this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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1,200 out of how many interactions with the public? Or even out of how many attempted arrests? Remember this is a country of over 300 million people, and 1,200 is 0.0004% of that. For comparison, over 45,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents in 2021 (source), so your chance of being killed in a car accident is almost 40x as high as that of being killed by police.
Yes, I looked at your source, it has tons of graphs but conveniently seems to forget to include that.
Source (PDF)
Yes, there are 300 million but that negate the problem of police violence. You could make this argument about anything: gun violence, car crashes, even cancer. Their deaths are all a percent of a percent of the population.
No one is saying police violence is the number one killer in the country. The issue being raised is one side is saying it’s a problem and the other is saying actually it’s not a problem at all.
Okay, but let's not move the goalposts now. If 61.5 million US residents had contact with the police, and out of those, 1,200 were killed, that's approx. 0.002%.
Again, let's compare that to the death by car accident rate, which is approx. 45,000/300,000,000 * 100 = 0.015%, which means driving a car is about 7.5x as dangerous to your life as interacting with the police. And I'm not saying there isn't a problem, but do you see why some people are saying this isn't really worth talking about?
…it’s not moving the goalposts. My initial comment stated it was a problem and that’s what my second comment said.
Again, cancer only kills ~600k in a year, which is only 2/10ths of 1% of the population. Better yet, it kills over 10x more people than car accidents. Does that mean car safety isn’t worth talking about?
This statement makes me think you are saying that:
I do think this is worth talking about, just like I think the hundreds of death row convictions that have been overturned are worth talking about or the ~500k homeless Americans are worth talking about or the kids who have been killed in school shootings are worth talking about. These are all tiny percentages of people but they are still problems that are preventable so we should try to prevent them, which requires talking about them.
The "moving goalposts" was a reference to you going from number of police killings (which is relatively tiny compared to the number of police interactions) in your first comment to the number of people who experienced threats or use of force, which is 1,000x that.
But sure, let's talk about that. The way I read it, that means 98% of all police interactions are nonviolent, and out of those that do turn violent, 1 in 1000 end with the death of a suspect. Does that really sound outrageously high? Yes, I'm sure that number is lower in other countries were guns are illegal, but considering that they ARE legal here and the police have to deal with the fact that getting shot at is always a very real possibility, this doesn't sound like a crazy high number to me.
Okay, that's fine, I'm not saying you shouldn't. Just don't blow it out of proportion, I guess.