This latest terrible situation where the man was gunned down is horrific. Yeah, yeah, we know there are thousands of policemen over the pond who are principled and beyond reproach but time after time we have had incidents about over-reaction. And before someone jumps in about the alleged stealing of a box of cigars we should note that the police gunman did not know about that. Involved in a confrontation between the officer and the man (black as the norm) the man knelt down and raised his hands asking not to be shot. He was shot but more than once even though unarmed. When this spread into a town protest the sheriff department went bananas running about like solders - and just as I said months ago this is an increasing situation in the country.

At least the State Governor showed more wisdom than the local police acting like someone had invaded the nation. No doubt pressed by the White House but none of this should have been needed there or in the other places where we have seen pictures and film of policemen beating up people with a vengeance or shooting like cowboys. In the majority of cases the officer or officers never get done and only oddly. Isn't this way things are going a bit worrying?

You do  make America look stupid.

There is NO country as bad as yours for police brutality at all because so many of your police come from a mental corner. Trying to compare us with you is so damn stupid as you are away out in front of not just of us.  Your cops are gun-ho because you have never grown up and have a Hollywood mentality problem. Better here for an officer to chase a suspect through a park with a truncheon rather than shoot the unarmed runner well over a dozen times.

There is NO country as bad as yours for police brutality [...]

You're delusional, RJ!
But that's not news...

He IS trying to be funny folks because the question is too direct and very true.

You do  make America look stupid.

There is NO country as bad as yours for police brutality at all because so many of your police come from a mental corner. Trying to compare us with you is so damn stupid as you are away out in front of not just of us.  Your cops are gun-ho because you have never grown up and have a Hollywood mentality problem. Better here for an officer to chase a suspect through a park with a truncheon rather than shoot the unarmed runner well over a dozen times.

You have no idea what you're babbling about. I have several family who are or were policemen and never harmed a soul and who served with distinction. Are there bad cops? Of course there are. Are most of them bad? Hell no.

The police service is sometimes criticised for incidents that result in deaths due to police firearms usage or in police custody, as well as the lack of competence and impartiality in investigations (in England and Wales only) by the Independent Police Complaints Commission after these events.[77] The Economist stated in 2009:
"   Bad apples ... are seldom brought to justice: no policeman has ever been convicted of murder or manslaughter for a death following police contact, though there have been more than 400 such deaths in the past ten years alone. The IPCC is at best overworked and at worst does not deserve the "I" in its name.   "
-- The Economist

Are all British policemen bad? You might know the answer.

I already acknowledged that there would be decent police but you DO have a national problem that cannot just be shoved away because of relations or friends etc are in that job. From one end of the country to the other we have repeatedly seen and had news of beatings, un-necessary shootings (oft with a surfeit of bullets even when a possible felon is unarmed. So it is not a case of sparsely happening offences. It has been an inherent thing and deeply rooted. And again as I stated the modern mobile phone has only betrayed what has been going on for decades. I also noticed that those who get miffed about the police situation totally ignored the news item I mentioned regarding the retired senior officer who publicly stated that too many joining the service are not suitable.

RJ: How much does it bother you, that things are getting better here...? Does it crimp your style?

Don't be afraid: It's just actual empirical statistics.

Are you being serious that things are getting better over there? How blind can a person be.

I've come to believe gun crime is over sensationalized on your telly as a way to justify the ridiculous laws you have.

Tho ridiculous laws and sensationalism are not in short supply anywhere so nothing has even been said yet.

Incidentally, I heard India is making "Selfie Free Zones" - because they have resulted it a few deaths. I wonder if that extends to the roof top of trains? (Ehh, who cares?) 

Are you being serious that things are getting better over there? How blind can a person be.

Plucked from Oakdale's reference.

Approximately 1,390 people were shot in New York city by the close of 2014.

In London the number of actual shootings has almost doubled from 123 to 236 in the last six months of 2014.

Number of Murders, United States, 2010: 12,996

Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2010: 8,775

Number of Murders, Britain, 2011*: 638
(Since Britain's population is 1/5 that of US, this is equivalent to 3,095 US murders)

Number of Murders by firearms, Britain, 2011*: 58
(equivalent to 290 US murders)

Number of Murders by crossbow in Britain, 2011*: 2
(equivalent to 10 US murders).

In 2014 the number of shootings in Toronto, Canada, a city about 1/4th the population of NYC, was 48!

The clear message is that if you live in the U.S., you should buy either a gun or a crossbow. Better yet, move to Canada.

A very clever attempt to try and drift away from the hard facts that there is an almost childish attitude to guns in the USA and that includes too many city police forces as well. The BBC reported the other day of this routine incident.

'Daniel Shaver of Texas  was killed in January after police came to his hotel room  responding to a report of a man pointing a rifle out a window, "Please don't kill me. he cried before officer Philip Brailsford shot him 5 times. The officer has been charged second degree murder.'  (saa routine like the sun and moon you poor folk)

This thread is about you police and too many of them are gun ho happ ytime after time. Something that cannot be equalled here in any way whatsoever.  Now you have a tv channel on gun selling  so proves my point that your country is like immature when it comes to fascination with guns. Time after time unarmed folk getting shot not just once but repeatedly and oh that is well, routine. There is thread here that continued from Opera on the guns issue which I ignore as it has went on long enough going nowhere.  So trying to draw some kind of equality with us on the firearms is daft to put it simply and as we are in this thread on police ours are unarmed. There is no mood here for regular police being armed but over the ocean with the daft attitude and so many iffy police you still have a problem. That recent incident I mention is a regular thing whether you like it or not!

West Virginia cop fired for not killing a man with an unloaded gun
(original story)

After responding to a report of a domestic incident on May 6 in Weirton, W.Va., then-Weirton police officer Stephen Mader found himself confronting an armed man.

Immediately, the training he had undergone as a Marine to look at "the whole person" in deciding if someone was a terrorist, as well as his situational police academy training, kicked in and he did not shoot.

"I saw then he had a gun, but it was not pointed at me," Mr. Mader recalled, noting the silver handgun was in the man's right hand, hanging at his side and pointed at the ground.

The man was Ronald D. "R.J." Williams Jr., 23, of Pittsburgh, and what happened in the seconds after Mr. Mader's initial decision is still being investigated by Mr. Williams' family as well as the West Virginia Civil Liberties Union. 

Mr. Mader, who was standing behind Mr. Williams' car parked on the street, said he then "began to use my calm voice."

"I told him, 'Put down the gun,' and he's like, 'Just shoot me.' And I told him, 'I'm not going to shoot you brother.' Then he starts flicking his wrist to get me to react to it.

"I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and deescalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop" situation.

But just then, two other Weirton officers arrived on the scene, Mr. Williams walked toward them waving his gun -- later found to be unloaded -- between them and Mr. Mader, and one of them shot Mr. Williams' in the back of the head just behind his right ear, killing him.

In a meeting with the chief and City Manager Travis Blosser, Mr. Mader said Chief Alexander told him: "We're putting you on administrative leave and we're going to do an investigation to see if you are going to be an officer here. You put two other officers in danger."

Mr. Mader said that "right then I said to him: 'Look, I didn't shoot him because he said, 'Just shoot me.' "

On June 7, a Weirton officer delivered him a notice of termination letter dated June 6, which said by not shooting Mr. Williams he "failed to eliminate a threat."

In the land of opportunities you can't miss an opportunity.
Looser, they say.

And wasn't there an incident with a 13 year old boy with an airgun/ When a policeman saw him with the thing he shot him several times. The traditions continue.

When dealing with a "fresh" news  story, it is reasonable to wait for the actual details to come out.

Here are some references to stories about police shootings that used to be fresh, but have become a trend commented on by a conservative in a conservative publication.

I've been looking closely at the police-shooting issue for many years, and I'm noticing a trend in many of the worst and most controversial shootings. The police make mistakes that heighten their own sense of danger, and then they "resolve" their own error by opening fire.

[...]

There is no greater violation of liberty than the loss of your own life in your own home at the hands of misguided, panicky, or poorly trained agents of the state.

I'd forgotten about this topic. I posted a presumably relevant entry here: https://thedndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=3745.msg84246#msg84246

The bigger problem may not actually be the systemic racism itself, but rather the propensity to violence exhibited by American police. Police here normally deescalates, while police in America can use all manner of excessive violence or even shoot if there's a "reasonable" threat. "We have a society where it's often considered reasonable to take a black person reaching into their waistband as a threat. The whole legal framework for determining whether lethal force is legal or not is premised on a flawed assumption that officers can determine what is reasonable."

But even so, assuming you fix the corruption and the violence, stopping minorities without any clear motive is at best a waste of tax dollars and a nuisance to those people. Splitting hairs over systemic racism vs propensity to violence sounds more like a way to avoid addressing either one.

A couple of days ago, police officers in Amsterdam were literally attacked (rammed). A handful of warning shots were fired. No one was shot or died while they subdued the suspect with pepper spray. Dutch police usually manages not to shoot people in situations like the West Virginia incident.

Compare the US trend to an incident in Finland, currently in the courts, where two guys had a plan to lure policemen by a fake emergency call, overpower the policemen and rob them of their equipment https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11520120

Two policemen arrived to the location after the fake emergency call. The one who stepped first out of the car was taken hostage. The second policeman stepped out of the car also, grabbed his gun and pointed at the situation, but didn't shoot, because the situation was that the hostage was used as human shield. The criminals shot "warning shots". So the second policeman called for backup by police radio.

The policeman taken hostage managed to turn to run away. The criminals shot after him and wounded him, but he made his escape and survived.

Soon later the backup arrived and a pursuit ensued. The criminals fired several shots during the pursuit, but were eventually caught. None of the policemen reportedly fired a shot. Nobody died.

The guys are facing a bunch of charges, most serious of them attempted murder against all the policemen.

Police culture + gun culture + car culture = 15 bullets for 1 bicyclist

Attorneys say independent autopsy shows Dijon Kizzee was shot 15 times

Attorneys representing the family of Dijon Kizzee said the 29-year-old man sustained 15 gunshot wounds and disputed the Sheriff's Department's assertion that he pointed a gun at deputies before he was shot in South L.A. last month.

At a news conference Tuesday, attorney Carl Douglas said deputies fired some of the shots when Kizzee was already on the ground, and that the gunfire didn't immediately kill him. He said those findings came from an independent autopsy commissioned by the family and displayed a body diagram showing the entry point of each wound.

"What this shows is he was alive and breathing and writhing in pain when the officers continued to stay away," Douglas said, suggesting that deputies did not render aid during those critical moments as Kizzee bled to death on Aug. 31. Kizzee's family members stood by, wearing black face masks that said, "Justice for Dijon Kizzee."

The shooting occurred in the 1200 block of West 109th Place in the Westmont neighborhood after the deputies alleged that Kizzee was riding his bicycle in violation of vehicle codes. The Times has identified the two deputies as a trainee and his supervisor.

A really disgusting nd horrible matter that is sadly very routine over the pond. Even allowing for decent ones in genera America has had a very long and wide terrible police service. In past times not so well known a fact of life until modern times and mobile phone cameras and other such advantages. Wee bit of a time ago mentioned a retired police captain with long service from Philadelphia I noted speaking on television. He openly stated that the country has a deep weakness in the poor standard and belligerence of far to many police and should not be in the job.