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>How can I put this. I could have done a better job than that policeman, and I'd seriously fucking hope he's never called out to my house because he's demonstrably more likely to fucking kill me than anybody he's allegedly there to protect me from.

Oh, I'm sure you could Cederic. Hey, while you're bragging about how much better you'd be thatn the cop who mistakenly shot that man maybe take look at the following a give us your critique about dangerous policework and tell us how its done:

https://www.odmp.org/search/year/2019
Master Police Officer Joseph William Shinners

Investigators had received information that the wanted subject was going to be in the area of a retail store at 50 West University Parkway, in Orem. Members of the Provo Police Department and the Orem Police Department located the subject in the parking lot and attempted to take him into custody. During the arrest the man opened fire, fatally wounding Officer Shinners. The subject was also wounded in the shootout and is in custody.
He is survived by his wife and young son.

I'm sure with you would have been able to capture the suspect single handedly, right? And you'd of done with nerves of steel and with no hesitation that this call could be last and you're wife and son would never see you again.

or how 'bout this one:

Police Officer Natalie Becky Corona

Police Officer Natalie Corona was shot and killed after responding to a report of a three-car vehicle crash near the intersection of 5th and D streets.

As Officer Corona was conducting an investigation at the collision scene, a person not involved with the crash rode up to the scene on a bicycle. As Officer Corona spoke to one of the persons involved in the crash the man then walked up to her and opened fire without warning, striking her. He shot her several more times after she fell to the ground before shooting randomly at others bystanders and vehicles.
She is survived by her parents.

Stupid woman officer not being aware of her surroundings! Of course a man riding up on a bicycle wouldn't have gun, who thinks like that?

One more? Sure.

WYTASHA LAMAR CARTER

Sergeant WyTasha Carter was shot and killed as he and another officer attempted to arrest two men who were breaking into vehicles at a bar in 900 block of Fifth Avenue North just before 2:00 am.

They were in the area on a special detail as the result of a recent rash of vehicle break-ins. A plainclothes officer spotted two subjects pulling on door handles of various cars and notified Sergeant Carter, who was in uniform and responded to the parking lot. The officer and Sergeant Carter stopped the two subjects and began to pat them down for weapons.

One of the men suddenly produced a handgun and shot officers, fatally wounding Sergeant Carter and critically wounding the plainclothes officers.

I guess there was no cop standing at a short distance to cover the other cops while they did the pat downs. Had there been, maybe Sergeant WyTasha Carter wouldn't have been killed and the bad would.

All of these were in January of this year. And that site has plenty more.

Cops have to make split second decisions to shoot or not and sometimes they choose wrong and lose their life over it. Tell me that cop who shot the man didn't have that thought in mind. Tell me what you would do, loser.

Also according to the database line of duty deaths are actually down 5% this year and gun related deaths down 22%. Either come at me with some more made up shit or finally take a second to sit down and realize that your knee-jerk assumptions without any evidence make you, by the dictionary definition, prejudiced.

Lately there have been a small number of cases of black youth violently attacking police officers, typically after being confronted for some crime these youth had committed, and then the police officers do the only reasonable thing and defend themselves using their guns.

Yes, the only reasonable thing for a well-trained law enforcement officer to do when violently attacked by unarmed black youth is to shoot them. After all, policing isn't supposed to be a dangerous job, so we can't expect police officers to endure any level of danger, no matter how insignificant. Any threat to an officer, no matter how minor, must be met with gunfire. This is, after all, "the only reasonable thing" to do.

In 2015, 129 American police officers died in the line of duty. 39 by gunfire, 7 by vehicular assault, 6 by bomb, 3 by assault. That's 55 cops killed by some form of violence (the rest died from automobile accidents, heart attacks, 9/11 related illness, etc).

In 2015, 1138 people died at the hands of on-duty American police officers. 554 of those people had firearms, and 223 of them were unarmed.

For every cop that is killed through violence, twenty Americans are killed by police violence. Of those twenty, four are entirely unarmed.

Source for cops killed by people, source for people killed by cops.

Alas, a lot of them that are killed on the job are killed while assuming that the person they're approaching isn't going to be violent.

Statistics show that while "a lot of" is hard to define, it isn't the majority of cases. https://www.odmp.org/search/ye...

And it's not just 2014 (a particularly bad year for police misconduct resulting in the death of an unarmed suspect). Feel free to look through the past few years and also note that firearms are never more than around 1/3 of police officer fatalities. Police have an irrational fear and you can tell if you've ever been pulled over. You get this feeling that you must comply with even an unlawful order or risk physical harm. Shit, I feel that way and I'm a white dude.

You are very much correct. And the sad part is, this fear is unjustified. Police officers are more likely to die from causes other than gunfire... And even more damning is that the number of officers killed by gunfire continues to decrease over time. Yet we still see numerous stories of police actions that result in unarmed people being killed.

https://www.odmp.org/search/ye...

Cops have this crazy idea that they are likely to be killed by an aggressive criminal. This is not backed by evidence. In 2012 there were 133 officer fatalities. That includes all workplace fatalities. Assuming the best case scenario that all 48 gunfire, 1 assault, 5 stabbing and 11 vehicular assaults were caused by criminals intentionally targeting police officers with deadly force that's 65 total for the whole year. Meanwhile there were 602 deaths of suspects due to police. You are looking at a 602:65 civilian to police killing ratio. Yeah, almost 10 to 1. If many of those 602 used life-threatening resistance, they weren't nearly as effective as the police in using deadly force. Remind me again why cops feel so threatened that they feel the need to shoot first when they are more likely to die from accidents than targeted violence? Me personally, I'd rather take a bullet and die from it than shoot a 12 year old over my own fear. Especially if it was my job to protect innocent lives.

https://www.odmp.org/search/ye...

Is military training also effective enough if we accidentally bomb only one hospital per war? Your acceptable failure rate is apparently a much easier standard than mine. Also, for your 602 suspects killed by police in 2012, there were 133 officer fatalities. That includes all workplace fatalities. Assuming the best case scenario that all 48 gunfire, 1 assault, 5 stabbing and 11 vehicular assaults were caused by criminals intentionally targeting police officers with deadly force, you are looking at a 602:65 civilian to police killing ratio. Yeah, almost 10 to 1. If many of those 602 used life-threatening resistance, they weren't nearly as effective as the police in using deadly force. Remind me again why cops feel so threatened that they feel the need to shoot first when they are more likely to die from accidents than targeted violence?

https://www.odmp.org/search/ye...

Bet you a dollar that only a fraction of police officers would want one. Even if it was statistically safer with a 1% failure rate.

And the 25% sounds incorrect. Thus far for 2013, Detective Eric Smith (Jackson Police Department, Mississippi) is the only officer killed by gunfire with his own weapon.

http://www.odmp.org/search?cause=Gunfire&from=2013&to=2013

They ARE heroes. They know that they could die in the line of duty, and they do what has to be done anyway.

Then I would have to say the REAL heroes are construction workers. According to this site, the US had 673,146 officers in 2005. The number of line-of-duty deaths? 165. That's a rate of 0.245 deaths per 1000 officers.

Compare that to this news that the rate of US construction worker workplace deaths is between 6 and 7 per 1000 workers, around 25 times the workplace death rate of police officers, and the construction workers don't necessarily get paid well for the risk.

Yes, the police do an important job, and no, it's probably not easy. However, I think this hero worship we lay upon them is ridiculous. (FWIW, the climber is definitely no hero either).

Irrelevant. A lot of the reason police brutality and harassment are so common is that the cops feel pretty certain that they're never going to be held accountable for their actions. In sharp contrast to TV fiction it's exceedingly rare for a cop to be killed in the line of duty in the US. Most cops die from illness or accidents. More cop killings will make the bastards think twice!

I don't know if this is your source, but I figure a citation couldn't hurt. Number of police deaths.

This is a common myth. Police officers are *rarely* killed on the job.

Once is enough to make the rest of them kinda skittish

1
2
3,4,5,6
7
8
9

In less than 10 years, from one police force, in Canada. There have probably been more, but I'm getting depressed searching for them.

Unless you take away all deadly weapons that does not work... lets see no more knives, baseball bats, hockey sticks, cars, or rakes. A gun is no more a deadly weapon than any of those items. The key is in how it is used. I respect all of the freedoms in the constitution even when it makes the job of law enforcement harder, we can't have both individual freedom and a crime free society. I personaly don't believe in more gun laws since they don't work, its been over 23 years since a new handgun could be legaly brought into Washington, DC. and its not helped them. More of these laws will just take money away from real law enforcement efforts to put criminals behind bars, give the officer on the strees the equipment and backup he/she needs, and more names will end up here.