Let's do something fun and make a political journal post ;)
As published by a study from the federal police university, in 2015 police officers
- fired on human subject 40 times
- 34 times of those was in self defense
- 4 times it was to prevent an imminent crime
- 2 times it was to stop a suspect fleeing the scene
as a result of this, nationwide 10 people were killed by police fire and a further 22 were injured.
on top of this 48 "warning shots" were fired (intimidation fire deliberately not aimed directly at the suspects)
all this at a population of 82.1 Million people and 310 000 police officers nationwide.
One police officer was killed on duty in 2015 - in a knife attack (1.2 per year on average since 2000)
That's the statistics for Germany, in case you were wondering.
In comparison, the United States have roughly one million police force and 321 million population.
That means, 20% less police compared to Germany, but in 2015 there were 990 people shot by police officers, and 58 officers were killed on duty (41 of which by gunfire, the rest was assaults, vehicular assaults and similar).
That means the United States policemen are 30 times! more lethal ( aka kill 30 times more people per policeman) than the German police.
At the same time the United States policemen are 16 times more likely to be killed on duty (not counting accidents)
The yearly homicide rate (numbers of homicides per 100000 people) in the United States is 3.9 versus 0.9 in Germany - 4 times as high, but nowhere near as imbalanced as the police figure/
What does this little study tell us?
In Germany you don't need to fear the police. Even if you are committing a crime, the police will try to avoid killing you if you leave them a choice. There are some complaints that police isn't always responding quick enough if there's need for them, but generally Germany is considered quite a safe place to be in this day and age.
The image of the United States policeman is much worse. "Trigger happy" and "Shoot first, ask later" are some attributes often heard in respect to the US police force, along with allegations of corruption and racism - up to and including racial targeted killings by police men.
The statistics back up this image. Both of the police men as trigger happy killers as well as criminals disrespecting the law enforcing officers - and legal system - in such a way that they rather kill policemen than let themselves get arrested.
So what went wrong?
One thing is police force strength. The police in Germany is constantly complaining about being understaffed. So if the United States have one fifth less police, and at the same time a much higher crime rate, it's clear that the country is not giving enough resources to its law enforcement.
Or does it?
In the United States the Incarceration Rate (Number of people in Prison per 100000 citizens) is at an astonishing 698, (versus 78 for Germany) That means for around every 150 people, one is in jail.
(In Germany only one in 1300 people is in jail) That's 2.2 million people in United States jails in total!
A person in jail costs the state around $30000 per year. A police officer on average earns around $80000 a year.
That means for the cost of having ten times the incarceration rate (2 million times 30000$) you could save 60 billion dollars every year, or instead hire an additional 700000 police officers. That would be 40% more than Germany instead of 20% less. Or instead you could opt for the same force strength but give them better training and equipment.
The problem in my opinion is that the United States legal system focuses on *punishment* of the criminal. If someone did bad, he must endure bad in turn in equal amount - resulting in unreasonably long jail terms and high incarceration rates. Jails are called "correction facilities" but effectively people are sent there to rot away so no one has to deal with them - for as long as possible. No "correction" takes place, in fact usually criminals get "hardened" in jail and come back way worse than before, especially for first offenders.
The German legal system is focused on crime prevention as well as reintegration of criminals into society - aka "fixing the problems instead of hiding them away" as a result the sentences are a lot less than in the states. There is no death penalty, but also no "accumulation of sentences" that could result in hundreds of years of jail time - if you committed crimes, you are sentenced based on the overall severity, which is usually dominated by the worst crime you committed.
That doesn't always work, ex-convicts have a hard time reintegrating here, too, and there's a percentage of repeat offenders - but its a lot lower than in the US.
All in all, it's a different paradigm.
If your goal is a safe society, respected police and reasonable expenses for law enforcement, it's pretty clear to me, which paradigm is superior.
The united states police man sees it as his duty to "stop criminals". Instead he should see it as his primary duty to "stop citizens from becoming criminals." For that it would require a fundamental reform of not only the police, but also the legal system backing them up.
If a petty thief or a drug dealer has to expect being sentenced to 300 years in prison, its kinda understandable that he'd rather kill a police officer or be killed in the attempt, than be captured.
And if police force were adequately trained, equipped and supervised, you wouldn't end up with racist killers among them thinking they were doing society a favor.
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7 years, 6 months ago
22 Sep 2016 14:32 CEST
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