The overwhelming majority isn't great when you're talking risk of death.
Someone survives playing Russian Roulette the overwhelming majority of the time too. 5 out of 6 times, nothing bad happens at all. 1 out of 6 times, you die. Is that also not something you would consider a "life threatening situation?"
It's actually an interesting question. At what point does the risk of dying in a situation make it "life threatening"? I believe something like 1 in 291 police interactions end up with someone in the hospital or dead.
1/6 is literally 2 orders of magnitude smaller than 1/291. Nonsensical comparison.
More importantly, how many of those hospitalizations/deaths are justified? You realize that police are typically responding to crimes and dealing with criminals who tend to be a little more violent than the average person, right?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a bootlicker by any means, and I acknowledge there are serious policing problems in the US. But seriously questioning whether you're going to survive a traffic stop if you act reasonably is irrational paranoia.
I do formal risk assessments as a part of my job, in a context where people are often risking their lives. Both 1:6 and 1:291 as the chance of of severe injury or death are both firmly in the highest risk category under most calculations, meaning that for decision making, you should assume that it will result in death. Yes, they are two orders of magnitude different. But the comparison is not nonsensical.
Well then you are no doubt aware that these statistics skew overwhelmingly toward those who are noncompliant, combative, and/or felons, correct? Such that the actual rate for "average" people (including minorities, although their rate may be higher) is probably miniscule.
The implication of OPs post was that this was a frequent enough occurrence to legitimately fear interactions with police.
My point is that this is excessive, and partly a result of the eagerness that the media to latch onto and sensationalize stories of blacks being killed by police.
It is relevant to the discussion.
Edit: all of this particularly when negative interactions are going to very heavily skew towards people who are combative and/or noncompliant. This is total paranoia.
> all of this particularly when negative interactions are going to very heavily skew towards people who are combative and/or noncompliant. This is total paranoia.
But also in multiple times a year with people who are non combative and compliant.
What is the acceptable loss rate _you_ are willing to accept on others behalf?
Multiple times per year in a country with 300MM people and what, tens to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of police interactions yearly?
Obviously in the ideal case it would be 0 but that's not realistic and, again, the current rate is far lower than the original poster implied. That's my entire argument. A couple times a year in the news does not justify worrying about being killed during a traffic stop or some other typical, mundane interaction.
If it's that rare, then shouldn't police be stripped of immunity completely?
Let's follow your logic. You claim that police abuse of power is exceedingly rare. In that case, to earn the public trust, and to punish the few rare cases that police do abuse their power, shouldn't the people be as free as possible to pursue justice in those cases?
If police abuse is rare, that argues for even more strict laws against police abuse, less legal protection, and more empowerment of the citizenry to address those few rare cases.
>You claim that police abuse of power is exceedingly rare
I made no such claim. I said that being hurt or killed by an officer is an unlikely occurance for a typical person. That's all I'm arguing and there shouldn't be anything controversial about it.
Someone survives playing Russian Roulette the overwhelming majority of the time too. 5 out of 6 times, nothing bad happens at all. 1 out of 6 times, you die. Is that also not something you would consider a "life threatening situation?"
It's actually an interesting question. At what point does the risk of dying in a situation make it "life threatening"? I believe something like 1 in 291 police interactions end up with someone in the hospital or dead.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/b-upk072116....