The creators of StreetCredrecently brought their work to my attention. They like data. So do I. They’re trying to flesh out the situations when police kill an unarmed person. Unarmed does not automatically mean a person isn’t a threat. It’s interesting that the majority of these cases are not officer initiated but involve police response to a call for service…
Tag: use of force
“Are you done?”
When Sandra Bland was asked by Officer Encinia if she, “was done,” she actually was. Officer Encinia could have issued a ticket or a warning and walked away. But he chose not to. That was a mistake. Not legally, mind you. But morally and tactically, it was stupid. “A roadside domestic,” is how my friend and retired Baltimore cop, Leon…
Get out of the car when ordered
Last month I composed this haiku: don’t be so certain if you say “I know my rights!” you probably don’t That was cute and all, before Sandra Bland died after being arrested in what was so close to being a warning for a minor traffic violation. Three(?) times Sandra Bland asserted her “rights.” Three times she was wrong. Now she’s…
Cops shoot and kill unarmed man
No real point here. Except it happens. And you won’t hear this (except in Des Moines) because there’s no racial element to the story. Does that make the shooting any better or worse? I don’t think so. Apparently there was a protest of one.
Aiming for the legs
Right or wrong, American policing are taught to shoot center mass. And only center mass. The goal is not to kill, though the outcome of center-mass shot is usually death. The goal is to shoot to stop or incapacitate the threat. Once the there is no threat (which often happens before the suspect is killed), you stop shooting. This is…
Well done, NYPD. What’s your secret?
The national average, the rate of people killed by police (as they define it, which is pretty loose, but OK) is 0.36 per 100,000. This is over the past 23 months. That’s roughly 1,135 killed per year. This is based on these data from May 2013 to April 2014. I believe it’s similar to (but a bit messier than) killedbypolice.net.…
Why are Christians so violent?
I know that headline is unfair clickbait, but there are many things that could be said about this video. Here’s a Daily News story. I think it’s interesting primarily to show what can happen when officers fail to gain control of a situation: a mess. A lethal mess. A cop gets shot. Two of the fighting Graver family get shot,…
“Who gave this reserve cop a gun?”
Uh, it’s his own gun. But headline aside (writers don’t write the headline), I like to think I make some good points in this CNN piece about Robert Bates, the Tulsa County “reserve deputy” who thought his gun was a Taser and shot and killed a criminal.
“If you point a gun at a police officer…”
I mention this article by Peter Katel in CQ Researcher (alas, behind a pay wall) because, along with lots of good stuff, there’s a quote I wasn’t expecting coming from my man Norm “a liberal critic of much police strategy” Stamper: A video of the [Tamir Rice] shooting — showing a police car driving up next to the boy, who…
Hey, I’m quoted in the Economist!
And I managed not to swear. But it might be behind a paywall. If so, here is the good parts version: Even undercounting, America easily outguns other rich countries: in the year to March 2013 police in England and Wales fired weapons three times and killed no one. Such comparisons should be read in context. America’s police operate in a…