[vorpalhex]

In 2015 (latest year I have good data for), there were just shy of 54,000,000 police interactions in the US.

The same year, there were 1,104 recorded police uses of force.

That's 0.00002% of interactions if I did my math correctly. Even if you think the use of force data is a magnitude off, that's about the same risk factor as shark attacks and lightning strikes.

[jakelazaroff]

Oh, I think your use of force data is more than one order of magnitude off. Police shot and killed 993 people in 2015 [1]. It's a safe assumption that fatal shootings are the tip of the iceberg in terms of use of force, not the overwhelming majority of cases.

And use of force is only one type of lawbreaking in which cops regularly engage. Buffalo News compiled over 700 instances of sexual misconduct by officers over 10 years [2]. Anecdotally, I see police commit traffic infractions all the time.

None of this is really relevant to my question, though, so I'll pose it again: how much must we pay for police officers to obey the laws they're supposed to enforce?

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic... (filter by 2015)

[2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/bncore/projects/abusing-the-law/dat...