[atlih]

Just because there's a lot of news of US police brutality and little or no news from [insert country]'s police brutality, that data point could just as well mean that the news are more robust in the US than that there's less of it in other countries.

[williamdclt]

34.8 people murdered by the police per 10 million residents in the US, versus 3.8 in France, 1.3 in Germany and 0.5 in the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...).

It's pretty weak evidence, as the officer in the video is talking about violence during interview, not about killing civilians and I'll agree that these are different things. But it's more than enough to make me skeptical that you should be grateful that you're being interrogated by an american officer rather than an european one...

Very anecdotally, I've watched/read a lot of american news during the elections and the idea that they are "more robust" or more impartial than european news makes me chuckle (at least western europe as it's what I know, and not pretending that our journalism is laudable either)

[seamyb88]

There are some pretty poor attempts to justify it, but "it's not that our police are bad, it's that our News is brilliant" has to be up there.

[konjin]

The US isn't better or worse than Europe, it's different. Having lived in both the hypocrisy of Europeans when it comes to police brutality to gypsies is astonishing, doubly so since I'm half gypsy but white enough to get a free pass and get told how bad 'they' are.

[stretchcat]

Usually it's around this time that some European chimes in with some bullshit about how it's not racism when it's against gypsies. Hopefully this time they spare us.

[konjin]

Again Americans aren't any better. My blond grandmother was in a camp because she was a slav but somehow racism against white people doesn't exist.

Both are equally stupid, but in different ways

[username90]

How many gypsies gets killed per year by police in Europe? Compare that to how many people police kills in USA? There is pretty hard data that European police is drastically less violent overall.

It is possible that European police is more racist than US police, yes, but that wasn't what we were talking about. I'm pretty sure that US police is more violent against white people than European police is against gypsies, meaning that even with the racism European police is still much better.

[newacct583]

Largely true. It's not that the US police are less abusive per officer or per interaction, it's more than the US does way too much policing.

[bzbarsky]

How are you defining "way too much policing"?

Just looking at Western Europe (arbitrarily defined, granted, and leaving out some really small countries) in the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen..., the US has fewer police per capita than (in increasing per-capita order) Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Scotland, Belgium, Germany, France, Portugal, Italy, Spain. More police than (in decreasing per-capita order) England+Wales, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Norway.

The US has about 25% more police per capita than Norway. Germany has 63% more police per capita than the US does.

[dubbel]

That 63% number for Germany fits very well with the fact that police in Germany it's always patrolling in groups of at least 3. I could imagine that that lessens the pressure on any single officer. In the US, if you are overwhelmed, you might be done, while in Germany there is always another officer ready to help. In case of vehicle stops, one officer can interact with the driver comparatively relaxed, which helps to deescalate, while the second officer is covering their colleague.

That is not to say that we don't have problems with police brutality or cover-ups here, they are just less deadly usually.