

2019 showed only 150 line of duty deaths

Out of over 800,000 police officers in the US in 2020. So... 0.000056% die by gunfire.

[Admiral Yi]

Good find Grab On.

[garbon]

Assaults not surprisingly much higher though rarely because of a gun / I guess few shot at who actually sustained injuries.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/topic-pages/officers-assaulted

Overview
In 2019, the FBI collected assault data from 9,457 law enforcement agencies that employed 475,848 officers. These officers provided service to more than 219.8 million people, or 67.0 percent of the nation's population. (See Table 80.)
Law enforcement agencies reported that 56,034 officers were assaulted while performing their duties in 2019. (See Table 80.)
The rate of officer assaults in 2019 was 11.8 per 100 sworn officers. (See Table 80.)

Injuries
Of the 56,034 officers who were assaulted, 17,188 (30.7 percent) sustained injuries. (Based on Table 80.)
24.9 percent of the officers who were attacked with personal weapons (e.g., hands, fists, or feet) suffered injuries. (See Table 85.)
8.8 percent of the officers who were assaulted with knives or other cutting instruments were injured. (See Table 85.)
5.6 percent of officers who were attacked with firearms were injured. (See Table 85.)
15.9 percent of officers who were attacked with other dangerous weapons were injured. (See Table 85.)

...

Circumstances
Of all officers who were assaulted in 2018:

30.4 percent were responding to disturbance calls (family quarrels, bar fights, etc.). (Based on Table 83.)
17.1 percent were attempting other arrests. (Based on Table 83.)
12.8 percent were handling, transporting, or maintaining custody of prisoners. (Based on Table 83.)

...

Weapons
In 2019, 79.3 percent of officers who were assaulted in the line of duty were attacked with personal weapons (e.g., hands, fists, or feet). (Based on Table 85.)
3.8 percent of the officers were assaulted with firearms. (Based on Table 85.)
1.9 percent of the officers were assaulted with knives or other cutting instruments. (Based on Table 85.)
15.1 percent of the officers were assaulted with other dangerous weapons. (Based on Table 85.)

I wonder if the 2018 mention is a typo as everything else seems to be about 2019 on that page.

[DGuller]

Here's the best I can find from 15 second of googling:

Thanks, but what I was looking for is more along the lines of "X number of cops killed during domestic incident, Y number of cops killed during traffic incident," etc.

Really though Jacob's chart wasn't much help either.  It just says what the initial call was - it doesn't say much of anything about how the individual death happened.

Yeah, I looked at it and rolled my eyes, but didn't really say anything, because it was a really subtle job.  It didn't say anything untrue, but it certainly framed true things in a way to lead you to an untrue conclusion.  Whether an initial call was non-violent or not seems to not be very relevant to the issue, but they're not saying that it is.  They're just putting the information out there, good luck pinning down the dishonesty.

[Jacob]

Yeah, I looked at it and rolled my eyes, but didn't really say anything, because it was a really subtle job.  It didn't say anything untrue, but it certainly framed true things in a way to lead you to an untrue conclusion.  Whether an initial call was non-violent or not seems to not be very relevant to the issue, but they're not saying that it is.  They're just putting the information out there, good luck pinning down the dishonesty.

A better chart would be one from which deaths were sorted into "the dead person clearly acted in a way that justified killing them and they deserved getting shot", "the dead person acted in an ambiguous way so we can't blame the police for killing them even if the dead person didn't actually deserve death", and "the police acted completely unreasonably and killed an innocent person" or some such (depending on what you think the issue is, of course).

The problem of course is that sorting the more than 1,100 dead into those categories is going to be subjective and potentially controversal.

The one advantage that the chart has is that the data seems pretty clear cut, and there's little room to argue whatever your position. But as you imply, if you use it as a proxy for "justified killing" vs "not-justified" then it's not particularly useful.

Still that more than 8% of people killed by the police (94) happened during mental illness/ wellness checks IMO points to a very real issue in the best way the handle those type of calls.

Similarly that more than 10% of people killed by the police (121) were killed during non-violent domestic disturbance calls suggests that there could be better ways to respond to such calls.

In both cases, knowing that ~20% of police killings result from those two categories could also potentially give someone pause before calling the police in in those situations, even if every single killing was justifiable in the situation where it actually happened.

If the neighbour's teenager seems distressed and might potentially harm himself because he hasn't got his meds, maybe it's better to wait it out than call the police to deal with the situation? It seems like there's a non-trivial risk that the kid might do something that would require the application of lethal force by the police, so maybe it's best to handle it some other way (even if that carries risks too).

[DGuller]

The data may be clear and true, but also irrelevant.  I think that's the case here.  Unfortunately, the expectation is that all data presented is relevant, so the reader has to search for relevance, and the one he's being guided to is that a lot of non-violent situations become needlessly deadly because police gets involved.

I don't think it would be a good thing for citizens to take into account the possibility of a violent confrontation with police when making a decision to call 911.  What if a mentally disturbed person situation does happen, you decide to not call the police because you're afraid they're going to shoot him, and then the mentally disturbed person becomes violent and hurts people himself?  It shouldn't be your judgment to make.  Just because an initial situation is classified as "non-violent" does not mean that it was a situation that police had no business being involved with.  I think people are forgetting that lack of police involvement in criminal matters may also be a bad thing; let's not forget that occasionally it's the criminals who do the killing.

Another problem with this chart is that you can turn the conclusion completely around.  If you don't go with the assumption that you're being led to, that police involvement leads to needless violence in situations that weren't violent to begin with, you can come to a conclusion that police is right to be hypervigilant in all cases.  If even non-violent calls can become violent, then as a cop you really shouldn't let your guard down ever.

[DGuller]

One other point:  I know it's anecdotal evidence, but we do have an anecdote right here on this forum.  Berkut's nephew responded to a non-violent call.  If he managed to shoot the shoplifter who seriously wounded him, that incident would go into the 58% column.   

[Oexmelin]

I don't think it would be a good thing for citizens to take into account the possibility of a violent confrontation with police when making a decision to call 911.

This is absolutely already the case. I certainly thought more than twice about calling cops on disturbances precisely because I had little confidence they would respond with proportionate strength or appropriate judgment to the situation. I know I am not alone in this, as many of my Black colleagues did the same.

[Admiral Yi]

I had no problem with Jake's chart.  If the person viewing the chart leaps to an unwarranted conclusion, that's on them.  If there was any message in it, it is that even ostensibly nonviolent encounters can turn violent.

Jake: I agree police killings in those situations create the possibility that there are better ways to handle them.  That's why I said earlier I'm open to others experimenting with the social worker model.  That way my concerns about the model can be alleviated (or confirmed).

[garbon]

I don't think it would be a good thing for citizens to take into account the possibility of a violent confrontation with police when making a decision to call 911.

This is absolutely already the case. I certainly thought more than twice about calling cops on disturbances precisely because I had little confidence they would respond with proportionate strength or appropriate judgment to the situation. I know I am not alone in this, as many of my Black colleagues did the same.

Indeed. It is also always down to an individual's judgment on whether or not they think a situation warrants calling the police or not.

That said I also agree it would be great if people didn't have to worry about police making a situation worse but alas that is not our present world.

[frunk]

I think an even bigger problem with the chart is that it doesn't track how many calls of each type there were.  I'm assuming that there are many more traffic violation stops than all of the violent calls put together, but only a small fraction of them ended with death.  We are dealing with numerators without the denominators.

If you compare our death rate per stop in each category with other countries I'm sure it would show how out of whack it is (since our totals are so outrageously higher), but this on its own doesn't tell us much.

[merithyn]

I don't think it would be a good thing for citizens to take into account the possibility of a violent confrontation with police when making a decision to call 911.

This is absolutely already the case. I certainly thought more than twice about calling cops on disturbances precisely because I had little confidence they would respond with proportionate strength or appropriate judgment to the situation. I know I am not alone in this, as many of my Black colleagues did the same.

I've chosen not to call the police any number of times after assessing if what was going on warranted a death sentence.

[DGuller]

WTF do you people do that you frequently get into situations where you would've called the cops on someone if not for your reluctance to proceed with the execution?

[merithyn]

WTF do you people do that you frequently get into situations where you would've called the cops on someone if not for your reluctance to proceed with the execution?

I lived in a community that was primarily not White in Portland. There were multiple times where loud music was played throughout the night, or where a group of teenagers were sitting near my apartment harassing people walking by, etc. It wasn't uncommon for me to call the non-emergency number of these kinds of things when I lived in a White Chicago suburb. But Portland police have had dozens of upheld lawsuits of overt violence against people of color.

So, given this knowledge, and knowing that police tend to escalate rather than de-escalating, I chose not to call the police at all. I bought earplugs, I crossed the street, etc. Because none of those things were worth a death penalty and I don't know how the police would have reacted.