this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
1948 points (98.0% liked)

tumblr

3393 readers
1069 users here now

Welcome to /c/tumblr, a place for all your tumblr screenshots and news.

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Must be tumblr related. This one is kind of a given.

  4. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.

  5. No unnecessary negativity. Just because you don't like a thing doesn't mean that you need to spend the entire comment section complaining about said thing. Just downvote and move on.

Sister Communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
gedaliyah@lemmy.world
1948
Tyranny (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago by Archer@lemmy.world to c/tumblr@lemmy.world
216 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] tswiftchair@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It’s just an example. Like Breonna Taylor, who did nothing wrong, whose boyfriend (Kenneth Walker) did nothing wrong, while the police did multiple things wrong and ended up killing her.

But even looking beyond individual examples, the data shows police killed over 1,200 people in 2023. That’s a problem.

Source

[–] MacNCheezus@lemmy.today -1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

1,200 out of how many interactions with the public? Or even out of how many attempted arrests? Remember this is a country of over 300 million people, and 1,200 is 0.0004% of that. For comparison, over 45,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents in 2021 (source), so your chance of being killed in a car accident is almost 40x as high as that of being killed by police.

Yes, I looked at your source, it has tons of graphs but conveniently seems to forget to include that.

[–] tswiftchair@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Among the 61.5 million U.S. residents age 16 or older in 2018 who had contact with police during the prior 12 months, 1.3 million (2%) experienced threats or use of force from police

Source (PDF)

Yes, there are 300 million but that negate the problem of police violence. You could make this argument about anything: gun violence, car crashes, even cancer. Their deaths are all a percent of a percent of the population.

No one is saying police violence is the number one killer in the country. The issue being raised is one side is saying it’s a problem and the other is saying actually it’s not a problem at all.

[–] MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Okay, but let's not move the goalposts now. If 61.5 million US residents had contact with the police, and out of those, 1,200 were killed, that's approx. 0.002%.

Again, let's compare that to the death by car accident rate, which is approx. 45,000/300,000,000 * 100 = 0.015%, which means driving a car is about 7.5x as dangerous to your life as interacting with the police. And I'm not saying there isn't a problem, but do you see why some people are saying this isn't really worth talking about?

[–] tswiftchair@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

…it’s not moving the goalposts. My initial comment stated it was a problem and that’s what my second comment said.

Again, cancer only kills ~600k in a year, which is only 2/10ths of 1% of the population. Better yet, it kills over 10x more people than car accidents. Does that mean car safety isn’t worth talking about?

And I’m not saying there isn’t a problem

This statement makes me think you are saying that:

…do you see why some people are saying this isn’t really worth talking about?

I do think this is worth talking about, just like I think the hundreds of death row convictions that have been overturned are worth talking about or the ~500k homeless Americans are worth talking about or the kids who have been killed in school shootings are worth talking about. These are all tiny percentages of people but they are still problems that are preventable so we should try to prevent them, which requires talking about them.

[–] MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 1 points 8 months ago

The "moving goalposts" was a reference to you going from number of police killings (which is relatively tiny compared to the number of police interactions) in your first comment to the number of people who experienced threats or use of force, which is 1,000x that.

But sure, let's talk about that. The way I read it, that means 98% of all police interactions are nonviolent, and out of those that do turn violent, 1 in 1000 end with the death of a suspect. Does that really sound outrageously high? Yes, I'm sure that number is lower in other countries were guns are illegal, but considering that they ARE legal here and the police have to deal with the fact that getting shot at is always a very real possibility, this doesn't sound like a crazy high number to me.

I do think this is worth talking about, just like I think the hundreds of death row convictions that have been overturned are worth talking about or the ~500k homeless Americans are worth talking about or the kids who have been killed in school shootings are worth talking about.

Okay, that's fine, I'm not saying you shouldn't. Just don't blow it out of proportion, I guess.