OVERKILL: American police kill one suspect every day

[kpete]

The Ferguson riots
Overkill

Police in a Missouri suburb demonstrate how not to quell a riot
Aug 23rd 2014 | FERGUSON | From the print edition



American police kill one suspect every day
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Smug television broadcasts in Russia and China have wildly exaggerated the sickness of which Ferguson is a symptom. But it is real enough. The police in and around Ferguson have shot and killed twice as many people in the past two weeks (Mr Brown plus one other) as the police in Japan, a nation of 127m, have shot and killed in the past six years. Nationwide, America’s police kill roughly one person a day (see chart above).

This is not because they are trigger-happy but because they are nervous. The citizens they encounter have perhaps 300m guns between them, so a cop never knows whether the hand in a suspect’s pocket is gripping a Glock. This will not change soon. Even mild gun-controls laws tend to fail. And many Americans will look at the havoc in Ferguson and conclude that it’s time to buy a gun, just in case.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21613272-police-missouri-suburb-demonstrate-how-not-quell-riot-overkillhttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/22/1323835/-American-police-kill-one-suspect-every-nbsp-day

[Fred Sanders]

1. The public police protect and serve in other nations are not themselves armed to the teeth.

The police have a right to defend themselves, in general, against a locked and loaded citizenry.

The police I believe live in fear of their patrol jobs in a nation bristling with lethal weapons of war.

FEAR is the common thread that makes it all so insane.

Remove the fear, remove the weapons from the public and police, disarm and demilitarize all parties.