Difference between US police force and others around the world.

[Maraya1969]

Link to tweet

[SergeStorms]

1. In some jurisdictions...

a high school diploma isn't even necessary. A GED will be fine for making split second decisions and remembering all of the jurisdiction's statutes. Highly educated and meticulously trained law enforcement officers in some jurisdictions, yesiree.

[Polybius]

30. For any job that requires a HD diploma, a GED is sufficient

It is the legal HS equivalent. BTW, here in NYC, you need 60 collage credits to be a cop. Is NYPD that much better with its citizens?

[Pepsidog]

2. Cams should be automatically uploaded to secure server with limited access.

[kirkuchiyo]

6. And no body cam footage automatically?

Immediate firing and blacklisting from ever being in law enforcement again.

[uponit7771]

10. +1, the tech is fairly cheap and easy too. But Chavin through his camera off and claimed it was ...

... knocked off.

The Thug Leos will find many a way

[Amishman]

20. With proper oversight, those who try this stuff could be brought into line or dumped

Unfortunately their union protects even rotten cops. Very disheartened to see a union seemingly aligning itself with the Right.

[Hekate]

3. My husband used to teach college students, many of them foreign. Before Spring Break...

...he would warn them about partying (which of course they all wanted to do) and US cops. They were uniformly shocked.

[Klaralven]

4. The US versus three small countries with ethnically homogeneous populations?

We're a lot more like Brazil.

[oldsoftie]

11. Glad someone pointed out the glaring difference

Also, whats the crime rate in those countries compared to the US? How many police are killed in those countries?
All factors that DO matter.
But hey, people get the desired result by not giving ALL the facts

[StarfishSaver]

12. What does ethnic diversity have to do with it?

Unless you're arguing that police engage in racial targeting and profiling, I don't get your point.

Surely you're not suggesting that ethnic diversity make a populace more dangerous and this heightened police brutality is to be expected?

[Crunchy Frog]

17. Germany's population is rather large actually. Around 84 million.

I don't know how many immigrants they have, but they've surely got some degree of diversity.

Anyway, given the fact that we have a very large and diverse society, it seems like that would be a good reason to have more rather than less training. As well as higher standards in hiring, and more oversight.

[Mysterian]

26. Germany is a small country with an ethnically homogenous population?

That's a pretty uninformed statement.

[Klaralven]

27. The German population is 25.3% of the US. Germans are 78.7%, with the rest mainly other European

Turks and other ME groups at 5% are the largest part of the about 8% nonEuropean.

So maybe not small, but definitely far more homogeneous, particularly since Germans from other parts of central and eastern Europe were forced to go there after WW II. The influx from Syria is very recent, and many from the other EU countries only arrived in the last couple decades.

[Mysterian]

31. Stop digging when you're in a hole

You made an incorrect statement that Germany is a small and ethnically homogenous nation, and the numbers you posted show that you were incorrect.

[NJCher]

5. very illuminating

eom

[WestIndianArchie]

7. Unfortunately.

The problem isn't training, the problem is racism/white supremacy. They murder who they want to murder.

[StarfishSaver]

13. Exactly

It's not a lack of training. It's a hiring and retention issue - too many police departments hire and retain the wrong people.

Derek Chauvin didn't murder George Floyd because he didn't have enough training. He could have had 10 additional years of training and this still would have happened because he is who he is. He should never have been hired in the first place and he definitely should not have been allowed to keep his job after he demonstrated over and over how unfit he was.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

8. Training isn't the issue.

[LastDemocratInSC]

9. I'm sure 300,000,000 guns is a factor.

And the half-wit Bubbas who are constantly armed in everyday settings.

[StarfishSaver]

14. That may be a factor

But police aren't killing Back and Brown people in disproportionate numbers because there too many guns on the street

[Kaleva]

19. Availability of guns is a major factor

"Black men are 6 times more likely to die as the result of murder, according to the report, and 7 times more likely to commit murder than their white counterparts. One eighth of the U.S. population is black, but one half of all homicide victims are black."

"The researchers’ article, appearing in the American Journal of Medicine, also touches on the issue of the right to bear arms — reporting that, from 1999 to 2009, 91 percent of murders among black men involved guns."

https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2013/04/12/study-murder-top-cause-of-death-for-young-black-men/

"Nationwide, the black homicide victimization rate in 2011 was 17.51 per 100,000. The overall national homicide victimization rate was 4.44 per 100,000, and among white Americans, the homicide victimization rate was 2.64 per 100,000."

"The homicide crisis in the black community is overwhelmingly a gun violence problem. Nationwide, when the weapon used could be identified, 82 percent of black homicide victims were shot and killed with guns. Among the victims killed with guns, 77 percent were killed with handguns."

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/murder-rate-for-black-ame_b_4702228

Causes for the high levels of crime:

"Detroit’s violent crime problem is inextricably linked to the recent bankruptcy and conditions that led to it. Beyond widespread poverty, unemployment and a faltering education system, the city’s shrinking budget and decline in services led to blighted houses, failing streetlights and lack of reliable transportation — three things most high school students surveyed by DYVPI said made for violent environments. "

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/detroit-highest-murder-rate-violent-crime_n_6144460

[DiamondShark]

21. Availability of guns is a major factor

Every officer carries a primary firearm. And some are required to carry a backup non-lethal generally a tazer. Not to mention the shotgun and AR-15 in the car.

There is no wonder of all the police shootings in America with the proliferation of firearms carried by our "peace officers."

[StarfishSaver]

22. We're talking about Black people being killed by cops

Your post is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

[Earth-shine]

15. You can't compare us to socialist European nations with health care and safety nets for all.

At least that's what right wingers tell us.

[BobTheSubgenius]

16. I saw this general topic expressed in shots fired.

In one particular year, if memory serves, the German police fired 67 rounds, of which a very large number were warning shots. In a single incident 2018 police in Miami fired at least 377 rounds at a car, hitting the car often, based on the law of averages, but also hitting other cars, buildings and even some police members. So, Miami police fired 5 times as many shots at one car as the aggregate of all police in Germany in an entire year.

I'm going to go ahead and call that a little trigger-happy.

[Kaleva]

18. Germany, Finland and Norway don't have a civilian population armed to the teeth.

[StarfishSaver]

23. This has nothing to do with it

If the population having more guns were the reason American cops shoot more people, they'd be killing white people in much larger proportions than they are killing Black people since white Americans possess guns at a significantly higher rate the Blacks. According to the Pew Research Center, while 36% of whites report that they are gun owners, less than quarter of blacks (24%) are.

So if the fact that people have guns were the issue, police would be shooting many more white people than Blacks.

The proliferation of guns in America is a serious problem. But that's not the reason cops are targeting and killing Black people at an alarming rate.

[genxlib]

25. I think both things can be true

It is pretty apparent that police in America go into many interactions assuming that armed conflict is a possibility. Based on the number of guns in America, unfortunately that can be true. So with that in the background, police are a lot more reactive and trigger happy than they should be.

Interwoven with that, there is a clear racial bias where police are more afraid of black people. The net result is that they are quick to pull the trigger whether there is a real threat or not.

Certainly this is not the issue in restrained abuse cases like Garner and Floyd. But it certainly comes into play for scenarios like Tamir Rice and others that were shot based on supposed threats that did not exist.

[StarfishSaver]

29. Perhaps.And if some of those here had made the thoughtful argument you made, that would have

been great. But arguing that the sole problem is the proliferation of guns as if racial bias isn't the driving force and trying to distract with statistics about Black crime is a non-starter with me.

[Johnny2X2X]

24. Foreign exchange students in college

At college I lived with several foreign exchange students from Germany and Holland. This was the mid 90s, but the Cops inspired police state was in full effect already and college towns were rampant with abuse.

I cannot tell you how shocked the European exchange students were. They could not believe how much power we gave law enforcement here. In most of Europe they do not entrust law enforcement with nearly as much power in terms of stopping and searching people, entering homes uninvited, and enforcement of all types of minor infractions. They couldn't believe that America was like this, they thought we were the land of the free. I had to explain to them that Americans simply don't value their rights the same as most of the rest of the Western world.

And as someone who's traveled, American Police are just trained differently, they're trained for aggression, even in conversations they're trained to dominate and control the dialogue with aggression and hostility. Heck, across the border in Canada, police say please and thank you and speak in calm tones while being polite no matter what situation you encounter them in. In Europe the same, the police don't try to put you on the defense in every conversation, they're more apt to say please and thank you.

We're finally seeing this as a country now because of cameras recording everything. Minorities have been the subject of this brutality for hundreds of years from the police. I believe the popularity of shows like Cops indoctrinated the whole of America into accepting abuse of rights and police aggression.

Something has to give, this is now how a free people are policed.

[Yavin4]

28. As with our foreign policy, Americans think that we can solve all problems with brute force.

We over use our justice system. We over police. We over incarcerate. We ask our entire justice system to clean up the mess left behind by our educational system, our housing systems, and most importantly, our mental health systems.

Thinking like this put us in Afghanistan for over 20 years and yet instability still remains there.