Back in 2014 I asked Why aren’t there a lot more police shootings in the U.S.? (observing the ready-to-shoot posture of a police officer approaching a harmless-looking woman in a stalled vehicle) and then Should we have unarmed police? (at the beginning of the wave of American news media choosing to cover police shootings).
Now Mohamed Noor, an immigrant from Somalia, has shot Justine Damond, an immigrant from Australia. Had they both emigrated to Britain rather than the U.S., it seems safe to assume that Ms. Damond would still be alive in her pajamas. Mr. Noor, as a basic patrol officer, would not have been armed.
(From what I have read so far it is especially sad because Ms. Damond was calling the police for purely altruistic reasons, i.e., to report the possibility of an unknown stranger being a crime victim.)
Related:
- Murder of Kitty Genovese (a false New York Times story led to a debate about why so many people witnessed the crime but did not call the police); see also “Her shocking murder became the stuff of legend. But everyone got the story wrong.” (Washington Post)
- from “The Domestic Violence Parallel Track”: Professor Callie Marie Rennison, a criminology expert at the University of Colorado Denver, explained to us that crime of all kinds, including sexual violence and domestic violence, disproportionately affect lower income Americans and may be underreported: “I’ve done a 180 on this during my career,” she said. “Now I think ‘Why would anyone want to report a crime? What would they gain?'”
I always say: if you really want gun control, start with the police
Why not revisit the idea of hiring police officers that are Somali immigrants instead?
Police unions benefit when it comes time to negotiate wages and benefits if society wrongly believes police work is dangerous. This results in unfounded paranoia which permeates training procedures and officers mindset. You have to believe what you’r selling, right? Officer safety is paramount despite a poor understanding of the actual dangers. This paranoia is reflected in the acceptable use of deadly force where threats exist only in officers adrenaline riddled minds. One thing these bizarre shootings seem to have in common is that the officers, in a time of great confusion, chose to shoot rather than retreat or take cover which would buy time to assess and evaluate the situation with a more clear perspective. This seems to support the notion of officer safety is paramount to protecting and serving. Patrol law enforcement doesn’t crack the top ten most dangerous professions. A majority of law enforcement deaths are due to vehicular accidents which is also reflected in other jobs requiring considerable driving. In terms of on the job homicide, taxi drivers are twice as likely to be murdered than police. Support our men and women in yellow!
There’s nothing wrong with hiring immigrants per se but in the interest of meeting affirmative action quotas, qualification tests for police have been dumbed down considerably. Police work (which BTW is not particularly dangerous compared to say , driving a cab) is very desirable with strong job security, generous pension and other benefits and so they get many applicants for each opening. They could really have the cream of the crop with a rigorous test but this would exclude too many minorities. Really at this point they should just have separate tests or cutoffs by race so that they could at least test the white and Asian applicants rigorously.
I think our society is too violent to permit unarmed police but what needs to be done is to take away the legal impunity that we give police. What we need to do is substitute a “strict liability” type standard for shooting unarmed individuals. Up until now, all the police have to do is say “he made a sudden movement” or “I thought she had pulled a weapon” (when in fact it was a cell phone) and we let them go. Police are rational actors so if on the one hand they are weighing the risk of getting shot but on the other hand they are weighing the risk of spending may years in prison for having wrongly shot an innocent, they will make the right decision. In many places, people like cab drivers and convenience store clerks have concealed carry permits and are armed, and yet they don’t go around shooting their customers who make sudden movements, because they know that if they do and that “gun” turns out to be a cell phone they will go to jail for many years. But if you tell police (as they do in their training) that you should make it your paramount value that you always get to go home while at the same time letting them know that there are never any consequences when you “make mistakes in good faith” (i.e. kill people) then they are going to shoot a lot more people. As it is currently set up now, there is hardly any downside for wrongly shooting someone while if you DON’T shoot them you might get shot. Given that incentive structure it’s almost surprising that we don’t have even more police shootings.
@Jackie: see Chicago for an example of what police do when they feel there is to much public scrutiny on them:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/12/29/60-minutes-report-chicago-crime-up-police-response-down/
First responders in some areas would need firearms to be taken seriously. Otherwise it seems a reasonable idea. Accident happen. But I suspect a bigger improvement in overall outcomes (shooting or not) will be had by allowing higher IQ officer candidates (my understanding is they generally block too-high on reasons of cultural fit i imagine) and not lower ones.
*accidents happen
Just need to reduce human errors by: 1. providing a bulletproof shield to the police when talking to potentially dangerous subject; 2. using only non-lethal firearms (a net? a sprout of glue?) unless the shield receives lethal force; 3. reinventing a Robocop or remotely controlled cop.
> But I suspect a bigger improvement in overall outcomes
> (shooting or not) will be had by allowing higher IQ officer candidates
Higher IQ candidates will faster to figure out that shooting first,
asking questions later is a dominant strategy
Mistaken police shootings are rare in this violent nation of 326 mil. Bad idea to make policy based on rare events with emotional impact.
Rare event bull….. Police are killing unarmed kids and adults about 2 per week. So 100+ per year. Back when cops shot people who were basically bad guys. But in recent years the cops are killing bystanders and others who are in the wrong place. The training is now about shoot first and ask questions later. That is just wrong.
The average iq in Somalia is 68. Average IQ in South Korea is 106, yet we are bringing more and more Somalians who will forever be on welfare. I guess at least we know they will vote Democrat (at least until they implement Sharia law).
Jon: It is interesting that high IQ candidates are generally excluded though I’m not sure if this would be better or worse for the police.
Finn: I would pay some of my tax dollars to see police use a net
Zero tolerance for petty non-police crime has worked wonders according to the police; so maybe we should try zero-tolerance for police crime too.
I think that this is the idea of 3 month, per blog motto. Let’s replace police with nannies. Then we will be able to hire illegals for the job cheap, they are not just for driving in traffic! Unarmed police is to be barracks- and precincts – bound for sure, so we will be able to hire homemakers for the job too!