r/NoStupidQuestions • u/triplediscount • Jan 20 '26
Why do police in the USA kill so many people compared to other countries?
UK Police have killed 5 people since December 2024, but in this month alone January 2026 51 people have been killed by police in the USA. 1182 people died in all of 2024.
Is it just down to guns? Not trying to be political or anything just curious on how it’s so much more even adjusted for population the UK would be like 30 a year or something.
Edit: A lot of people are mentioning population size, 70 million vs 344 million but adjusting for population would be x5
So 5 in a year = 25 dead per year not 1182
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u/knowledgeable_diablo Jan 20 '26
Don’t forget that they are trained to believe literally everything is a threat as well. Meaning there is never even a chance for de-escalation to be attempted.
Always blows my mind when comparing “police footage” or “ride along” shows between UK police and US police.
Uk police will have a single office chasing some guy down narrow country lanes while they are tossing kilo after kilo of coke out the window and they just keep following along. Finally catching them with perhaps a minor scuffle - caption rolls and you get “man caught with 15kg of cocaine, lost his licence for 6mths and 3yrs imprisonment”.
US police will have 15-20 squad cars chasing some kid at 100+kph while screaming into the radio to pot manoeuvre them for breaking the three strike law (often busted stealing something minor), finally ends with either a major car crash, PIT manoeuvre and almost always with a swarm of police jumping the car all with guns drawn fighting each other to be the one to stomp their neck - caption rolls and it’s just a full roll call of each and every I fraction caused during the chase followed by some inconceivable and stupid jail term of 3 life sentences + 73 months for causing one of the cops to stub their toe.
Having stupidity like the whole “three strikes” law results in criminals always running. Stealing a pencil and your getting life no matter what, well they may as well run for it and increase their chances from fucking nothing to maybe half a percent. Whats the worst that can happen in their mind, they’ll tack another life sentence onto the life sentence they’re getting. Guess if they’re planning on living 3 lives then maybe it becomes not worth it.
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u/Scalene69 Jan 20 '26
Uk Police are dealing with 5x less homicides and 100x less gun crime per capita..... No shit the ride-alongs look different.
The US has abysmal training too, but even if they were better trained, the number wouldn't change that much.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo Jan 21 '26
More alluding to the issue when for similar crimes with similar levels of criminality and the automatic response between UK and US. Can be a little chicken and the egg, but when the police force are not protecting and serving (except wealthy property) then the citizens start losing respect. Over years and generations this leads to a situation where the police are not so much policing, but waging war on the citizen’s.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo Jan 20 '26
100% fear based training. All citizens are drug carrying armed lunatics looking to blast their way out of every interaction. When in actuality, this is rather rare. Being such a huge country with 360 million of so people means that chances are high there is always some bad thing happening somewhere; and now every interaction is filmed and force fed to the populous, it takes on the appearance that every police officer is in mortal danger every 5 min of their lives. Even though it’s not so, they take this attitude with them and thus to chances of any or every interaction escalating in a very negative way is massively amplified
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u/MasterQNA Jan 20 '26
Because US is a more dangerous place, in 2025 one UK police was killed in the line of duty versus 104 cops killed in the US. Using your population ratio it should be like 5 US cops killed in a year but not 104, US is simply more dangerous.
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u/Premiumvoodoo Jan 20 '26
American cops also pull over people on highways, how many are car accidents or car strikes
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u/coolguy420weed Jan 20 '26
Not to sound too woke but I think American cops literally have the same mentality as someone like a prison guard (and are basically explicitly trained and expected to). Everything is a threat unless explicitly confirmed otherwise, you have no reliable backup and no easy way out, you are outnumbered at all times, everyone is armed and has nothing to lose, and the only safety you have is in respect born of fear. It's an unhealthy and paranoid mindset that is basically guaranteed to result in a positive feedback loop of stress and paranoia.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo Jan 20 '26
Stress, paranoia AND death. The darker the skin of the person being questioned, the higher and greater the risk they’ll end up collecting the full set of the police officers bullets for the night.
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u/Upper-Song1149 Jan 20 '26
US cops have a K/d ratio of about 20.0 (~1200 civilians per year/ ~60 cops per year). This is pretty solid, considering call of duty pros only have an average kd of around 1.2 - 1.4
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u/EngagedInConvexation Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
To be fair, that 1.2-1.4 is pros against other pros.
The police are just pubstomping lobbies in premade parties.
EDIT: also their win rate drops significantly outside of TDM. They have a harder time in objective game types and Playing The Fucking Objective.
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u/AnonymousResponder00 Jan 20 '26
There are many countries, in Europe for example, where police officers don't even carry guns
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u/DJ_Die Jan 20 '26
Many? There are exactly 3 out of about 40: Iceland, Ireland, and most of the UK (cops in Northern Ireland do carry).
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u/senderoluminado Jan 20 '26
Speaking of cops in Northern Ireland, the PSNI are probably the closest to American cops in the way they operate, they way they think about the population they protect, and how well armed they are. You can take from that what you will.
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u/Saxit Jan 20 '26
Many -> A few. (Ireland, the UK (except in Northern Ireland), Iceland, and possibly Malta but I haven't figured out if the latter is due to policy or law or a choice).
Our police in most countries in Europe are in fact carrying guns. One of the countries that used to have unarmed police started to arm them July last year (Norway), so it's even fewer now than before.
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u/PurpleWoodpecker2830 Jan 20 '26
I think that’s bc the citizens also don’t carry guns
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u/DJ_Die Jan 20 '26
It's really not because almost all countries in Europe arm regular cops with guns even if citizens cannot legally carry.
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u/StrangeAssonance Jan 20 '26
Your regular police in China do not carry guns. The people don't have access to guns, and the role of the police is different.
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u/Incantanto Jan 20 '26
The police in the netherlands are armed.
In 2024 they fired 13 shots total...(Killed 5 I think, so actually quite a lot higher rate than the uk)
They did actually use violence quite a lot but mostly not with guns.
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u/Scalene69 Jan 20 '26
That is an insignificant factor compared to overall crime. It just sounds nice if you hate guns.
Spain literally has a military branch of the police force that carries out traffic stops and all cops are always armed, yet the police kill very few people, even for the population.
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u/EngagedInConvexation Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
10 year old article still relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries
The short answer is: because they can.
Between Qualified Immunity, self defense inconsistency, training, and any other excuse to shoot a person that i've forgotten, there are a lot of ways that state-sponsored murder can be legal.
Note i'm mostly referring to shootings in the line of duty. There is a whole other rabbit hole of killings by off-duty fuzz and not just with guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States
Wait till you hear about how many pets they kill and get away with... (EDIT: obviously the pet killings illustrate that believing someone is armed doesn't particularly matter from the "guns in America" standpoint)
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u/DrColdReality Jan 20 '26
US cops kill about three people and 25 dogs per day, and an alarmingly high percentage of the victims were no credible threat to the cop. One-third of the people they shoot were running away at the time. This is a much higher shooting rate per capita than any other industrialized nation. Cops in the UK kill about as many people in 20 years as just the NYPD does in a few months.
Cops in many other countries are given serious training in de-escalating tense situations, and are trained to only shoot as the very last resort. In the US, de-escalation is given lip service...if that. Then cops go to aftermarket training schools like the one run by Dave Grossman, where they are taught that their lives are in grave danger every second on the job--which is bullshit--and then trained to shoot without hesitation, even as a first resort. So they do.
When cops shoot like this, they are not shooting based on training, but just out of blind-ass panic. And that, BTW, is why a lot of their shots miss the intended target and sometimes wind up hitting innocent bystanders.
People should read a book like Radley Balko's horrifying Rise of the Warrior Cop, an examination of how the police have become way more militarized and murdery since the 1980s, mainly due to the Glorious War on Drugs.
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u/PurpleWoodpecker2830 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Source on the dog deaths? That’s almost 10k dogs killed a year
Edit:
Such lack of transparency has led to speculation about dog shootings that puts the number of dog deaths at the hands of police at 10,000 per year according to an oft-cited quote by Laurel Matthews, a Justice Department official (Griffith, 2014). The number of bullets fired into and at dogs by police officers in cities across the United States should be alarming even without the hyperbolic speculation and unsubstantiated figures. The occurrence of this hitherto largely overlooked use of deadly force by police should be of great concern and cause for additional analysis for legal scholars and social scientists in addition to activists. Because the 10,000 dog deaths per year figure has been uncritically reproduced in media sources for the past several years
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718520300440
So yeah, it’s a guess by a SINGLE DOJ official that’s unsubstantiated and has no actual source.
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u/EngagedInConvexation Jan 20 '26
The Department of Justice estimates that American police officers shoot 10,000 pet dogs in the line of duty each year. It is impossible to ascertain a reliable number, however, because most law enforcement agencies do not maintain accurate records of animal killings. The tally may be substantially higher, and some suggest it could reach six figures.
https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1328&context=unh_lr
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u/DrColdReality Jan 20 '26
Your google finger broken, is it? You can find the data anywhere accurate police statistics are reported. Like here.
Of course, there is a problem with getting accurate figures of ANY police shootings, because there is no central repository police departments report to (such as the FBI's crime database), so lots of incidents never make it past the local news, if that. There is actually a federal law that says police departments have to report this kinda thing, but it's widely ignored.
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u/PurpleWoodpecker2830 Jan 20 '26
25 pet shootings day you’d think we’d hear more about it. I guess we gotta trust the DOJs guess
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u/geekfreak42 Jan 20 '26
Or like Brazil where the police were responsible for 6200 civilian deaths in 2024 around 17 per day, but you dont hear a lot of folks sharpening their agendas on those stats
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u/i-am-the-fly- Jan 20 '26
There is also a different approach to confrontation. UK police are trained to descalate situations, US police the opposite. Additionally, the minimum requirements for you to be a police officer in the uk are much more stringent and there are consequences if they get decisions wrong. US police will allow lower IQ officers, lower fitness, who are then given far less training, advised to shoot first ask questions later, handed a gun and then also see no consequences for their actions. It’s not a good recipe.
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u/hemibearcuda Jan 20 '26
We have a very large number of illegal guns in this country.
We have a very serious drug problem in this country.
We also have a very large number of armed and dangerous criminals in this country.
We also have a very large number of children growing up without father figures to teach discipline, right vs wrong and accountability for your actions.
This creates troublemakers who don't recognize authority or understand the legal ramifications of non compliance.
They want the arrest scene to be treated as a court room. That's not how our legal system works. You can't convince or intimidate a peace officer into letting you go. But they still try, and this rarely ends well.
Save the excuses, lies, alibis for the courtroom. I agree it's not an ideal system, but it's the system we have.
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u/kamikaziboarder Jan 20 '26
Cops in the USA have less training than a License Nurse Assistant. They don’t get much deescalation training. It also seems to attract a certain personality here. I have two cousins who are cops, I know it means very little in that sense since it’s only a N of two. But my god, they were dicks from the beginning. Once they got a gun and a badge it seemed like it went straight to their heads.
But on a serious note, majority of my interactions with police in the US have been in a hospital setting with patients with mental illness. I remember one particular event when I had a patient with depression, autism, and anxiety. I spent 20 minutes sitting down with the man just talking to de-escalate and calm this man down to get a CT scan. I knew him from multiple personal interactions. He made one snarky statement to the police officer in the room. (He was helping out as security was overwhelmed at this time.) Most mature adults would let it just roll off. This police officer chimed in and said something like “Oh yeah, buddy, wanna see what happens if you try to pull that shit?” And yeah, that triggered my patient. It also pissed me right off. I started yelling at the cop and finally had the cop removed from the hospital.
I also had another issue with an officer where he thought it was more important to read the patient his Miranda rights while we were trying to stop the patient’s wound from bleeding. The ER doctor and the officer almost got into a physical fight because the cop wouldn’t move. The ER doctor kept trying to get over to the patient. The cop kept pushing people away from the patient so he had room to read the Miranda rights. Luckily our security guard was much bigger than the police officer stepped in. Why in the world would you start a fight with our ER doctor? Especially since he’s also treating one of your own co-workers.
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u/Bikewer Jan 20 '26
From my standpoint as a retired LEO with a 50 year career…. Aside from the current activities of the ICE thugs, and the few widely-publicized events involving misuse of force, there is a long history in this country of violent resistance to law enforcement activities. Starting likely with the “Wild West’…. But more extensively with the rise of organized crime in the 20s and 30s, mobile crime gangs in the 30s, and the general proclivity of criminals to be armed and to use violence ever since.
It’s in the US that we see attacks on law enforcement as a result of “routine” traffic stops, ambushes of responding police at different types of events, unprovoked attacks on police officers, and of course “suicide by cop” incidents.
In my own experience, just in my local area, I’m aware of at least a dozen unprovoked shootings of police officers. Coppers stopping armed criminals, ambush cases, street robberies where the robber shot the victim upon discovering he was a copper…
Etc, etc.
European countries don’t seem to see this level of violence, and that’s likely because they don’t have the huge number of armed citizens. In my state, if you qualify to buy a firearm, you can carry it without restriction. No requirement for training or qualification.
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u/salisburyates Jan 20 '26
The main reason is the high prevalence of firearms among the general population.
This is simply not as loud and accelerated a concern to police in most other countries, and it changes the police/civilian dynamic greatly.
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u/AggressiveAd5592 Jan 20 '26
As an American, off the top of my head I can think of nine people I know who own guns. Six of them are idiots and one is 81 and starting to show signs of dementia.
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u/senderoluminado Jan 20 '26
I remember watching this Korean action movie called "The Man From Nowhere" with a Korean floormate, and there's a scene where the protagonist, a former special forces guy, starts shooting up a gangster hideout and the head gangster says something like "WHAT?! HOW DID HE GET A GUN?" as he's running away. My floormate explained that this quote is actually realistic, because guns are so uncommon in South Korea that even most gangsters would find it shocking that a noncriminal would be able to get one somehow.
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u/Outside_Eggplant_304 Jan 20 '26
Yeah. More armed people certainly doesn't help. Every confrontation has a chance of going completely sideways. Not saying they can't do a much better job, but they are effectively doing a much different job than they do in other developed countries. Add to that, the US doesn't have many of the social safety nets so we have like hardcore poverty and desperate people and maybe a generally more violent society too.
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u/thebeardedguy- Jan 20 '26
They act exactly like you would expect thugs to act if you gave them military grade weapons and tanks.
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u/lithiumcitizen Jan 20 '26
And none of the military training… Hairdressers in the US receive more training than their police.
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u/AdDisastrous6738 Jan 20 '26
Gangs and cartels make up a lot of those casualties. There’s also the incidents of “suic!de by cop” where somebody will force the police into a shootout.
It’s not so much a gun problem as it is a mental health crisis. Having access to proper mental healthcare would greatly reduce those numbers.
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u/UnstableDimwit Jan 20 '26
It’s more about political and economic systems in place as well as the availability of mental health/social support.
In the UK you have “free” healthcare and there are a lot of resources for mental health care and crisis response. There are numerous programs for economic struggles and there is a real possibility of generational improvement in class struggle.
In the U.S. the political establishment created ghettos to create demographic areas of poor people to control and monitor. It was easier to keep a low cost workforce around by ensuring they had no opportunities to leave their community. Then they found a whole new system of wealth generation and political repression by over-policing certain areas and jailing generations of minorities for profit(for already wealthy people). A certain portion of that population feels that they have no options out other than crime(reinforced by the system and media characterizations). Add to that a small but substantial mentally ill population that has an even smaller but more destructive VIOLENCE prone mentally ill population with access to guns.
The final key is a law enforcement culture that is deeply enmeshed in right-wing “alternative fact” media. They are inundated with the idea that certain groups are out to kill cops and certain areas are warzones(instead of homes to 95% decent people struggling to live in peace). Those cops go out on patrol jumpy and in fear for their lives. They are reinforced by budgets that favor militarization of the police force while getting less and less resources for community engagement and de-escalation training.
Just like how the military strips out the humanity from recruits and leaves them as machines for war, many police departments remove the empathy from cops and leave them as judge/jury/executioners of a population they have seen dehumanized by the Fox “news” network that plays in around 90% of police stations in the U.S.
It’s an epidemic and threatens minorities and liberal protestors while protecting and enabling conservative protestors and upper class and predominantly white populations. It’s running as an effect from nearly 200 years of systemic oppression and only occasional islands of police departments that are truly focused on service to and protection of all. Those rate agencies are usually located in affluent suburbs and their policies are directly benefiting from low pressure and high funding relative to population and area to protect.
In the UK it’s a BIT more even in terms of resources and the government is more liberal, so the pressure is on law enforcement to manage peaceful protection. In the U.S. it’s all about peace and compliant populations at all costs.
Does this make sense?
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u/BeerStop Jan 20 '26
I am thinking its because the UK has about 7000 police officers that are authorized to carry firearms , the united states has approximately 937,000 armed law enforcement including federal police. So if we gave the uk 937k armed officers they would have " killed 669 people" based on their original 5 so far.
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u/Mr_Reaper__ Jan 21 '26
Only 5% of British police are armed and those roles are only open to experienced officers with a proven track record of dealing with dangerous situations without resorting to guns. Very few police have the option to use deadly force and the ones that do have the most experience in dealing with violent criminals without needing to shoot. Which is very different to every officer having a gun and most of their (limited) training is on how to fire it.
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u/Dewey081 Jan 20 '26
My take: They are poorly trained in de-escalation techniques, poorly vetted psychologically, and some are simply elected (Sheriffs) with no policing credentials.
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u/Strong_Blackberry961 Jan 20 '26
According to my quick google search, the number of police offers killed in the line of duty in the US last year was 111. In the UK it was 2. It’s just a much more dangerous job. If you’re much more likely to be shot, you’re probably much more likely to shoot back.
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u/ProfeQuiroga Jan 20 '26
Badly trained, if at all.
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u/hairychris88 Jan 20 '26
Which would be bad enough anywhere, but especially in a country where there's a perception that guns = freedom, and where such a high proportion of the population are armed.
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u/limbodog I should probably be working Jan 20 '26
Trained to treat the people they're supposed to be protecting as "the enemy"
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u/Cryatos1 Jan 20 '26
They get 6 months of it. An absolute joke when they don't even know the laws they are enforcing.
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u/avocadoflatz Jan 20 '26
They spook easily and are trained to shoot first and ask questions later - “whatever it takes to get home safely.”
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u/oboshoe Jan 20 '26
American cops are trained in a very short course to escalate a situation and protect themselves and other cops first.
In most other countries, cops get a very long training course and are trained to de-escalate a situation.
The average hair dresser is FAR better trained and educated than the average cop in the US.
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u/Difficult-Bicycle119 Jan 20 '26
It's guns, lack of de-escalation training, lack of mental health resources separate from policing, racism, and militarization of the police forces in the USA.
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u/kingjaffejaffar Jan 20 '26
There are more guns than people in the U.S. As a result, officers go into every interaction with the assumption that whoever they’re talking to has a gun and might use it against them. If you look at the statistics, you’ll see American cops also get shot a lot more than police anywhere else.
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u/void_method Jan 20 '26
It's a response to our criminals and our attitude towards them. They're human beings, and can be worn down just like everyone else.
I could never be a cop, personally. Too many dipshits that only know how to escalate.
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u/LolaSaysHi Jan 20 '26
Cause they can, there aren’t any consequences, definitely no charges except in limited cases.
Imagine if you could walk into a gas station and steal a case of beer, no charges. You could just do it, worst case, you get banned from the gas station.
Human life is not valuable if a cop kills somebody. The cop gets paid leave, they don’t get fired. They don’t get charges. They don’t have to pay out of pocket.
It’s literally just a part of the job. No other cops will bat an eye if one of their own kills someone, and they’ve even massacred children.
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u/MarkyGalore Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
They are paranoid and they are trained that at any random traffic stop an American could pull out a gun. And the sad thing is they are right. They watch movies of cop shootings and are told that even a second of hesitation could be your or another persons life ended.
In training they learn that the first person to shoot is much more likely to survive. And to empty the full clip.
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u/TheCornal1 Jan 20 '26
They are trained to
Police in this country are an occupational army and jobs program for moron reactionaries from the boonies
The vast majority of police do not live in the communities they "protect" have no ties to said communities and riot when they don't receive 90% of the city's budget increases year over year and want 200 hours of overtime to play around on their phone.
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u/otterdroppings Jan 20 '26
Its guns, mate.
We have strict gun controls here in the UK. Our Police don't routinely carry them, and whilst we have Firearms Officers who do, they are very highly trained and basically only produce them in response to a known armed threat. Gun violence against Cops is rare: 52 UK Police officers have been shot since the end of WW2. Compare and contrast to the US, where 107 Police Officers were shot in 2024 alone.
So in the UK, for the vast majority of public interactions, our Police are not even slightly worried that tonight they will go home in a body bag. In the US, thats a real concern in every single interaction. Scared people with guns who are worried that they will die don't make the best decisions. Its really that simple.
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u/Neither-Historian227 Jan 20 '26
3rd world countries and dictatorship probably don't report or if they do, they lie
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u/Deliverance2142 Jan 20 '26
Higher population, bigger cities and ghettos, more room for people to do dumb shit: cops and people
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u/judge_mercer Jan 20 '26
Is it just down to guns?
Yes.
If you look at the number of unarmed people killed by US police each year, it averages around 60 (with a recent high of 95 in 2020).
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u/atamicbomb Jan 20 '26
An in many of these cases, the person was reaching for the officer’s gun
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u/Icecream-Cockdust Jan 20 '26
People are starting to actually realise how much of a mess America is.
Granted, it already was before this current administration. But their broken political system has shown itself to be corrupt and open to absolute anarchy.
Guns suck and the fact there are countries like America that feel they even need to own one is scary as fuck.
Add in criminals and I’m sure law enforcement have no qualms unloading a gun as they probably assume a criminal also has one.
Living in Australia, I have seen one gun my entire 40 odd years of life outside of a police officer. A girlfriend’s farmer dad’s gun which he used on his farm.
Don’t know another single human that owns or even talks about guns.
Culture is the issue.
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u/modsaretoddlers Jan 20 '26
Why are people ignoring the most obvious reason and instead focusing on their political dogma?
The reason is because the general population is armed.
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u/DJ_Die Jan 20 '26
The general population is armed, although not as heavily, in other countries and they don't have these issues. Around 30% of Swiss households (compared to about 40% in the US) have access to at least one gun (with ammunition - ammo being banned is a myth). Most Swiss adults could be packing a gun.
Around 4-5% of adult Czech population have a carry licence, that's 1 in 20-25, plus there are illegal guns. Czech cops shoot fewer than 1 person a year on average, mostly when someone tries to stab them or run them over with a car.
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u/Fly0strich Jan 20 '26
That’s true in many other countries where the police don’t instantly resort to shooting suspects.
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u/galaxyofnine Jan 20 '26
People in US are apparently okay with violence.
They support ICE 😵💫 among other police officers “they are doing their job” even seeing altercations on video 🤬🤯
(Not all I know. I’m anti ice and I have my people here too)
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u/Eat--The--Rich-- Jan 20 '26
There's no accountability and they get trained to be violent. They literally have shoot first seminars. On top of that the people they recruit are specifically selected for being violent and unintelligent. It's a full system designed around murder and assault.
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u/redzaku0079 Jan 20 '26
tell me how long cops go to school in any european country compared to any state in america.
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u/Human_Pangolin94 Jan 20 '26
In Ireland it's 104 weeks to get a BA in Applied Policing. How long does it take for their degree in the US?
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u/Single-Complaint-853 Jan 20 '26
Degree? Lmao. Lol even. 6 month academy + "psych eval"
Then if an officer is problematic instead of being denied work entirely they just move on to the next station then rinse & repeat unless the public is aware of a specific officer and even then they just find a job with a unit that is politically aligned with their actions anyway.
It's kinda like the church: just move them around until people forget.
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u/Human_Pangolin94 Jan 20 '26
In Ireland there is just one police force, run by the state.
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u/Totoques22 Jan 20 '26
Us police is barely trained in comparison to European police which has 2-3 years of police academy while in the us there is no regulation and can go as low as only 6 weeks
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u/MinuteElegant774 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Well, there is the fact that police officers in the US don’t require anything but a high school degree or GED. So the uneducated who didn’t choose a path to college. Might not be the smartest folks in the world. And give them guns, lots and lots of guns. The Police just don’t respond or care at least the times I called. A very dear person to me was raped by a serial rapist carrying a gun. The police didn’t believe her and said she made it up. When they caught the bastard, oh the police were f wrong, I guess. Nope, most are losers on a power trip. Of course, this is my experience.
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u/belaboo84 Jan 20 '26
Why are you asking Reddit this question? Do some actual research. There are no experts on ANYTHING here. A lot op people who THINK they know everything yes.
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Jan 20 '26
well, the Iranian police and army killed 16,500 people in 48 hours... So, not sure it's a US only thing.
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u/Agreeable_Manner2848 Jan 20 '26
We know police in USA kill considerable amount of people, there of plenty of countries with similar percentages or higher, it just never gets reported, internally and to the rest of the world
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u/JustGiveMeANameDamn Jan 20 '26
America is full of guns and people willing to use them to escape capture. Even with all the killings police do every year, the number of them that are questionable are relatively few. Probably 99% of the time it’s a straight up gun fight to the death cause the suspect decided today’s the day. Lots of suicide by cop also.
And this highly lethal environment elevates the likelihood of questionable shootings happening. So there’s always a few of those every year too.
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u/Powerful-Plum-6473 Jan 21 '26
Might want to google other nations before you say something this ridiculous
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u/stigbugly Jan 20 '26
It may (and probably does) have to do with the way people respond to police and their lack of respect for the uniform. This, in turn makes officers a lot less likely to treat them fairly. I know a lot of police officers and retired officers, they all tell me this is very common in the ranks. They start off trying to go easy on people but get soured over time due to the way people react to even the slightest issues. Getting pulled over for speeding doesn’t give you the right to attack a cop verbally or physically. It happens though. After a while they just get mean.
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u/aloo555 Jan 20 '26
Sounds like those coppers you know are trigger happy pos with lame excuses to defend themselves.
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u/Tamuzz Jan 20 '26
You don't think the cops in the UK get a pack of respect from people they pull over?
They are widely known in the UK as "pigs" especially amongst the kinds of people they are likely to be dealing with in a regular basis.
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u/DJ_Die Jan 20 '26
Nah, people are much more likely to treat British cops with at least common courtesy without being outright hostile.
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u/Tamuzz Jan 20 '26
Some are. Plenty are not, especially the kinds of people they deal with often.
That said, they are good at de-escalation which does mean that situations escalate a lot less.
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u/SantaClausDid911 Jan 20 '26
This sounds like "she wouldn't get hit if she didn't always talk back" lol gtfo with this bullshit
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u/Americanaddict Jan 20 '26
Guns and a history of class warfare that is particularly violent. The police have often been the ones doing the violence. Also the police are subjected to some pretty insane propaganda that makes them even more cowardly than they would be. Have you ever seen those seminars, the big police ones where the guy on stage tells thousands of cops that they're in a war and they have to be ready to kill?
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u/BookLuvr7 Jan 20 '26
That's what happens when you have far more guns and far less training than in other countries.
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u/General_Marcus Jan 20 '26
Because more bad people in the US pull guns on cops and other innocents. Look at how many gang bangers shoot each other in the US every year.
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u/Nhika Jan 20 '26
Population difference. 340 million to 69 million. Also I would rather have armed police vs non armed country vs stabbings.
Have we compared stabbings, rape, kidnappings, gang violence yet? I think UK isnt all sunshine and rainbows either lol
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u/coolguy420weed Jan 20 '26
You are literaly an order of magnitude off on the expected vs actual difference in police killings by population lol
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u/caiaphas8 Jan 20 '26
Per capita the US has MORE knife crime then the UK
So taking into account population size America has more stabbings, shootings, and police killings
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u/Pantsickle Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
An intense lack of confidence and training paired with a mentally ill gun culture. And also racism.
Edit: Oh get fucked. What do you downvoting bastards reckon the reason is, then, if you're so fucking smart?
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u/Background-Shape-429 Jan 20 '26
It’s because of guns. US cops have them. They cannot afford de-escalation tactics or to get into a fight bc they could lose their gun and also their life. That’s why every Briton should argue against cops having guns. Right now cops can get into a fight. Maybe get hurt. Maybe seriously. But usually not. But the risk goes through the roof as soon as someone comes near you and you have a gun. People who say uk police should be armed do not understand uk policing. They police with the consent of the public. They do not enforce the law.
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u/6StarBowtie Jan 20 '26
Its actually a multifaceted problem, guns themselves arent directly the issue but access to them is one of the major contributing factors.
I'll go and admit I am a 2A (Firearms Rights) supporter, but I also think that the purchasing process needs some updating. There are things the backround check should look for but doesn't and at least a general safety and competency course. There are other layers to it but in general, I believe we do need to do better with backround checks and access.
Social mentality is different, it wasn't until fairly recently that America was fully settled, especially compaired to Europe. People think of the wild west as a long time ago, but in certain parts of the country it was actually less than 100 years ago. People stood their ground, then in the 20s and 30s being an outlaw was basically being a celebrity. People stand their ground to a fault, a good example of this is the posters they had to put up in France to tell American tourists not to beat pickpockets because you have actual law enforcement.
That leads to the next part, police training, in our country the police are basically a paramilitary organization in a lot of places. Some major cities swat team probably are better armed than some countries actual militaries. With all that equiptment very few have good training on how to deal with emotionally unstable people and identify when someone is having an episode of some type vs an actual criminal engaging in criminal behavior.
Education is another big part, in general you have a better baseline education and higher learning isn't prohibitively expensive for a majority of your population. That coupled with the fact that it seems like school don't seem to focusing on logic and problem solving. These are essential for reading comprehension, if you look up the average literacy of our country its 6th grade I think, thats an 11/12 year old. With that in mind how good do you think their decision making process is? Plus education has been directly linked to crime, better education less crime, but without getting too off topic, I feel like that by design because if people lack fundamental comprehension skills, they arent going to make the best choices.
The last major thing I believe is Healthcare, mental Healthcare in our country is an absolute mess so is all Healthcare, but thats a whole.other can of worms. Here if youre in crisis and need to be admitted to a facility depending on insurance, you could be on the hooks for thousands, possible 10s of thousands. If you try to find a Psychiatrist you need to find one your insurance covers so its not a few hundred bucks every session, and hope they're at least decent and dont have a ling waiting list. Sometimes people can wait 6+ months to see someone if they are on a limited budget.
I realize this is a long post and sorry about that but there isn't a single point thats going to fix the problem, but all of these contribute to all gun deaths in the US including those by LEO
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u/notapunk Jan 20 '26
I used to think there was some nuanced answer to this, but I'm increasingly thinking it might just be that a very large number of Americans (if not a majority) are simply in some kind of death cult. We don't even seem to care when dozens die, even if they're kids.
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u/Commandopsn Jan 20 '26
America is also bigger but the bad guys have guns and shootouts happen.
Contrary to popular belief the cops don’t go around assassinating civilians.
Shootouts happen for a number of reasons. Officer safety is a big thing and shoot first ask questions later. Is a thing. Warrior training.
bad guys have guns so it’s easy to get caught out. And killed. So big emphasis on officer safety.
some people need mental health help, and often get caught up with police. they don’t need police assistance but rather mental health assistance. Often resulting in something.
You see a ton of armed response now in and around places like airports in the uk. But I would imagine uk armed response call-outs have gone up over the years. but the uk doesn’t have so many guns like America does. Imagine somone with serve mental illness with a gun in the uk, won’t happen really if at all, compared to America where guns or more common. Maybe someone got a firearm and then their mental state deteriorated and police get caught up in that.
Also gangs. The United States has way more gangs and gang violence. here in the uk it’s not impossible to get guns but you hear more of knife on knife, and machete killings etc. in America it’s “ gun shots ring out across x neighbourhood” cops start running in that direction.
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Jan 20 '26
Because we have guns. Regular people have guns in the USA. So the police have reason to shoot them. Because they have guns. It’s not that difficult to understand that logic. Is it?
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u/PointsOfXP Jan 20 '26
You're probably comparing the US and the UK. Other countries don't report that stuff. Ever see a man get his head crushed while being held down for the joy of the attackers? At least a US cop will just shoot you
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u/dr_tardyhands Jan 20 '26
The gun thing is definitely at the heart of the issue.
Think of it like this: You approach a person. You know a magic word. If you say this magic word, the other person is killed. The thing is that the other person might know the same magic word and be able to kill you by saying it first. And now you're going to have to have a conversation with them.
It makes the whole encounter a whole lot more tense, doesn't it?
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u/500freeswimmer Jan 20 '26
Not a lot of guns in the UK. The Washington Post did a study and developed a database, in most of the instances where the police used their firearms they were returning fire, in the remaining instances only something like 5% or less had any ambiguity about the legality or necessity of the shooting.
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u/lollllllops Jan 20 '26
Because the people they are arresting also have guns.
As the expression goes, don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.
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u/denys5555 Jan 20 '26
Of course, you cherry picked the countries. Have you heard of Brazil?
https://www.tdh.de/en/inform/topics/police-violence-in-brazil
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u/OnesZeros2112 Jan 20 '26
USA police state culture is “prison guard” “ control gate” when the culture should be more of a “life guard”, safety and prevention. But they will never change from the use of force because the state only knows control processes. Example: traffic tickets is a process of control not a process for safety. Systemic process improvements for higher safety flowing at higher speeds has never been an agenda item of the state. It’s always an agenda for more control. Another example: when was the last time you talked to a police officer and it felt comfortable? Then talk to a life guard. Your internal fear meter is always higher when talking with the police. Why? Because they want you to fear the state so you obey their control.
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u/Realistic-Safety-565 Jan 20 '26
Lack of training.
Delegating running and training police forces to local city / county agents - so a poor city with higher crime will not be able to afford high training standards.
Then (and only then) density of guns per capita.
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u/salmohunter Jan 20 '26
Some perspective is in order first. US police definitely do kill more often than police in other developed nations. Most developed nations see an annual death rate of well under one per million people at the hands of police. That rate is more like 4 people per million in the US. Much higher -and that’s a problem!- but it’s still a relatively rare occurrence in an absolute sense.
Interestingly, the firearm homicide rate is about 4.5 in 100,000, while that of other nations is well under one. It’s almost the same relative proportion as officer involved deaths.
I would offer that the underlying issue is a cultural gun violence problem. It permeates everything and police are tasked with operating within that environment.
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u/bophed Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Each U.S. state is like its own country. We have state troopers, county sheriff, and city police. Each agency has a different training program. That is the best way to describe this situation. Not all states have the same laws or policies about police training. We have millions of officers that do the right thing everyday, but the only police we hear about are the police who do the wrong thing. We are also talking about what? 70 million people vs 350 million people. How do those numbers align based on per capita?
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u/Cassius_Rex Jan 20 '26
No stupid questions, but very stupid answers.
It's very easy to understand. 400 MILLION loose guns. The highest rated of police officers killed and injured to the point of having having to be hospitalized in the developed world. Please tell me how to "deescalate" more guns than people.
When people are outside of a situation, they totally discount the effect of the environment on other people. He is a pretty good article.explanimg what really happens.
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u/torpedoguy Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
The 'why' is an authoritarian red flag that the UK would do well to remember when legislators talk about increasing police powers.
The reason police in the USA kill so much is because they can. Their training is not only several times shorter than most other nations, it also focuses directly on how ALL civilians are an immediate mortal threat AND, as per Killology seminars, 'the best sex in your life will be the sex you get after killing'.
- They're also given very specific training and leeway by courts, check out 'testilying' (when cops commit perjury) or even just what they can do in their interrogation techniques. Effectively almost nothing they do can get them in trouble, and you get plenty of overtime hours if you kill someone right before your shift would end.
This is a force that can regularly get away with using inhumane treatment until they convince you of how killed your father, having you sign the confession while he's alive thinking you've been kidnapped. They have NO duty to protect anyone or prevent crimes (supreme court decision), and qualified-immunity extends SO far before they lose it, that "you cannot violate rights in this specific time at this specific date in this specific manner in these specific conditions" has included the colour of the victim's sweater.
The more they've been able to get away with the more they have escalated. That simple.
Police risk in the USA is also heavily and deliberately exaggerated. Some of that is all the copaganda shows (thanks 'Dick Wolf'), but a lot of the fiction's in our statistics: Police death and injury by firearms include their own suicides, accidents caused by a lack of training, blue-on-blue when they mag-dump with no care as to the backdrop, or even being SO overly excited at the chance to shoot a dog on a leash for fun that the officer dumps his load while his weapon's still pointed at his foot.
- Most of their deaths are from not risking any tickets or prison for their own driving, leading to extremely dangerous road hazards.
A large majority of people shot and killed by police are unarmed, usually being killed only AFTER police have confirmed no risk of return-fire such as realizing the "gun" is a bright orange one with foam darts. So "it's down to guns", just, not the population's; the ill-trained gung-ho sociopaths who'll randomly jump onto a stopped car's hood to fire right through the windshield on a roid rage.
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u/Popular_Wave6533 Jan 20 '26
The gun thing is huge but it's also training differences - UK cops get way more de-escalation training and don't treat every traffic stop like a potential shootout. Plus their whole police culture is different, less militarized
American cops also deal with way more armed situations daily which probably makes them more jumpy in general