Police in the US use force on at least 300,000 people each year, injuring an estimated 100,000 of them, according to a groundbreaking data analysis on law enforcement encounters.
Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group that tracks killings by US police, launched a new database on Wednesday cataloging non-fatal incidents of police use of force, including stun guns, chemical sprays, K9 dog attacks, neck restraints, beanbags and baton strikes.
The database features incidents from 2017 through 2022, compiled from public records requests in every state. The findings, the group says, suggest that despite widespread protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, overall use of force has remained steady since then – and in many jurisdictions, has increased.
Good to know they’ve responded to the people’s critiques of policing by doubling down on the problem. I hope more people start taking seriously the idea that we don’t need the police, and in fact any value they may offer society is simply not worth the violence. We could legitimately make our society function better by disbanding the police entirely
I think the main argument against disbanding the police is that we’d have no mechanism to prevent violence from former cops. I have no expectation that their behavior will improve if we just stop paying them.
Also if we get rid of the police we might as well get rid of a good chunk of the government while we’re at it. One of their core functions is to pass laws and with no enforcement arm there’s no point having those.
I usually couldn’t care less about electoralism, but if any politician has get rid of police and government as their platform, I will vote for them and campaign SO HARD.
Great news is that would be the last time you’d ever have to vote, too. I wonder what kinds of benevolent folks would step into that power vacuum, fun to think about.
This. The actual job of cops is to protect rich b*stards and their stuff from ordinary taxpayers. And making us pay for our own abuse with our own tax dollars.
If that goes away, they’ll just hire mercenaries, instead. They won’t give up that protection.
If there’s no government and no police you get mafia. Ask me how I know
^(Hint: look at my instance)
y’all are acting like the rich don’t already have mercenaries and mafia
Easier to throw them in jail when you strip them of qualitative immunity though.
Who exactly is going to throw them in jail?
If we remove the current police we have the room to reform them better. Also the FBI is less corrupt than current state level police.
Still corrupt. But less. The FBI can do it in the meantime.
But in reality we need police reform. We need to make them walk their beats again. They need to police the places they live, not neighboring counties. They should mostly not have guns. A good chunk of the force should be replaced with social workers. And qualitative immunity needs to go away permanently.
That’s something I can get behind.
We do have a mechanism to prevent that, our right to bear arms.
LOL. Rights mean nothing if there’s no enforcement.
Enforcement of your own rights is protected by yourself. The government doesn’t enforce the right to free speech, it can’t force you to say something. The government doesn’t enforce the right to a warrant, the government is the one who makes cops enter your place without one.
The government also doesn’t enforce gun ownership to anyone but the military and the militarized police. There is no “Government supplied and required to own and use firearm”.
Governments rarely give you freedoms you never had before they came into power, they just remove the limits they enforced onto us. And they never do it willingly.
“The answer is not to defund the police! It’s to fund them! Fund them!!” - Joe Biden
And then he proceeded to give them money to buy more tear gas canisters and armored vehicles and liberals are surprise Pikachu face-ing when statistics like this come out.
In 100 years (if the earth lasts that long) I hope people look back at police abolition the way we look back at the abolition of slavery: as an obvious step towards a more equitable society.
For real. We need to deescalate things and I don’t think that can start with the populace defending itself to stop defending itself. The cops are bullies. The answer isn’t to lay down and wait for teacher to see we’re getting beat up. We need to deal with the bullies by demonstrating that we’re strong together
Any examples of thriving modern societies without a law enforcement arm?
Easy. The US does not have “law enforcement.”
The police have no duty to protect the law and they do not. They protect capital and only respond to crime after the fact.
and if you’re not a member of the favored class they won’t respond even then. In fact, they might make your situation worse just to do it. I got pickpocketed in Louisville and the police basically told me that not having my wallet anymore was a problem I’d have to navigate on my own. Later that day they busted me for driving without a license and vagrancy because I was trying to leave Louisville to return home to VA.
I cannot emphasize enough that when people ask questions to me when I say we should dissolve the police and start anew with some new mechanism for handling crime such as “who will you call when you’re the victim of a crime” my answer is almost never the police because its very rare for them to do anything useful
You know anyone can look up arrest records and see how inaccurate your statement is.
That’s not enforcement, that’s the justice system after the fact.
Of course they can’t do anything about a crime that hasn’t been committed. Do you want police to follow people around to prevent crimes or arrest people they suspect will commit a crime.
As soon as they witness a crime they act. If you expect more than that you are looking for a police state.
Arrest records are also not an accurate portrayal of crime. There’s a TON of wrongful arrests out there. Like… Its a monumental problem
Right, it’s not a good representation of crime, because the number of reports are always higher than the number of cleared cases, hence the term clearance rate, which by the way is highest for crimes against persons(murder, rape, and manslaughter) despite the earlier claim that “police only protect capital”.
Good thing there is a process to validate the arrests.
My issue with this is the notion that there are thriving modern societies. Our modern world is a complex web of torture and exploitation. The police in my country (the USA) act far more as maintainers of the status quo of torture than they do protectors of the populace from violent crime
In fact, the Courts ruled they don’t actually have to protect you at all! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
EDIT: District Court
I mean, I think there are, most Nordics for one.
Whether US police is a uniquely thuggish corrupt arm of the moneyed establishment or not, is a different question.
But the way you are phrasing it I think you are skirting with the idea of anarchy as a (non) system of governance so the primary question here is if you think there is a need for any rules at all.
And if there is, how are they agreed upon, adjudicated and enforced in societies larger than a village.
https://harvardpolitics.com/nordic-racism/
And for the record. Yes. I am an anarchocommunist. If the cost of large societies is large scale violence, then maybe we should adjust our primary societal units into smaller, more communal units. The ideal government is one that protects the liberties of the populace from exploitation by others. As it stands our governments mainly function to ensure the exploitation continues. I’m not advocating the immediate abolishment of all government right now, but I want to make it clear that I don’t think a society that justifies the violence it enacts as being necessary to maintain society is worth maintaining as is. Such a society requires adjustment
I’m not sure there will ever be a society that doesn’t require adjustment.
Anarchocommunism - I see. In my mind seems like a theoretical construct, a temporary situation that would quickly shift to something else either by internal or external forces, a construct similar to libertarianism.
And indeed historically this has been the case.
This “small communities” construct is also pretty unhealthy if you ever had any experience in small communities as I have.
Your neighbours are your oppressors and you theirs.
Societal norms of dress, sexual preference and everything else, are enforced by societal shame, isolation, expulsion and occasional beatings in extreme cases. The rumour mill would whip up neighbours into all kinds of idiocy. They know everything about you and you about them.
Anyone that has lived the village life that had any sense couldn’t get out of there fast enough and into the anonymity of a large city where the people didn’t police each other but if needed was the protection of an independent and dispassionate (from interpersonal animus) arbiter that mostly left them alone.
You’re misunderstanding what I mean when I say smaller communities and that’s partially on me. The largely anonymous city is the unit of organization I champion as being the ideal target. We want populous cities that are self organized and self sufficient. Personally, my experience with this independent and dispassionate arbiter has never been good, so my vision for community policing moves away from a paid police force to the mechanisms I’ve already invested myself more in in the forms of mutual aid and support.
Smaller in this case is a comparison between countries that span across nearly entire continents vs the idea of a city state. We also need to protect ourselves from multinational companies that are so anonymous and foreign to the people they exploit that it’s impossible to hold them accountable
In which case how does a community of that scale operate without a rule enforcement arm?
Will there be environmental laws? Traffic laws? Food safety? Defence? Adjudication of differences?
How does it work?
Will someone be issuing driving licenses based on competence? Who’s going to check if I don’t have one?
If I don’t have the sense to drive properly or secure a dangerous load, or I drive drunk or I keep running people over or running red lights who is going to stop me?
If I assault or murder someone is it vendetta rules? What if someone accuses me of that but I haven’t done it - who figures out what happened? Are there investigators? Who’s going to stop me? Or defend me?
Anarchy means “without rulers” not “without rules”. Anarchists love rules.
How would we deal with violent crime without a police force?
How would we have any violent crime without a police force to commit it?
Yes yes perfectly logical
I feel silly for not seeing it exactly that way before
You can move to a part of the world that doesn’t have police, right now, if you want to experience that life. Have fun!
how can you not see this was very obviously a joke based on the headline of the thread?
So obviously
see: Alaska
very high per capita rape and domestic abuse Police may commit a fair chunk of it, but certainly not all.
Contact the police and tell them that you think that the US police departments are sliding into fascism.
I did that to the local police chief and gave examples when they have acted fascist to me.
They sent “mental health professionals” to interview me. Because one must have mental health problems to see police as fascist ?
Anyways if you do start down that path with the police, then expect their family and friends, and the other agencies with access to your locale will begin to show you what fascism looks like in full force.
Fucking worth it.
The psych part is key too - if they can claim you are mentally ill, not only can they ignore your concerns but they also have a convenient way to dump you in a psych word if you get to annoying.
Friendly reminder that 988 = 911!
I did that to the local police chief and gave examples when they have acted fascist to me.
They sent “mental health professionals” to interview me. Because one must have mental health problems to see police as fascist ?
And now you know why red flag laws are a bad idea
What was the reason stated on the warrant when they came into your home?
They didn’t show me one, they just broke in and kidnapped me.
So is this what the MAGAs mean when they say crime is going up, or…?
I did a quick dig because I wanted to see if the rise in police homicide would trend with population growth and violent crime rates. It did not.
Violent crime has been pretty stable for the past decade. Growth in police homicide exceeded the population growth rate by about 7%, if I did my math right.
I’d like to investigate more when I have the time.
Imma unpopular opinion
- How many uses of force are justified? Just the fact that they used force to arrest somebody doesn’t mean an atrocity. It could have been 300,000 armed rapists trying to carjack a mother of 3 to get away, or it could have been 300,000 peaceful Palestinian protestors. The relevant number to track is how many unjustified uses of force there were.
- Is it possible they’re tracking things better now? When the police document that force was used is HIGHLY dependent on their policies about what has to be documented, which I would suspect is highly correlated with time going by since 2020.
- “Use of force” and “injuring” are super broad. If they tackle somebody on the grass to arrest them, that’s a use of force. If they taze somebody causing cardiac arrest, that’s an “injury.”
They do dive a little bit into the details, but I think a lot of the details either undercut the headline narrative or are misleadingly presented. E.g.:
despite widespread protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, overall use of force has remained steady since then – and in many jurisdictions, has increased.
Half of the agencies reported increases in overall force in the two-year period following Floyd’s murder, the report said.
So, basically, it hasn’t changed. And it went up in half and down in half. I mean it is fine if you want to present that result as an indictment of the claims of reform, but the way they wrote the “everything’s getting worse” headline out of that data is weird.
The most common use of force was stun guns, which are considered “less-lethal” but can also have deadly consequences; the organization tracked more than 20,000 stun gun deployments.
In 2022, the group also cataloged more than 8,000 incidents of chemicals being sprayed; more than 4,700 cases of people hit by weapons like batons and beanbags; and more than 2,100 cases of contacts with K9 dogs.
Sounds like, if those are the numbers out of 300,000, then by far the most common use of force (the remaining 264,200) was tackling / wrestling with a suspect. And then they decided to lead with the descriptions of more lurid uses of force that make up 1%-7% of the times that things happened. No?
Then at the very end the whole tone changes:
of the 757 agencies that disclosed types of force used over time, there were 973 neck restraint uses in 2019. By 2021, there were 112 of those cases, a nearly 90% drop.
Jurisdictions with DoJ reform agreements reported a 22% reduction in overall reported use of force, Mapping Police Violence found. And 13 out of 18 agencies that adopted state or federal reforms reported reductions in use of force.
Policies that reduce overall police encounters can be most effective at reducing injuries and killings by police, such as alternative responder programs dispatching mental health professionals to people in crisis, Sinyangwe said. He said he hoped his database would help officials, including a potential Kamala Harris administration, identify agencies in need of urgent intervention. And he hoped to see an expansion of initiatives shown to work.
See this sounds great. It’s like, some reforms are working and some are not (or just aren’t even being attempted in some places), let’s strategize how we can fix the existing and continuing problems. Let’s get a clear eye on what is happening and try to make things better.
If they had led with this, I would have no griping, but the whole headline and 2/3ds of the article is just feeding into the “OH MA GAWD THE POLICE ARE KILLING EVERYONE WON’T SOMEBODY STOP THEM”.
Bring on the downvotes 😃
How many uses of force are justified
Almost none.
It could have been 300,000 armed rapists trying to carjack a mother of 3 to get away
It could also have been Thanos robbing the mayor of Gotham 🙄
Is it possible they’re tracking things better now
Possible, but extremely unlikely. Several jurisdictions have cracked down on reporting police violence and expanded police immunity.
The few progressive prosecutors that got elected promising to do something about police brutality have almost all been run out by cops, Republicans, and conservative Democrats colluding to oust them.
How many uses of force are justified
Almost none.
How do you know this?
Simple: force is very rarely justified in general and cops are trained specifically to react violently to most situations.
Okay so you have no idea what the actual number is; you just kinda have your way that you look at it and that’s all you want to know
Got it
This you?
Hey, that’s new! Usually people just call me a centrist or do some strawmans. Kudos.
Bring on the downvotes 😃
If you insist…
They kill over 1000 people per year. That number has been rising. That number should be the same each year and it should be zero.
Okay, so if the cops walk up on someone’s porch, or in a parking lot or etc, to talk to them and that person pulls out a gun and points it at the cops, what should happen?
De-escalation.
The first way to achieve this is to stay off someone’s porch.
I’ve interacted with the cops several times in my life. Off the top of my head, I think the most recent time was a friend of mine’s roommate who was threatening her with physical harm. They came, talked to the guy, and took him away. When the judge was a little bit dismissive about granting her a protective order, the next day, the cop was the one who got outraged and got her a new hearing at which she got her protective order so the guy wouldn’t hurt her.
So… what? The cops in that situation should have just stayed away from her house, and let him maybe beat the fuck out of her? Explain it to me what you think should happen; have cops pursue non violence in all situations? Like never kill anyone no matter what the person does? Never use physical force? What should happen, in my friend’s situation? What if the guy beats the fuck out of her, and then they see him on the porch of a house some time later – should they stay off the porch?
What I really find disappointing about this exchange is how disingenuous this scenario is that you paint. You set up a very vague and overbroad situation and then follow it up with a very specific to the point of anecdotal example as if that refutes my rebuttal.
Like, do you really think I should get bogged down in a response to this new scenario like it’s worth considering? Do you genuinely think a random person on the internet is incapable of imagining a scenario such as the one you described and would be floored by it? C’mon dude.
But ok. Sure, let’s do this like you have a good point. Here’s what should happen. Domestic violence experts who are trained in psychology and deescalation techniques could intervene and create a safe exit for victims of abuse and violence. But you know what? I don’t know what exactly that task force would look like or how it would operate. What I do know is, it shouldn’t look like those guys in blue who shoot black people in their own homes while existing and chuck flashbangs into cribs.
Sure, let’s talk. I’m not tryin to be hostile about it.
You set up a very vague and overbroad situation and then follow it up with a very specific to the point of anecdotal example as if that refutes my rebuttal.
I responded to someone who said the number of people the police kill per year should be 0. I brought up two specific drawn from real life examples where the cops are justified in killing someone, as a way of rebutting it. Does that make sense? Or no?
The conversation I would like to have is, how many of these 1,000 times that the police have killed someone, did the police do something wrong? If you’re going to tell me that number is 0, I think you are 1,000% wrong, and I’m happy to explain why. If you’re going to tell me it’s a complicated question and we need to delve into quite a lot of real world details in order to answer it, then fuckin-A let’s talk about it.
I think I’m being a little bit needlessly combative about it, but I don’t get what you are saying that I am being bad faith about the way I’m bringing up examples. They’re not disingenuous or vague in any way. It’s just reality that doesn’t match the simplistic frameworks that it seems like I’m hearing. Does that make sense? Or no? What details of these 100% real examples would you need to hear for them not to be vague?
Sure, let’s do this like you have a good point. Here’s what should happen. Domestic violence experts who are trained in psychology and deescalation techniques could intervene and create a safe exit for victims of abuse and violence. But you know what? I don’t know what exactly that task force would look like or how it would operate. What I do know is, it shouldn’t look like those guys in blue who shoot black people in their own homes while existing and chuck flashbangs into cribs.
If someone points a gun at the cops when they roll up to the porch to arrest them on a warrant? What if that person shoots the police while they’re contacting the domestic violence expert?
(This referring to the example of someone who pulls a gun when the cops roll up to their porch. There’s a separate conversation to be had about my friend’s experience – actually, as it happens, the person involved who called the cops was black, the guy who got arrested was white, and the cops showed up and talked to everyone and still managed to take the white guy away and avoid shooting the black guy or throwing any flashbangs into cribs or anywhere else – i.e. they accomplished a success for the mission. Isn’t that relevant?)
I’m not saying they shouldn’t use physical force when necessary. I’m saying they should not be killing anyone.
To be fair, america has a mental health crisis that also needs to be addressed. Police in other countries don’t have to deal with mentally ill people who have turned to drugs to cope with living in hell. I see that as the far bigger problem. Solve that and the rest will sort itself out.
Okay, so what if they walk up on the porch to talk to that guy and he pulls a gun and points it at them? What then? Deescalation?
They’re going to learn not to trespass.
That’s insane, if someone points a gun at you you are completely justified in shooting in self defense. Nobody is pointing a gun at the police without the intention of shooting because obviously the police aren’t going to wait to see if they’re just doing it as a joke.
Or what, you can just get away with any crime if you’re willing to shoot a cop over it?
the cop knew what they were signing up for when they joined, I say: let em die.
Okay, so if the cops walk up on someone’s porch
They already fucked up.
See my question to Wytch
I think this is what the kids call “critical reading abilities”
Thanks for providing a strong counterpoint to the click bait narrative, here’s a prize 🏆
Da Police State Enjoyer has logged on
Aw c’mon, what is the point of being all ACAB people together if you don’t have a “yay police” person to all gather around and yell at
I didn’t actually read what you wrote because it started stupid and I’d rather see how people here want to change things.
I am europe based. Can I ask why this is such an issue in the US?
Police aren’t legally accountable for their actions so long as they’re acting in the performance of their duties, and lots of departments knowingly have illegal policies on the books to maintain that immunity for their officers.
People try to sue over it, but the cases are thrown out by the local judge because there’s no standing to sue unless the illegal policy had impacted you, so a cop basically has to kill someone before the policies are modified in the smallest way possible, but the killer cop still gets off.
Additionally, police are allowed to lie in most of their interactions with the public. They have created a culture that encourages dishonesty, so perjury isn’t an ethical problem in their eyes.
Not entirely true. Cops are fired, penalized, and held legally accountable quite often. Not frequently enough but you’re stating that they are immune.
Qualified immunity protects state and local officials, including law enforcement officers, from individual liability unless the official violated a clearly established constitutional right.
Ignoring problems tends to make them rot faster. Hollywood is superficial, it’s all we got. None of the basics are taken care of, it’s why I left (e.g. wealth before health). No safety nets, desperation is easy to find. Limited opportunities if you can’t afford to do anything. It’s an unsustainable way to live, if you call that living. It’s more like surviving.
Yeah but I was referring specifically to the police attacks. Cause I hear about it regularly in the news just to see another aggression?
Any parallel between expenses and police violence?
We’ve been hiring these “police trainers” that have been telling police that their job is super dangerous and anyone can kill them at anytime if they’re not ready to kill at the drop of a hat. Then creating bullshit scenarios where grandma passes by in the street and shoots them. Like the lady in the red dress in the matrix training.
Anyways being a cop has a lower chance of getting you killed than being a pizza delivery driver, so these people are ALWAYS ON EDGE but the payoff never comes. So they behave like an immune system when nothing is happening by attacking the body.
So they’re beating innocents and abusing criminals left right and centre and there is nothing we seem to be able to do about it other than give them more militarized equipment so they can beat us better while feeling safer doing it.
Don’t forget the military surplus from endless wars, and the lack of social services causing mentally ill people from biology or circumstance to further burden an untrained police force (obviously shouldn’t be their job to begin with, fuck cops). They can keep throwing money at police, but it won’t fix any of the causes and people in general are bad with grasping exponential feedback loops.
…partly it’s cultural, partly it’s legal immunity from abuses of power…
…law enforcement receives negligible training nor regulation, funds itself on the spoils of abuse, bullies anyone who objects, is immune to accountability, and readily hops jurisdictions in the event of public backlash…
Also anyone that tries to fix the system from the inside tends to get targetted, at least by HR if not by their peers whose corruption they are threatening. The bad apples are in control and have a system to either turn new apples bad or toss them out.
And the police unions are used to avoid reform from above, since pretty much any attempt to discipline is challenged with whatever means available.
And they are a gang with state resources available to help enforce their will, plus inside information about how investigations are run and access to those doing the investigations, should their other lines of defense fail.
The prisons are for profit and the state gets to keep anything it seizes.
ACAB includes European cops, by the way. Just because they’re especially bad in the USA doesn’t mean yours aren’t also trash.
Not sure which country you’re in, but how have your cops been handling environmental or climate protests? or protests in support of Palestinians?
I’m a Finn and I can vouch for this. It’s different, but it’s there.
I like that way of describing it, a lot.
I shall raise a shot glass of Salmiakki liquor in solidarity later tonight in the sauna
I wonder if we’ll ever connect the dots. The FBI released a report more than 10 years ago that white supremacists have infiltrated law enforcement agencies throughout the country. Sauce: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Supremacist_Infiltration_of_Law_Enforcement
And now we’re voting between “Literal fascist who hired cops to harm minorities” and “literal cop who harmed minorities”. And before that was “Literal fascist who hired cops to harm minorities” and “Wrote the bills to enable cops to harm minorities and protected rape victims.”
Governments don’t protect you, me, or anyone, they never give you the freedoms, only take them. Keep your wits, stay safe, and drink water.
Lemme guess. 70% of those are black victims.
Kinda goes to show the failure of modern protest movements. What did BLM accomplish exactly? They didn’t convict Chauvin, it was the people filming him that did that. A lot of realistic ideas were floated to fix policing, but they were drowned out by edgelord calls to “defund the police” and “ACAB”. 4 years later nothing has been fixed.
People need to find a better way to make change happen. Raising your fist and marching around doesn’t change a thing. Maybe instead of that, people should pool their money together and spend it removing bad politicians/sheriffs/judges etc from office. That’s how oil does it.
A lot of realistic ideas were floated to fix policing
This guy’s grasp on reality:
people should pool their money together and spend it removing bad politicians/sheriffs/judges etc from office. That’s how oil does it.
I mean I plead guilty to posting while intoxicated, but it seems to me the fossil fuel industry does spend a lot of money on elections and basically has a whole caucus representing it in Congress. What do modern protests like BLM, Occupy, etc. have to show? Is there a single meaningful legislative change they can point to? The article seems to suggest quite the opposite. To be fair though, they did inspire a bunch of dismissive lemmy users to feel smug.
