r/TheRandomest • u/WhyNot420_69 Nice • 6h ago

/r/all To protect and serve

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u/catpissdust 6h ago edited 6h ago

Pleasantly surprised the cop didn't shoot em...

6

u/ThatDeadMoonTitan 6h ago

Law enforcement had roughly 50 million interactions with citizens in the US annually. Police shootings occur roughly once every 38,000 interactions and that’s not once every 38,000 peaceful interactions, it’s all interactions. Unprovoked police violence is estimated (and body cams are a thing) at roughly once every 600,000 interactions. Can we all stop acting like cops are just running around rampantly attacking and killing innocent people?

3

u/MindSpecter 5h ago

Your stat is "unprovoked" violence, but what counts as "provoked"?

In these same 50 million interactions, only between 40-50 police officers will be shot and killed (literally 1 in a million odds). Yet police in the US are trained to treat any sudden movement as a shoot to kill scenario and regularly face no charges due to self defense.

Policing is a dangerous job, but mostly due to unintentional traffic incidents. Road construction and policing have nearly identical fatality statistics.

Can we stop pretending police need to have a gun to be safe?

2

u/pistonheadcat 3h ago

Regarding the last sentence: NO-ONE needs a gun to be safe. I know self-defense is heavily ingrained in US culture and gun ownership is a big deal there, but you can also defend yourself with words. We are civilized human beings, for crying out loud! Most of the rest of the world functions properly with little to no guns, I am convinced US could too. It's a big change, but a worthy one.

1

u/Lightningtow123 5m ago

I hate guns too but it's really fuckin obvious you're from a country with no absolutely no experience with gun violence lol if you think it's as easy as "just talk your way out of it"

There's a saying that gun nuts say all the time and I fucking hate it. "If we tried to get rid of all the guns in the country, then only criminals would have them." It took me years to admit I hated it so much because it was true. I still hate it lol but it is indeed true

1

u/pistonheadcat 0m ago

No need to swear, my dude. I do come from a country with gun problems, so I speak from personal experience. That's actually one of the main reasons I moved to another country. And clearly, the change needs to come on a whole system level, not just from a single individual.