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Comment on What's the point of American police saying "Show your hands" after they shot a man?

You say that but most cops still will go their whole career without firing their gun statistically.

you know the other part of that statistic, right? that those who do tend to get into substantially more situations that ‘require’ lethal force in the first place. Some of this has to do with where they happen to work… cops working in departments within large cities are much more likely than cops out in the burbs or sticks. Part of it is also their specific occupational specialty- SWAT for example is just put into more situations where it’s necessary, compared to state highway patrol vehicle inspectors. or the Federal Reserve Cops.

Plus hand guns are crazy hard to aim over any distance

Yeah, that’s true enough when your average cop has less than 15 hours of range time annually, and only quals out once a year. The vast majority of distance for police engagement is 3-6 feet.

Cops need to be better- every round that misses it’s target is potentially some random kid caught in the crossfire. Personally, cops need way more training on not going to lethal force in the first place. but that’s a different topic.

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Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Police in Finland regularly stop suspects by shooting them into leg which according to many Americans is impossible due to how inaccurate pistols are. That apparently means the alternative is then to dump the entire mag into the torso.

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- FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Got a proper source on that claim there? Cuz… yeah.
  
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  - be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I did find a great many links to this article, but so far nothing to support that they do it regularly.
    
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/world-news/finland-stabbing-suspect-shot-in-leg
    
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    FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    you’ll note that they don’t say he was shot in the thigh intentionally. I suspect that they were aiming center mass and were just off. it happens. hitting a running target is… well here, the FBI tallies a ~47% chance to hit between 5-15 feet. (this is comparison to an 87% chance to be hit if you’re standing still.)
    
    Shots to extremities happen, nobody is saying they don’t. But doing so on purpose is almost impossible. Especially on a running target. Even with a rifle.
    
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  - Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Situations where Finnish police result to using their firearm are rare to begin with but you can just google it and find several articles with examples of this.
    
    Since 2000, ten people have died as a result of use of force by law enforcement officers in Finland. This includes a prison guard shot by accident during a training exercise, and a detainee who died of undetermined causes after being fired at with a taser.
    
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    FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    not to be a stickler, but the source makes no mention of it being on purpose. I suspect you won’t find a source that makes that claim.
    
    Also, as for the general use of force in Finland vs America, it’s two different scenarios. Vast cultural differences in general… but for some perspective… there’s 2 national and 11 local agencies in finland, comprising ~7.5k cops. (per statista), all of which have direct over sight form the Ministry of the Interior.
    
    For comparison, in the US there are 17,985 agencies, ranging from the federal government to local police to sherifs and state police. All of whom have their own oversight systems. we have more agencies than you have cops. and all of those agencies have their own, unique requirements for training and qualifications. hell, some states, they don’t even have to have any education outside of highschool or GED. (actually in many places… that’s preferred. for reasons.)
    
    Americans are also rather more violent than Fins. Just saying.
    
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- AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  How regularly?
  
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  - 520@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Very rare. You can usually count the annual deaths by law enforcement on your fingers.
    
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AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

cops need way more training on not going to lethal force in the first place. but that’s a different topic.

Yeah, that tends to be my response as well. I usually try not to second guess a stressful situation where I wasn’t there, but all too often it really seems like lethal force is the goto response in way too many cases.

The example above where a female cop killed a junkie approaching her …. The post was intended to demonstrate multiple shots may be necessary, but what I saw was that after telling the guy to stop, the cops only option was lethal force. I’d really like to see some of these anecdotes show cops trying other options, even if it eventually escalated to lethal force

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- FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  So, like, there’s a lot to be learned from UK cops in how they handle knife-armed subjects. In general, you tend to fight how you train; so when you spend a lot of the focus of your training on lethal force, that usually becomes where your focus is.
  
  For example that lady that shot a guy, shouting ‘TAZER TAZER TAZER’, even though she drew her firearm. What I assume she meant to go for tazer, but in the stress of the moment, muscle memory took over and she spent hours practicing her pistol draw and not much at all practicing the taser draw. (she could have meant to do it, too, shouting tazer for the body camera, but while recognizing that… i wasn’t there and I don’t know her.)
  
  Increasing training on less-lethal or non-lethal methods; and actually training soft skills in the same way as firearms is how you solve that. The other thing, personally, that we really need to ramp up recruitment for police. This gets you a lot of things. Enough bodies means you can now spend a few hours a week training something rather than one or two classes a year, spread it out; physical training, yes, but soft skills like negotiation, deescalation and the basics of EDP-stuffs. the other reason is, then you can start firing all the fucking assholes. (which this is how you get institutional change. you change the institution by changing the poeple that make it up.)
  
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corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I hope you can move to somewhere safer.

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