[ToucanLoucan]

Why is it not zero? This strikes me as the exact sort of calculus they used way back when they stopped chasing fleeing suspects in vehicles: the danger to the public is too high to justify the use of force. If you can't hit your suspect without hitting other civilians, then don't fucking fire! And no I don't particularly care if the LEO's life might be in danger either, that's literally the job they signed up for: to put themselves in danger to enforce the law. It's ridiculous that cops just get complete power of life and death every time they feel a spot of stress, and have to be handled with kid gloves by the general public less they be murdered in the streets.

[socalgal2]

I will never be zero because perfection is impossible. It's like saying there should be zero car fatalities. We should work to get them down (enforcement against drunk driving, maybe checkpoints, stronger driving tests), but asking for zero accidents just isn't reality.

[ceejayoz]

> It's like saying there should be zero car fatalities.

https://www.politico.eu/article/helsinki-no-traffic-death-ro...

"Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year, municipal officials revealed this week."

"The limits were enforced with 70 new speed cameras and a policing strategy based on the national “Vision Zero” policy, with the goal of achieving zero traffic injuries or deaths. Data collected by Liikenneturva, Finland’s traffic safety entity, shows Helsinki’s traffic fatalities have been declining ever since."

[Dylan16807]

That's one city, for one year. Their rate of traffic fatalities is still above zero, I guarantee you.

[ToucanLoucan]

That's not analogous at all. Everyone drives, and so everyone is a possible source of a car crash. Police are not (in theory) just whoever wanders into the goddamn precinct. They're (in theory) trained professionals, educated in what they do, and therefore entrusted with both the force of law, and the deadly force they wear on their belts.

And no we probably can't make it ZERO, but we could surely get it under 1,300!?

[socalgal2]

1300 is not the rate of innocent bystanders being killed. It's the rate of people killed by police period. Maybe if we didn't have police being killed by criminals in the USA then they wouldn't need to go in armed and scared for their lives.

[ToucanLoucan]

By definition, every person the police interact with is innocent, because at such time as they are talking to a cop, even being detained by one, they have not been convicted of a crime.

[Dylan16807]

That's not the definition of 'innocent', and that argument extremely falls apart when the word 'bystander' isn't omitted.

Come on, you know what people are talking about when they say "innocent bystander".

[ToucanLoucan]

> That's not the definition of 'innocent'

No, it's the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" and even if you'd like to craft a scenario next where we're going to talk about Officer Friendly stopping a rape-in-progress, yes, that person is almost certainly guilty, AND the punishment for that crime is usually not death, AND the cornerstone of our justice system says that the officer in question, no matter how pure of heart he might be, cannot exact a death sentence on a clearly guilty person because that is not how justice works.

A cop killing ANYONE, be they a bystander, or a suspect, or an assailant, should be RARE. It should be notable.

[vostrocity]

Has anyone done a study on correlation between no-chase policy and increase in robbery or retail theft? Would be pretty interesting