Imagine being a cop and having to deal with stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k4L97igDjY They literally save this man's life and he kills the guy who saved his life. Cops don't work in a safe space. Years of working in a violent and hateful environment must take a serious toll on them.
While there's a kernel of validity to what you're saying, cops in every state and every nation have to deal with a violent and hateful environment. The variation in outcomes suggests something else is at play.
Variation of outcome in other countries can be easily explained by low availability of weapons (that the case of most places): policemen are less susceptible to make use of their weapons when people they arrest as low probability of holding one.
While I grant that that is true, and likely a contributing factor, it's worth noting that police have other disabling weapons at their disposal. The ease with which one, and the other, are deployed again suggests that it's not simply a matter of "need to defend one's self against possible violence" differing between regions.
How many videos, at this point, are out in public of police taking out tasers at routine, non-violent traffic stops? Of chemical spraying non-violent protestors? And of shooting unarmed people? The famous photo of the UC Davis photo casually spraying seated students at a campus protest makes the case more eloquently than I can: that was not a person in fear of their life, and we've created a system where that person avoided criminal prosecution (https://humansarefree.com/2014/04/the-cop-who-pepper-sprayed...). When that happens, it seems an offense to logic to reach to "well, our police are more violent because our criminals are more violent." It may be true, but it's outright offensive to their victims not to pause, first, at "...and because their violence goes unpunished." Pointing out the risk they are exposed to is less plausible when we see violence undertaken in non-violent situations, and where they do not see criminal prosecution for wildly disproportionate responses.
How many events have we learned of where unarmed people providing no violent resistance were killed by officers who didn't suspect violence? The death of Eric Garner in NYC involved an unarmed man, stopped by the police for selling single cigarettes, who was pinned down and choked to death, while his hands were up and he was wheezing and begging for air. Those officers were neither permanently removed from duty, nor prosecuted. It's difficult to interpret "slowly choked an unarmed and unresisting man to death" as "acting in response to fears of the violence possible in the situation." Situations like that make it highly unlikely that violent police are a simple correlation to violent criminals, because that would at least suggest that the police violence is constrained to violent and reasonably-possible-to-escalate-to-violence situations. Which isn't what we see riots breaking out over.
Imagine being born into a society that brutally enslaved your ancestors for centuries. And after that ended, the society continued to severely oppress those who look like you in countless ways -- through savage violence, terrible government policies, and pervasive racist cultural norms both blatant and subtle -- even to this very day. Years of living in such a society must take a serious toll on them.
I like to share this video with critics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfi3Ndh3n-g to show how police have to be ready to go from 0 to 100 within seconds in order to not be killed. Notice the first thing the activist notices when he's done with the simulation: "I never realized how importance compliance is."
I watched this video and I think it presents a skewed perspective on things to lead you towards a certain outcome. I think it's worth questioning the underlying assumption throughout that video, which is that guns need to be involved in these scenarios at all.
In the first scenario, if someone chooses to randomly shoot a police officer then nothing can be done. This is generally true throughout society. If people choose to randomly shoot others they can mostly succeed. This is not an argument for an officer having a gun, but for less guns to be involved in society in general. Even if the activist or newscaster had a gun drawn from the beginning the outcome easily could/would have been the same.
In the second scenario, there's no reason for a gun to be involved over something less lethal like a taser or a baton. This is essentially a misdirect after people are freaked out from the first scenario.
In the third scenario, again why is a gun involved? Similarly a taser or baton would get the job done. Or actually using other tools like handcuffs rather than shakily pointing a gun at someones back, which is begging for an accident.
All of this to me ironically paints a picture of guns unnecessarily escalating situations, rather than the point they were trying to make.
Also watching that video, the cops were grabbing at his waist where there was a gun, If the guy was just saved by firefighters he may be in an altered state so antagonizing him about carrying seems pretty reckless.
I'm not excusing the criminal. He made a choice, but the power of video. Other cops should learn from it. Could that situation have ended safely with some other approach.
That second voice, "lift up your shirt".
it stopped being a conversation with 1 officer and became two people giving orders to 1 guy.
I assume from the shooter's perspective the cop wants to search a him, and he knows he has an illegal firearm on him. Depending on the state and his status as a repeat offender, he could be facing life in prison for that. So, suddenly murdering the person who is going to put you in jail for the rest of your life seems like a zero sum game to a sociopath.
> So, suddenly murdering the person who is going to put you in jail for the rest of your life seems like a zero sum game to a sociopath.
"you win and I go to jail forever / I win and you die" actually literally is a zero-sum a game. People fight/support wars over even completely unrealistic fears that they might one day lose even a bit of their freedom.
Maybe you mean that deciding not to voluntarily lose that zero-sum game makes someone a sociopath. And, tbh, in that situation, I would rather surrender than kill (for a lot of reasons, both moral and practical). However, I also wouldn't call someone a sociopath for deciding to kill in order to avoid a life sentence. "Live Free or Die" is literally the motto of the state of New Hampshire.
If I were about to arrest someone who knew they were going to jail for life, I would go into that situation expecting a life-and-death struggle. Even if that person were a completely balanced and mentally healthy person. Anything less seems a bit naive.
Before you downvote this comment, please consider that this is literally true.
In 2018, 150 US law enforcement officers died due to work related reasons. There were about 690,000 officers employed in America at that time. This means 21.7 out of every 100,000 officers died due to a work related reasons.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that about 25 out of every 100,000 driver/sales workers died due to work related reasons.
For both jobs, most of the deaths were accidental.
