“According to the FBI, police have reached a two-decade high in fatally shooting suspects. Law enforcement officers killed 461 people in 2013. It’s the third year in a row that fatal shootings by police have increased. Actually, a correction: We are seeing an increase in the number of killings by police reported to the FBI.” – Violence by Americans Is Down, Unless Those Americans Happen to Be Police Officers [via reason.com] [h/t DC]

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61 COMMENTS

      • In the past ten years, dogs have killed cops exactly never. While there are no “official” numbers (gee, I wonder why), cops have been estimated to kill three dogs every day.

      • Information liberation? Do yourself a huge favor and quit reading that junk. I didn’t look at it long enough to find the articles about the U.S. government using demolitions to bring down the twin towers but I’m sure they’re there.

        • You do know that W personally led the navy seel teem that planted the explosives on the levee, in a chevy, and entirely destroyed the City of New Orleans?!?!?! Right!!!!!!!! 😉

        • I’m not endorsing that site. It was just a convenient link.

          Here’s the link to the original story from Buffalo’s WGRZ.

          Collateral Damage: Police shooting dogs in line of duty
          http://www.wgrz.com/longform/news/investigations/2014/11/14/buffalo-pd-dog-shootings/19012631/

          According to use of force reports requested by WGRZ-TV under the Freedom of Information Law, Buffalo Police shot at 92 dogs from Jan. 1, 2011 through Sept. 2014. Seventy-three of those dogs died. Nineteen survived. In comparison, Buffalo’s numbers more than triple the amount of dog shooting incidents involving police in Cincinnati, a municipality of similar size. The New York City Police Department, the nation’s largest force, reported killing half as many dogs as the Buffalo Police Department in its two most recent annual discharge reports.

  2. For officer safety!
    Or, you know, they could get more cardio and start wearing seatbelts. But shooting people works too.

  3. Crime may be down in general but where are the increases in police fatal shootings coming from? Is it randomly distriubted through the general population which would be an indication of an increase in police abuse or is it occuring in the same gang infested crime ridden neighborhoods where the bulk of America’s murders happening? I also note that this the highest rate in two decades. I wonder why it was so high 20+ years ago?/sarc.

    • Such a distribution could be influenced by other factors like officers or departments handling people differently. I would expect that an officer or department dealing with violent felonies with a higher frequency might have a tendency to be of a different mindset when it comes to dealing with members of the public.

      • Not sure what your point is. Do you mean that people who handle gangbangers have a more shoot first ask questions later attitude than those who patrol upper middle class neighbhorhoods or do you mean that a police officer who spends most of his time dealing with gangbangers will act the same way when he encounters the upper middile class?

        Consider the source. Reason Magazine was squarely on the side of Michael Brown and the gangbangers at least in the beginning. Not sure if they have issued a “never mind” yet.

        • Libertarians are an extremely divers bunch, and Reason mag’s evolution reflects this. Clearly an oversimplification, but most libertarians generally fall into two factions, both of which start from the premise “Just leave me alone and…..” It’s what comes after the “and” that differentiates one libertarian from another.

          If it’s “……and I’ll take care of myself and my family and take responsibility for my actions”, then you have the more self-reliant, individualist faction, which has some overlap with conservatives.

          If it’s “…….and let me do whatever I want, and to Hell with everyone else in society and how my actions impact them”, then you have the more selfish, anarchic faction, which has more overlap with liberals.

          For the decade or so I subscribed to Reason, starting in the late 1990s, the magazine was more the former faction. I dropped it when it shifted too far into the latter faction.

          It became an echo chamber of “Gimme drugs….,gimme drugs…..throw open wide all of the borders…..it’s a police state because I got a speeding ticket today…..every government employee from the local public librarian to SEAL Team Six is a jack booted thug champing at the bit to enslave you” kook talk.

          I hope someday they turn it around, because they used to write some of the most engaging, daring, thought-provoking copy out there. Today, though, I don’t consider them even entertaining, let alone trustworthy or informative.

        • Those two “and” types you pigeon-holed are not mutually exclusive therefore not differentiated enough to be two distinct groups nor all-encompassing of libertarians in general. Reads to me like you’ve got yourself a hefty bag of broken stereotypes you lug around to justify your opinions of things you don’t understand. That’s cool. Most people do.

        • @Jonathan

          Reason was co-opted by Murry Rothbard and his followers who are not friends of a Constitutional Republic. Since they don’t recognize governing institutions beyond the immediate group their focus became fixed on what can be called social rights like sex rights and drug rights intead of what are considered rights in the American Constitutional tradition. The Rothbardians fallback position defaults to natural rights. However, since most of them are athiests Natural Rights don’ t really exist since they are axiomatic principles outside of human influence. Without a supreme being to specifiy your natural rights they become simple what ever the guy with most guns says they are.

        • I was merely proposing that reasons for a distribution like you speculated on might be a result of more complex underlying factors than just that there are a lot of criminals in an area. It might be confounded by a higher than normal tendency of some officers to use force in those areas.

          I wasn’t making a specific statement. Rather, I was speculating on something that might be a factor.

  4. That “reported to FBI” line is rather curious. If you don’t tell the FBI about something does that mean it never happened?

    • No, it just means it wasn’t counted in the statistics. The implication is that killings by police are actually higher that what the FBI is saying.

      • Pretty sure, reported or not, FBI does track every officer involved shooting in the country. Now, whether they are releasing all the data to 3rd parties or not is a problem. Sitting on that would definitely make citizens believe there is a coverup going on, even if there is not, which increases the public’s distrust of LEOs all the way down to the local level. Something you would think FBI would NOT want to do, since they keep claiming they want to build the bonds of trust between people and law enforcement. Bit of a conundrum for them, seeing as even the perception of lying increases the level of distrust exponentially in today’s social media driven society.

          • See? The simple fact is that FBI does, in fact, whether they share the data or not, collect and collate information about ALL police shootings, most especially those of a controversial nature. Valuable leverage to be had in all that. So FBI manipulating data, or simply lying, is not outside the realm of possibility. Which was my point to begin with.

        • I read an independent study that put the number at about 640 ish if I recall. In a country of 300,000,000 I though even that served low. The study was just a guy who had made the issue his pet cause and had compiled the data through news stories. The accusation was that the stay want even tracked at all, which hampers his credibility in light of the FBI numbers.

        • It would only be a conundrum for them if they believed that the public had a good chance of finding out. If they believe that they can lie and, with high probability, not get called out on it…

          • Well, since we ARE finding out it is most certainly a conundrum for them. Their very actions are turning people against them, and the easily observed facts can not be hidden in this age of instant communication. This is the primary reason the Obama Admin is pushing “net neutrality”, they believe they can use it to silence citizens. Their efforts to spread disinformation have utterly failed, so silencing people is their only alternative. And it is not going to work.

            FBI has an engrained culture which holds it outside elected officials and Presidential Administrations. The question is will this stand in the coming months or will it collapse and turn them into just another secret police arm as has happened in so many other countries.

          • And yet you keep defending the enemies of America and the human race at every turn. Typical Democrat Party c*nt.

          • Really? You keep defending and supporting rioters, looters and murderers. Those actions make you a Democrat. Lie all you want, your actions are all the proof needed. Now, go ahead, tell me you didn’t vote for Pres Obola twice. Need a good laugh this AM.

        • I don’t vote democrat. Every now and again, I hold my nose and vote republican. In fact, I’m currently registered republican because I needed to cast my vote for a good man in the primary. I’ve attended republican central committee meetings and have worked functions/attended executive meetings for the TEA party (I’m not a TEA party member either, BTW). I also worked on a republican representative’s campaign team. I was one of the key circle of about 7 doing planning and whatnot with the candidate. I’ve never done anything of the sort for any democrat candidate or party organization.

          (FYI: If you were on Zello a while back, I believe that you and I have had long conversations. 😉 )

        • How in the hell do you get that I’m a democrat from that comment?!?!

          – AFAIK, I have never voted democrat (might have many, many moons ago but now don’t recall ever doing so) and never been registered as a democrat. Most often, I am a registered republican.
          – I don’t agree with the democrat platform.
          – I have never assisted with a democrat campaign.
          – I encourage others to, at the very least, not vote democrat.
          – I am registered as a republican since I voted in the latest republican primary. Prior, I was registered independent for a while.
          – I have attended and participated in republican central committee meetings.
          – I have attended and participated in TEA Party meetings.
          – I have attended and participated in TEA Party executive meetings.
          – I have assisted with public outreach events for the TEA Party.
          – I worked closely on a republican campaign and personally with the candidate.

          • Sure, sweety, you are a TEA Party supporter because everyone knows the TEA Party is all about rioting and looting and murder. Whatever you say, cupcake.

  5. Perfect example of people that JUST DONT CARE. When the camera was zoomed in on the guy, he was sitting there calm as can be. Kind of chilling actually.

    These are the type of people we would encounter in a DGU situation. Don’t reason with them, they JUST DONT CARE. Stay safe.

      • Maybe I didn’t word it the best. My point was, this guy didn’t care about consequences of any of his actions. Just like the thug on the street won’t when he is holding you up.

        • And I have to, still, disagree. Your average “thug on the street” IS very worried about consequences. They don’t want to get caught. This guy had a totally different agenda, as one commenter above has pointed out. He wanted the po-po to drop hammer on him. It is a perversion of the Catholic and muslim concepts of martyrdom. And it is just as sick and dangerous as islam’s death-worship terrorist cult. It crosses ethno/religious lines and gives very ruthless people a very potent weapon.

  6. Another question? In the, very, long time in which every cop on duty was focused on 1 guy in a truck how many other crimes were simply being ignored?

    • They did a good job of cracking down on the seedy world of black market newspaper delivery during that time.

  7. Can’t not expect our fine Law Enforcement not use all that nice free military hardware they get. Who else do they have but to use on the under equipped crooks dogs and babies when they are doing noknock warrents on the wrong addresses.

  8. This incident, apparently in Los Angeles, CA, and apparently the subject being Hispanic and very likely a gang member. Here in So Cal the gang members have used shooting Police Officers as both an initiation right and a means to gain status within the gang. Consistently, when a gang member gets cornered for something by LAPD he takes a fatalistic attitude where he forces the Police to shoot him or let him go, but surrender to the Police is not an option. Since letting him go is not an option for the Police, the incident usually ends-up in the subject being fatally shot by the Police. The Hispanic gangs have a very strict set of rules regarding “personal honor” and loyalty to the gang, being Hispanic and their “relationship” to the Police (generally antagonistic). The upshot is that whenever a situation develops as shown in the loudlabs.com video, the outcome is pretty much predictable…dead suspect. This is not so much a matter of Police “Brutality”, but a clash of cultures that have drawn inflexible lines between one another and one side will not yield and the other cannot yield.

    Having read and seen hundreds of news articles that tell the exact same story, but with different names involved, I am pretty confident my description of the root cause of the matter is accurate. I’m not pretending any defense or condemnation of either side, just stating what I have observed and concluded being a long time So Cal resident. There are occasional “exceptions” to the pattern, but MOST of the time it turns out as the video shows.

    I would guess the rise in Police Shootings does involve a higher percentage of Black and Hispanic subjects (victims) and that this kind of impasse exists between minority racial communities and the local PD’s in towns and cities across the Country.

    • I am always amusded at the attitude shown by many folks here about the legitimacy of a shooting depending on who did it. For example how many of those up in arms about Darren Wilson would have been cheering if the little Asian guy pulled out a Glock and wasted Michael Brown? It seems that many of the armed intelligensia can recognize a bad actor and the kind of person who might be the subject of your DGU but somehow immediately assume bad motives by police when they shoot them.

      • You trust the police (government agents with guns) to not lie to protect their own?

        Once police are held to the same high standards that non-police are held to, then come talk to us.

        • The default position when a person assaults a police officer while fleeing the scene of a crime and gets shot is that it is a justfied shooting. Your positions seems to be the criminal gets the benefit of the doubt. FYI if the little Asian guy shot Brown the gangbanger and race hustler crowd would have rioted anyway.

        • @tdiinva: I believe that the Michael Brown shooting was probably justified. I don’t believe that the John Crawford shooting was. Lastly, I followed the Trayvon Martin incident all the way through, even simultaneously watching a live feed of the trial and a couple of media streams all of the way through. (I cleared my schedule and did nothing but follow the trial.) I firmly believe that the Martin shooting was justified.

          With all of that out of the way… I often suspect the cop first because the cop is being paid to do a job and ought to be held to a higher standard as he is operating on privilege. A non-law enforcement DGU is based upon rights and not so much on privilege. I will always put a higher burden upon government and its agents initially.

  9. They also cook the books in Chicago. Cop killings happen quite often where no one sees anything but the cops. As an absurd aside did anyone else see Garry “streetlight” McCarthy in Israel “advising” the Israelis on security? Everything but carrying a gun 🙂

  10. We had the discussion here last week about the fbi trustworthiness, adjusting of numbers, accountability, and the current administration and so on…..

    • UCRs are also self-reported, and thus prone to “massaging” for political reasons. Chicago PD is famous for it, and I wouldn’t doubt that NY does the same, specifically reducing the severity of crimes reported so that it appears crime rates are falling.

    • That article can’t be right.

      Why just the other day I was talking to a police recruiter who said that our local police needs MRAPs, military gear and snipers “because police are outgunned by bad guys with machine guns”…and “because of terrorists since 9/11.”

      Meanwhile, the crime rate in the county is the lowest it’s ever been since they started keeping records about 100 years ago.

  14. (Come here, come here, come here)
    I’ll take your photo for ya
    (Come here, come here, come here)
    Drive you around the corner
    (Come here, come here, come here)
    You know you really oughta
    (Come here, come here, come here)
    Move out of California

    -the vines / get free

  15. Quote of the Day: Police Killings of Civilians on the Rise. Or Not. Or, YES, ’cause local PD’s don’t ‘officially’ track, nor submit any comprehensive data to be independently verified, Farago.

    Policestate? Call it reality-aphorism: it’s here, to stay, until the mechanism funding it all go bankrupt, the way of Maywood, CA.

    Don’t give a frak about the numbers, other than the fact that the entire notion of ‘govt police force’ is utterly UNConstitutional, PERIOD, as they’re not de facto, but are de jure standing armies: local oink oinks get federal funds, have same to similar command hierarchy as the military, nowadays, even more militantly aggressive ROE than military actually fighting real terrorists overseas, same to similar BDU, not to mention the same to similar war-toys.

    It walks, talks, quacks, and kills like one, it’s a muthafrakking standing army, PERIOD.

  16. stop calling us civilians! that there is a war time term to decipher friend or foe. we are citizens! just like any law dawg. STOP CALLING US CIVILIANS!!! we are citizens. it feeds the ‘us vs. them’ mentality and you all should be as mad as me and call them out on it every chance you get. please. CITIZENS, CITIZENS, CITIZENS!

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