[bell-cot]

Um, yes - bad cops are bad, and there are plenty of bad cops. Very bad.

Might anyone point to an example (current or historical) of a large, complex, socially diverse society which has managed to tightly control actually-serious crime, while also managing to keep the "bad cop stuff" well below the level which America has been stuck with in the past ~half of a century?

[iudqnolq]

A randomly selected citizen has a smaller chance being abused by the police in any rich country and nearly any poor country.

People can point to horrible police misconduct cases in other countries, but you need an immense amount of police misconduct to reach American levels.

Here's a list of the top ten countries ranked by police killings per year. Note this isn't adjusted by population. Note also that the other countries on this list aren't the sort you'd expect to produce good statistics.

    Philippines — 6,069+ (avg 2016-2021—includes only deaths during anti-drug operations)
    Brazil — 5,804 (2019)
    Venezuela — 5,287 (2018)
    India — 1,731 (2019)
    Syria — 1,497 (2019)
    El Salvador — 1087 (2017)
    United States — 946 (2020)
    Nigeria — 841 (2018)
    Afghanistan — 606 (2018)
    Pakistan — 495 (2017)

[arcticfox]

Why did you specifically select the non-population adjusted list?

Top 10 Countries with the Highest Rate of Police Killings (per 10 million residents — U.S. ranks 33rd):

  - Venezuela — 1829.9 (2018)
  - El Salvador — 1703.8 (2017)
  - Syria — 819 (2019)
  - Philippines — 556.5 (2016-21 avg)
  - Nicaragua — 522.7 (2018)
  - Jamaica — 472.7 (2018)
  - Trinidad and Tobago — 339.7 (2014)
  - Brazil — 276.2 (2019)
  - Bahamas — 275.7 (2018)
  - Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — 181.8 (2018)

[iudqnolq]

Why did you specifically select the portion of that list that doesn't include the US? It shows the US is far worse than any rich country, as I claimed.

Mexico, Rwanda, Sudan, and Mali rank 34-37

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-ki...

Edit: The closest rich countries are

- Malta, at ~2/3 the US

- Luxumberg, ~ 1/2

- Canada, ~1/3

Malta is notably an anomaly: I can't think of any other rich democracy where journalists reporting on on government links to organized crime get killed by car bombs.

[mcguire]

As an aside, I find many of these numbers to be very untrustworthy. For example, India has the note, "Includes 1,606 deaths listed as occurring in "judicial custody," but not due to police, military, or intelligence agency activity." Out of 1,731 deaths in 2019. Syria, "Syria is involved in a civil war".

Malta and Luxembourg had one (1) killing each. Statistical outliers, and all that.

[iudqnolq]

I agree completely, and thought it important enough to note up top.

As a general principle I believe this kind of data should either be rigorously analyzed in depth or analyzed as little as possible. That's why I originally posted raw numbers: I think raw numbers are the only responsible way to do this kind of internet forum surface-level analysis. It's too easy to trick intentionally or unintentionally with statistics.

It's obvious the US is an outlier from the raw numbers, there's no need to get fancy.

I chose the metric of police killings carefully. In a non-tiny democracy with a police violence problem there are enough that it's not dominated by outliers, but few enough that it's feasible for a few reporters to spot check the data. They're also notable enough a large portion of the incidents generate some publicly available commentary, often in local press.

(In non-tiny democracies without a police killing problem it might be dominated by outliers, but the raw numbers make the fact killings are rare obvious)

In the US, for example, the FBI collects statistics even they acknowledge are poor quality. The Washington Post has a project to monitor publicly available information and enter police shootings into a database, and they generally find publicly available proof of about twice as many shootings as are entered into the FBI database.

The main takeaway I wanted people to take from the data I posted is that there's nearly no country like the US close to it. Either way you read Malta & Luxembourg that's true, so there's no need to get fancy (and I think further analyzing that single stat without country-specific expertise would be questionably responsible).

I thought about saying I expected underreporting from the less democratic poorer countries but I decided I didn't want to spend the time reading their methodology to be confident in that. It's possible they've already attempted to correct for that, possibly even too much in the other way. The definition of police is also complex: Whether a unit is police or military is often historical chance.

[Tozen]

> ...the other countries on this list aren't the sort you'd expect to produce good statistics.

But those expecting the U.S. to produce good statistics, will just as likely be disappointed (or happy... depending on point of view). Dare we wonder why that is so?

"Black Americans were 3.5 times as likely to be killed by the police..." (oops, that looks "inconvenient" for accurate reporting).

"...the initial findings of coroners or medical examiners downplayed or omitted the role of the police when a Black man was killed..." Dare we wonder if under full reporting, if that 3.5 times more likely to be killed would go even higher.

More Than Half of (U.S.) Police Killings Are Mislabeled, New Study Says (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/police-killings-underc...)

[cauefcr]

Literally every other country?