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.
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.
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.
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.
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 😃
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?)
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
Da Police State Enjoyer has logged on
I am europe based. Can I ask why this is such an issue in the US?
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.
…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…
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.
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
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
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
