America is Number One in Police Killings – Western Democracies not even close!
So it’s been a long while since I’ve done a daily reads post, so here goes……before we start let me remind everyone that I am a liberal Democrat and have been since the 60s!
So one of the aspects of life in America that certainly has me pissed off recently is the number of police killings over the last year or so. Certainly as a percentage of deaths and or arrests the rate is still fairly low – in other words what I’m trying to say is that the percentage of good policemen is still high. I just wish those cops could get the other cops over on their side!! I for one can’t understand how with all the publicity surrounding these police killings that al of the policemen aren’t on their best behavior everywhere.
These police killings certainly bring shame to our country and need to STOP!! The following post from AlterNet shows how bad things really are…
America Is #1 in Police Killings Among Western Democracies — But We’re Only Just Discovering How Bad the Situation Is
Even before the Washington Postpublished its startling report this weekend on the astronomically high number of Americans shot and killed by police in the first five months of 2015, the U.S. was already easily number one…..
Look at these numbers!
…..No matter which numbers you look at—even in the unlikely case that not one more case of deadly force occurs this year—U.S. cops are far more deadly than Britain, Iceland, Denmark, Iceland and other European nations.
The Danish police published a study on police shootings between 1996 and 2006. It also accounted for population (based on 2000 census data) by giving the number of people cops kill per one million residents. In Denmark, the cops only killed 11 people during that ten-year span. The number of people killed, per one million residents, is .187 people
Here is the data per millions for the rest of the countries:
- Sweden: 13 people — .133 people
Norway: 3 people — .060 people
Finland: 2 people — .034 people
Germany: 81 people — .089 people
The Netherlands: 24 people — .137 people
England/Wales: 25 people — .042 peopleIceland, however, takes the cake.
The republic was founded in 1944 and the first time the cops shot someone was in 2013. And we can’t use the “Iceland is anti-gun” excuse, either. According to PRI, Iceland ranks 15 in the world when it comes to per capita gun ownership.
Cops in England and Wales went two years without killing a single resident.
Here is where the U.S. falls, according to the Los Angeles Daily News:
If we take Five Thirty Eight’s estimate that 1,000 people are killed by police in the United States every year and divide it by the 2000 population of 282 million, the American situation for just one year would look like this:
US: 10,000 people killed — 35.5 killed for every one million residents Read More
We are at 35 per million and no other major European country is over 1!! It is a disgrace!!
After I read the above article I found this post at Addicting Info….. another police killing and this one in my home state of New Jersey!!
N.J. Police Gun Down Black Man In Crowded Library With Children For ‘Menace’
It looks like you can get killed by police for holding a book as easily as holding a gun if you’re black in America today, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when you can get shot down for nothing more than walking down the street a half-shade darker than a paper bag. Like Bob Dylan sang in “Hurricane,” “If you’re black you might as well not show up on the street/’Less you wanna draw the heat.” This pox upon any notion of a civil society has been going on for at least 40 years judging by that song, alone, and hundreds of years, judging by the nation’s history.
Thirty-six-year-old Kevin Allen of Lyndhurst, N.J., was shot dead by police in the local Lyndhurst Public Library of all places, Friday afternoon, allegedly for menace toward the officers who’d first deemed him “suspicious” and attempted to approach Allen outside the library shortly before the fatal incident took place on the upper-most floor.
Local authorities claim they had no choice but to shoot Allen dead on the spot, despite the fact that civilians were present, including children. Read More
Now granted in the above case we don’t know what really happened, but based on recent cases I do believe that the benefit of the doubt goes to Kevin Allen!! Now how we stop these police killings is question for another day, and one the needs to be answered soon!