German Police Used Only 85 Bullets Against People in 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/german-police-used-only-85-bullets-against-people-155155175.html

by gscott • 14 years ago

205 218 14 years ago

news.yahoo.com

aresant• 14 years ago

"used only 85 bullets"

What an odd way to quantify police violence.

Right? Wrong? Justified? Article provides none of that.

tzs• 14 years ago

Anyone know WHY this is?

Germany is certainly not crime free, so some possibilities that come to mind:

1. Perhaps German criminals, for whatever reason, are more docile than American criminals and give up when asked to so there is little need for the police to use violence.

2. Perhaps German criminals aren't as well armed as American criminals, and so when the police try to arrest them the criminals know they are outgunned and give up.

3. Perhaps German police are not very good at tracking down armed criminals and so the are few chance for the police to use guns.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that #2 is the most likely of those three possibilities, but I've surely not thought of all the possible explanations.

Without some insight into why they fire their guns so rarely, this statistic is just interesting trivia.

gscott• 14 years ago

I don't believe it is that, because police shoot people who are armed with knives, tree branches, and unarmed on a pretty regular basis... all of which are readily available in Germany.

There was a homeless person here in San Diego because he had a tree branch and looked like he was going to use it against the officers (the person was mentally ill). Not to mention the guy who jumped the White House fence who had a butterknife (the President wasn't in the country at the time). The butterknife guy was shot and killed, since he didn't follow orders to put the knife down.

I believe it is a lack of respect for human life along with the fact that these cases have made it to the Superme Court which ruled for the officers, if the officer feel they are in danger, they can shoot to kill. And they do so.

My guess is German police offers don't care if a person has a tree branch, butterknife, stones or whatever they go in and make the arrest without just shooting the person. There is some risk of personal injury but probably nothing that 10 officers with billy-clubs can't handle.

cskau2• 14 years ago

> My guess is German police offers don't care if a person has a tree branch, butterknife, [...]

I'm pretty sure policy is if the guy is holding a knife, you warn them and draw your gun. Then if the guy comes at you you've got the possibility to fire to avoid injury or death.

While use of guns by the police is extremely scrutinized (it's often big in the news when it happens). The guns are a last resort in the really messy situations when there's no other way out. (And you have to prove that later on)

cskau2• 14 years ago

> 2. Perhaps German criminals aren't as well armed as American criminals, and so when the police try to arrest them the criminals know they are outgunned and give up.

Nobody is as well armed as Americans.

But really I'm pretty sure it's down to policy. The police doesn't 'shoot first, ask questions later'. No need to escalate to using guns unless you're directly threatened with a weapon yourself - say if the guy is threatening with knife. And I really think it's the fewest of people who are desperate/stupid enough to try something like that.

Also note how 49 of those 85 bullets were warning shots fired into the air.

netrus• 14 years ago

I am pretty convinced #1 and #2 are both true. POlice officers most of the times do not hunt down murderer or kidnappers (their is hardly murder in Europe, compared to the US), but are asked to appease husbands beating their wives, stop parties that are too loud, etc. Those people will hardly ever own a weapon - other then in the US.

Second, I am pretty sure there is another culture of violence and fighting with the police in the US. Car chases, for example, are way less often in Europe - criminals tend to give up, instead of fighting to death.

darklajid2• 14 years ago

I have no statistics of my own, so I cannot cry foul. But can you back up "their (sic) is hardly murder in Europe"?

Europe is a big and quite diverse place..

rorrr2• 14 years ago

Gangs. American gangs are fueled by uneducated population. Ignorance is so celebrated here, mixed with the attitude of entitlement, you get a lot of frustrated uneducated people when they realize that all the stories about getting rich and famous only apply to 0.0001% of the population.

This mentality is the major factor.

kitsune_• 14 years ago

Do you have any facts and figures to back up that claim?

brown9-2• 14 years ago

How much crime in America is caused by gangs? Without this fact, this claim sounds non-sensical.

rdl• 14 years ago

Gangs alone account for more crime than the total in places like Germany, but US crime levels ex-gangs are still higher than in those other places.

Gangs alone aren't an adequate explanation, but if you're looking for a single factor, maybe the reasons people go into gangs would be broad enough to account for it.

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

I have a different theory, having lived in both places. Police in America seem to be willing to escalate a confrontation or "chase" to almost any level in order to prevent a bad guy from getting away. Where I lived (near DC) a police officer stood in front of a car to prevent an unarmed teenager from leaving an IHOP without paying the bill, when the kids wouldn't stop, he shot up the car, killing a passenger(1).

Sometimes, when the offense is minor its OK to let the bad guy get away. Firing repeatedly at a moving vehicle in a crowded parking lot is never ok, even if someone might get away with murder.

Polizei seemed much more calmly methodical and much less cowboyish. I can't imagine this situation occurring in Germany.

(1)http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02...

brazzy• 14 years ago

I think you're right. It's a common trope in German crime shows on TV to see the police chase a dangerous criminal on foot with their gun drawn and then watch in frustration as they get away - but not shoot at them.

> Sometimes, when the offense is minor its OK to let the bad guy get away.

Especially since, with a bit of methodical work, you usually have a good chance of catching them later.

DominikR4• 14 years ago

Police officers in Germany in most cases when someone points a gun at them wont even draw their gun, but try to talk to the person, or take cover and call in extra support.

TDL2• 14 years ago

Well said. It seems as though an intellectual shift has occurred in law enforcement training where de-escalation is no longer a priority and police officers are now more prone to escalate. Part of this might be due to the introduction of less-than-lethal and (supposedly) non-lethal weapons.

patrickk• 14 years ago

Well said, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Here in Ireland (republic of) I've heard, anecdotally, that the police will quite frequently give chase to joyriders and people speeding, but will very quickly give up the chase if they don't think it'll be reined in quickly. So police in Europe generally may be willing to let people go to de-escalate a situation and save lives, of both suspects and innocent bystanders.

rbehrends2• 14 years ago

First of all, German police statistics underestimate weapon use a bit (though not horribly much, so we're not talking about order-of-magnitude errors here). The gist of the article is correct, as far as I know, in that German police officers use guns far less than American ones (though still more than the UK police, where -- with few exceptions -- the police does not carry guns at all).

As far as I know, it's primarily a matter of policy. Gun use is the ultima ratio, only to be used when other means are insufficient. Constitutionally, this is a reflection of the principle of proportionality [1] in conjunction with article 1 and 2 of the German constitution. This means that police officers are required by law to use the least intrusive means available to stop a crime and not use disproportionate means (obviously, with due regard to the difficulty involved when making split-second decisions or judgements based on incomplete and insufficient information).

On a practical level, this is ensured by two mechanisms. Firstly, these principles are part of the firearms training for police officers. Secondly, each gun use by a police officer in the course of his or her duty automatically triggers a criminal investigation (even if it is obvious self-defense). This adds a high inconvenience factor even for justified uses that discourages casual shooting. (In 1993, allegations that a GSG-9 member had executed the terrorist Wolfgang Grams [2] nearly led to the dissolution of the GSG-9 and, along with the botched execution of the raid, caused the resignation of the Minister of the Interior.)

[1] http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/3907/1/1458-1702-1-SM.pdf

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Grams

alister• 14 years ago

> German police statistics underestimate weapon use a bit

Can you explain how?

cstross2• 14 years ago

Minor nit: the UK police, where -- with few exceptions -- the police does not carry guns at all

Firstly, some UK police forces are routinely armed -- the Nuclear Police and the Transport Police who patrol airports pretty much always carry automatic or semi-automatic weapons. (The first cop you see entering a British airport concourse will probably be carrying an MP5.)

Secondly, all UK police forces have specialist Armed Response Units, and all UK police have radios: if an armed incident is reported (including knives, not just guns and bombs), the armed units will turn up to handle them.

British police officers who carry guns are required to put in range time more than once a week and are trained specialists. Their usual tools are a Glock-17 and an H&K MP5, plus body armour, although specialist snipers are also on call.

So: while ordinary police patrols are "unarmed" (as in: they wear anti-stab vests and carry batons, pepper spray, and in some cases tasers -- just no firearms) any incidents that involve weapons will be responded to very rapidly by marksmen.

The policy difference is simply that British police forces treat firearms use as a speciality, and cops who carry guns need to be trained to a high level of proficiency. Given that the average American police officer draws and fires their gun in anger once in their career, if that, it follows that they're either under-trained or a huge amount of training is wasted on people who don't need it. The argument for arming them -- that it's a big country with a lot of violent armed criminals and specialist backup may not be available in time -- doesn't apply in the UK (small, dense country, very few firearms in private hands, relatively easy to summon armed specialists as needed).

yason2• 14 years ago

I don't know about Germany but I suppose the situation might be quite similar in Finland. A quick googling revealed that about 15 police bullets shot per year is roughly the average in Finland, and most of them are warning shots. The Finnish police shoot and kill less than a handful of people in a decade. It's always news, and the news always report that police hasn't killed anyone for X years.

The Finnish police forces are only allowed to use a gun when no other force is effective or available. So, it's the worst-of-the-worst case choice. All policemen I know haven't fired a single bullet during their entire career.

Further, generally each shot fired (or use of any weapon) in duty will require the policeman to report the case to his superior officers and the internal investigations will determine whether what happened was within the laws that limit the use of force in duty. The fact that officers who shoot are generally suspected for breaking the criminal/police law is a constant counter-force to limit the usage of firearms. Mostly they don't and investigations cease but each case will be considered.

Thus, the policeman needs to be 101% sure the situation warrants firing a gun until he will use it. In most cases where shots are fired there's a prior permission from the superior officers. There must be a case where a single policeman had to fire a gun based on his own judgement but I don't remember reading about one. The patrol calls do involve armed civilians but the clear majority of the offenders are talked down.

This creates a general atmosphere where criminals know not to shoot back to the police. They know that because of the strict laws governing gun use in force, the Finnish police mean it when they announce they're prepared to use armed force. There's an occasional nutcase with a gun and who doesn't give up and he might be surrounded for hours or even days but even those cases rarely escalate to an actual firefight with the police.

option_greek• 14 years ago

I think like other comments noted, it all comes down to value of human life. Considering the UC Davis pepper spray incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper-spray_incident), these numbers are not surprising at all.

rickmb• 14 years ago

With respect to #1: in countries with a functioning justice system, humane prisons, no death penalty and no insane "three strikes" rules, criminals are more likely to surrender and just accept defeat.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

Yes.

The. War. On. Drugs.

hussong• 14 years ago

German here. I believe this is because power is balanced on a level of low escalation.

The threshold for firing a weapon is rather high for law enforcement and criminals know this. They also know that pulling a gun or even firing at an officer when things go wrong will easily add 10 years to their sentence. As a result, most chases and arrests are not a life-threatening situation.

Let me illustrate this with a story: My neighbor had a break-in, the alarm went off and the burglar was caught in the act. Burglar pepper sprays my neighbor, her friend and two police officers and escapes via the roof. Police officers had their guns drawn but wouldn't use them. Burglar knew this and didn't bring a gun of his own in the first place. Everybody lives.

fauigerzigerk• 14 years ago

I suspect that many gun fights in the US involve young people from underprivileged social backgrounds who don't know what they're doing. That demographic is much smaller in Germany as the welfare state keeps many of them on the right(ish) side of the law and the population is frankly older.

I believe violent criminals in Germany are more professional types. They know when they have lost and they will switch to damage control mode instead of escalating the situation. It's mostly organized crime as far as I can tell. Lawyers instead of gun fights.

moldbug• 14 years ago

4. Because none of these people live in Germany:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw5pZpGh5Hg

antidoh• 14 years ago

A drawn but unfired gun can be very effective in convincing someone to stop what they're doing. It would be useful to know how many times their guns were drawn.

It may be (I dont' know) that German police are trained to minimize firing, and American police training may put relatively more emphasis on how to fire guns to resolve situations.

ralfd• 14 years ago

Criminals are just not suspected to have a gun. Another example: When German police is trying to stop one on the road they are driving ahead and then decelerate, so you can't escape. American police, at least in the movies I know, are driving behind you so they can see every move of you and you do better the show-your-hands-and-no-quick-moves-thing.

staunch7• 14 years ago

What's really odd is that there were "49 warning shots". Police in the US aren't allowed to fire warning shots. For good reason too, it's a completely reckless thing to do.

vegardx4• 14 years ago

It does not tell you anything about their rules of engagement, so how can you say it is completely reckless? I've seen my fair share of shoot-outs from the US, and if that is not reckless, than what is?

Coming from Norway i find the very notion that police carry guns very strange. I also feel less safe when I'm around guns, be that of police or just regular citizen.

staunch7• 14 years ago

Because there's no safe way to fire a warning shot in a public space. Firing a weapon without a proper backstop is always extremely dangerous and should be a last resort.

Also, I seriously doubt you would feel less safe in an FBI office than a ghetto in London. One is full of guns, the other is full of danger.

tomas• 14 years ago

As far as recklessness go, 49 warning shots in one year is still a bit better than e.g "...another 90 shot at one fleeing unarmed man in Los Angeles."

matt4711• 14 years ago

I also think that criminals have a different attitude towards warning shots knowing that the police (almost) never fire shots.

staunch7• 14 years ago

Sure, I'd agree that US police are probably recklessly trigger happy. But when it comes to warning shots their policy is correct.

Someone• 14 years ago

If the US police isn't allowed to do reckless things, where are all those car chases I can see on TV filmed?

I would think those would endanger bystanders much more than shots fired into the air (which might only kill you if you are really, really, unlucky, as in 'having a weak skull and watching up, getting the bullet in an eye socket' or so.

staunch7• 14 years ago

Most US police agencies these days do not engage in high speed pursuits for non-felony suspects. Chasing a murder suspect may be dangerous but so is letting one escape.

Warnings shots fired in public are virtually always reckless.

And no where did I claim or imply that US police never engage in reckless behavior.

biafra2• 14 years ago

Bullets fired into the air can and do kill people because most of the time they do not loose their spin and hit with a higher speed than terminal velocity.

Source:

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode50

Bullets fired into the air maintain their lethal capability when they eventually fall back down.

busted / plausible / confirmed

In the case of a bullet fired at a precisely vertical angle (something extremely difficult for a human being to duplicate), the bullet would tumble, lose its spin, and fall at a much slower speed due to terminal velocity and is therefore rendered less than lethal on impact. However, if a bullet is fired upward at a non-vertical angle (a far more probable possibility), it will maintain its spin and will reach a high enough speed to be lethal on impact. Because of this potentiality, firing a gun into the air is illegal in most states, and even in the states that it is legal, it is not recommended by the police. Also the MythBusters were able to identify two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured. To date, this is the only myth to receive all three ratings at the same time.

tetha• 14 years ago

Warning shots are part of the procedure.

If a german officer wants to use his firearm, he has to warn the other party either verbally or ideally with a warning shot, if time permits and if no immediate threat exists to the officer himself or other persons.

staunch7• 14 years ago

The problem is that there's simply no way to safely fire a gun in a confined public area. If you look at what it takes to make a gun range safe you'll see why. You need a large non-ricocheting backstop to be safe.

ungerik• 14 years ago

So warning shots are reckless, but shooting people directly is not? My guess is, that there were about zero injuries because of these 49 warning shots. How many unarmed people have been shot in comparison by US police?

zokier• 14 years ago

Shooting people directly usually harms only the people being shot. Warning shots have larger probability to harm other people.

Zak3• 14 years ago

The logic is that if you have the opportunity to fire a warning shot, the circumstances were not severe enough to justify firing a gun at all. A woman in Florida just got 20 years in prison based in part on that principle: http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2012-04-21/story/naacp-we...

Note that some evidence suggests she was also the initial aggressor, which likely contributed to her conviction.

hej5• 14 years ago

Reckless? Hardly.

Think about risk and probability. The probability of any of these warning shots actually hitting, hurting or even killing someone is extremely low. I'm not aware of any warning shot fired by the German police ever hurting anyone.

So, 50 years or so of warning shots and no one was hurt. If a warning shot kills someone today, those 50 years of warning shots only had to save two lives (someone decides to give up instead of seeking confrontation and being killed) to be worth it.

I think it's pretty simple, actually. On the whole, warning shots seem quite beneficial, that more than outweighs the low probability of hurting or killing someone.

But humans are bad at dealing with probability, so your error is understandable.

drone4• 14 years ago

Interesting that you know the probability of -any- warning shot, fired in -any- direction, at -any- time...

Bullets fired into the air have regularly caused deaths and injuries around the world. [1]

In several US states firing a bullet into the air is a crime, in some, a felony. [1, below]

I find it difficult to believe that any person is well trained enough to take all critical factors into account during an armed encounter to determine whether or not a bullet will ricochet off a non-target surface, and in what direction it will ricochet. [2]

"So, 50 years or so of warning shots and no one was hurt. If a warning shot kills someone today, those 50 years of warning shots only had to save two lives (someone decides to give up instead of seeking confrontation and being killed) to be worth it.

I think it's pretty simple, actually. On the whole, warning shots seem quite beneficial, that more than outweighs the low probability of hurting or killing someone."

I find this a starkly terrible calculus. Are you really saying that cops can kill one innocent person for every two potential deaths they may or may not have prevented?

"But humans are bad at dealing with probability, so your error is understandable."

Consider this statement in light of actual statistics.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire#Falling-bul... (Numerous citations)

[2] http://books.google.com/books?id=VbrDbbHAflsC&pg=PA109&#...

EDIT: In the essence of improving one's self, what about this rebuttal causes so many downvotes?

staunch7• 14 years ago

1. You have no stats on what has happened with German police warning shots over the years. It's quite possible there were innocent bystanders hurt.

2. It wouldn't be worth killing a single innocent bystander to save 10 violent criminals in my book.

3. German police very rarely fire warning shots at all. That doesn't make it not reckless, it just makes a bad outcome less likely to occur.

lispm3• 14 years ago

A bit perspective:

Germany has around 82 million people.

Estimated 45 Million shooting weapons are in possession. Many of them illegal (for example people inherited weapons from their parents but did not register them, weapons were imported from East Europe or illegally left behind by the leaving soviet army).

The ownnership is highly regulated. If you want to buy a weapon, you need a permission a Waffenschein and/or Waffenbesitzkarte (owner registration). A 'Waffenschein' is a permission to carry a gun in public. This permission is usually only given to Police, professional bodyguards or similar. A Waffenbesitzkarte allows you to have a weapon for sports (or similar) and you are only allowed to carry the weapon in a closed and sealed transport box without ammunition. To get a Waffenbeitzkarte is not that easy - for example if you are under 25 you need a psychological check.

Thus the only shooting weapons one ever sees in public is usually from the police or a forester.

Around 20000 crimes are done with weapons. This is 0.3% of all crimes. At 4500 crimes there is some shooting.

In the statistics cited by DER SPIEGEL ( http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/polizei-schoss-2011-se... ) it is mentioned that the police shot 8812 times at animals. Almost all these cases were animals who had serious injuries due to traffic accidents.

But many Germany use weapons for sports. For entertainment see this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyq90LEZe4k

diminish2• 14 years ago

lived for 3 years in germany; i was extremely clubbing. Forget shooting you don't see much fighting neither. In comparison, in my one year in England, I witnessed 5 club fights, and in Russia two gun fights. It seems mostly an attitude of the society towards violence and guns. On the other side, in Germany, you frequently see your neighbor calling the police if you make some noise.

arethuza9• 14 years ago

In my experience, violence in the UK tends to be concentrated at very specific times and places - generally city and town centers between 11pm and 3am on a Friday and Saturday night.

Avoid these times and places and you'll never see a fight, go to the worst of these places and there will be multiple fights. As for culture - where I grew up (70s/80s, small town, North of Scotland, fishing and oil as main employers) there was a lot of fist fights but I never heard or saw anyone using a knife - I suspect that has changed.

ticks• 14 years ago

I think the UKs main problem is alcohol abuse, which has a tendency to fuel violence - thankfully the violence is mostly limited to pointy things due to guns being banned.

mjwalshe• 14 years ago

But they do seem to consider having a regular riot with the police as almost a tradition.

PaulMcCartney4• 14 years ago

I'm led to believe that societally they are repressing their anger and aggression in reaction to WWII. The lack of bar fights and the number of shootings are strangely low. I think this is the most compelling explanation. It is known that the atrocities committed by their people during WWII weighs heavily on their psyche.

anamax2• 14 years ago

> Estimated 45 Million shooting weapons are in possession.

Why are you suggesting that police should only shoot someone who has a gun?

lispm3• 14 years ago

Why are you suggesting that I'm suggesting that?

gurkendoktor• 14 years ago

Two things... First, as a German, we do have discussions about police violence. But they mostly relate to using water throwers and brute force. Demonstrations in Berlin are known to look like a cliché British football match sometimes.

Second, I looked up the list of countries by firearm deaths. Any Finnish folks here to explain what's going on there?! I didn't expect any European country to be so high up on the list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re...

DanBC4• 14 years ago

High suicide rate?

   Finland	6.86	0.86	5.78	0.12	1994	Krug 1998
   N. Ireland	6.82	5.24	1.34	0.12	1994	Krug 1998
   Switzerland	6.4	0.58	5.61	0.13	1994	Krug 1998

(Country, total firearm related death rate, homicides, suicides, accidental, date, source.)

I'm avoiding politics - here's a link about the Northern Ireland "troubles" to explain the high murder rate.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/5097948.stm)

sdfjkl2• 14 years ago

Interesting shift between homicides and suicides. Suicide by offending an armed drunk?

yason2• 14 years ago

Well, it says most of them are suicides. That's certainly true. Most of the rest are homicides: Finland as a country is filled with weapons (registered for shooting at the range or for hunting) and when you mix that with excess alcohol consumption there's always someone who gets pissed at a family member, a relative, or a drinking buddy and as things escalate someone goes to get his hunting rifle.

exDM69• 14 years ago

I'm from Finland, maybe I can give some background.

Finland has a high rate of gun ownership due to popularity of hunting and farmers, who use guns to keep unwanted wild animals at bay. In addition to that, there was a fair amount of guns left over from WWII, and there was a well-known case where guns where stashed away to form a resistance militia in case of foreign invasion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_Cache_Case).

In addition to that, Finland's southernmost tip is roughly at 60 degrees northern latitude, roughly at the level of Anchorage, Alaska. That means that 3 months of the year, this is a cold, dark and desolate place where the only thing you can do is get drunk and wave guns at your friends and/or yourself in a state of delirium tremensis.

Also note that firearms-related suicide is far more common than homicide, in that Wikipedia statistic it's about 6 times more suicides than homicides. (The Finns prefer to stab each other and shoot themselves).

It is a very rare occasion that a police officer fires a gun at a person in Finland.

Tichy• 14 years ago

"a cold, dark and desolate place where the only thing you can do is get drunk and wave guns at your friends and/or yourself in a state of delirium tremensis"

Luckily there are computer games now :-)

peteretep4• 14 years ago

I tried to find similar figures for the UK, but could not. Best I could find was:

"From 1990 to 2011, police shot dead 53 people" > http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/riot-d27.shtml

peteretep4• 14 years ago

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/about-us/non-perso...

Suggests that police in England and Wales discharge firearms in ~ 6 incidents a year.

(updated: UK -> England and Wales)

diminish2• 14 years ago

that's a slow weekend in LA.

DanBC4• 14 years ago

For comparison, here's some information about New York police:

(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/nyregion/08nypd.html?pagew...)

> The number of bullets fired by officers dropped to 540 in 2006 from 1,292 in 1996 — the first year that the city’s housing, transit and regular patrol forces were merged — with a few years of even lower numbers in between. Police officers opened fire 60 times at people in 2006, down from 147 in 1996.

radicalbyte• 14 years ago

The UK, with a population (~60m) close to Germany, has very few incidents a year where police discharge firearms.

Stats from 2000-2007 show between 5 and 11 incidents where firearms were discharged per year: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.homeo...

Unfortunately, when they do use them they do so to kill innocent foreigners, execution style (which then gets largely swept under a rug): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Meneze...

sdfjkl2• 14 years ago

One thing I found very surprising when moving from Germany to the UK was that your average UK "beat cop" doesn't carry a firearm. They call in armed police when needed, but this seems to often result in delays in pursuing criminals and sometimes escalation where armed criminals are given the time to take hostages and/or barricade themselves in.

On the other hand, when seeing some recent encounters with these beat cops, I was glad they weren't armed. Overall I got the impression that the UK police forces suffer from a training or selection problem that wasn't apparent in Germany.

hahainternet• 14 years ago

You used the word 'often'. Please substantiate this.

basisword• 14 years ago

Firearm use varies throughout the UK. For example in Northern Ireland all Police carry firearms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_U...

danparsonson• 14 years ago

> Unfortunately, when they do use them they do so to kill innocent foreigners, execution style (which then gets largely swept under a rug): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Meneze....

Not to defend those involved, but that was a single tragic incident that occurred at a time and place of very high tension (being about two weeks after the 7th July 2005 London bombings [0]). Your use of the plural ('they do so to kill innocent foreigners') implies a pattern - unfairly, to my mind.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_bombings_of_7_July_2005

epo• 14 years ago

So you are claiming ("when they do use them they do so to kill innocent foreigners, execution style") the UK police make a point of discharging firearms to kill innocent foreigners? Is this some kind of policy to cull them? Tourists are annoying, sure, but they bring in money. Killing them seems kind of idiotic, as does your comment.

eiji• 14 years ago

The german police patrols in 2 person teams. You'll never see a single policeman in a car. This changes the dynamic of every confrontation.

nkoren3• 14 years ago

Meanwhile, in America, not only is there no national tracking of firearm discharges -- there's no national tracking of how many people are killed by police.[1] The FBI tracks "justifiable homicides" by police -- which seems to range from 350 to 400 per year[2], and is limited to "The killing of a felon by a peace officer in the line of duty"[3] -- but it explicitly refuses to track all other killings by the police. (And rather strangely, there seems to be no private group which tracks these figures either. When I've googled for it in the past, I've found anecdotal stories claiming that groups which attempt to compile these figures are strongly discouraged from doing so. But now I can't seem to find those claims, however.) News reports of the shootings of unarmed non-fellons would suggest to me that there are a few score such killings every year, but there's no way to be sure.

Moral of the story: Germany is a profoundly civilised country. America, not so much.

[1] http://www.lvrj.com/news/deadly-force/142-dead-and-rising/na...

[2] http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_informati...

[3] http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_informati...

16s2• 14 years ago

It would be difficult to track discharges in the USA. Tens of millions of Americans go hunting and skeet shooting, and go to firing ranges, etc. Unless the discharge is illegal and results in injury or property damage, it's not really an issue which you would want to spend money tracking.

nkoren3• 14 years ago

Sorry, to clarify, I meant "firearms discharged in the line of duty by police officers", as per the original article.

meepmorp• 14 years ago

I think he meant discharges by LEOs, not private citizens. And we're probably only talking about during duty shooting, not target practice for the german figure - I know I send at least 100 rounds down the range when I go shooting.

arethuza9• 14 years ago

"Germany is a profoundly civilised country. America, not so much."

I don't think making unnecessarily provocative comments like this adds much to the discussion.

soc883• 14 years ago

Can you point to the "provocative" part? I don't see it...

bluedanieru• 14 years ago

That's a pretty weak defense of your police state. Care to elaborate?

Cieplak• 14 years ago

I hate to use anecdotal evidence to support your claim, but here it goes:

http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/11/california-woman-permanent...

jscheel• 14 years ago

Although the URL says Yahoo, this article originally comes The Atlantic Wire, a sister site of The Atlantic. Content aggregators on major news sites cheapen the experience. It's bad enough that nearly every news publication merely regurgitates AP stories, but to also outsource your op-ed takes away the one defining characteristic you have left.

Cocerning the content, this article is literally dripping with contempt for America, and makes no attempt to actually find the story behind the statistics other than to postulate that America is "gun crazy." Poor reporting by a relatively inexperienced writer (who happens to be from NYC, which may explain his stance).

Finally, this story really has zero bearing on anything HN related, other than the fact that it throws around a little statistical trivia. What gives?

(edited for clarity, typing in this text field on an iPad is torture)

cnbeuiwx• 14 years ago

Not to mention the police attitude to people. Its like nazi Germany in the United States. Police can do anything and get away with it. Im watching the police in the US and comparing to Europe, and I cant believe the amount of sadistical violence that is going on there. Maybe because ex military people become cops?

Its a very scary place. I dont even go there as a tourist because they have a legal right to throw anyone in jail without trial if they want to.

That being said, ordinary people are very friendly. But the government and the police are scary as hell. Totally dark forces going on there.

TDL2• 14 years ago

"Its a very scary place. I dont even go there as a tourist because they have a legal right to throw anyone in jail without trial if they want to."

The U.S. is not a scary place. Violent crime is the lowest it has been since the 1950's. Also, the police do not have the right to just randomly arrest people. I have no idea where you came up with this notion, but it is manifestly untrue. There is much to criticize in law enforcement trends in the U.S. and this type of hyperbole is completely unmerited.

aggronn• 14 years ago

Your perception of the US is a bit off.

Aloisius• 14 years ago

I think you may be blowing things out of proportion just a bit.

The vast majority of people in the US will never be terrorized by a police officer. In fact, the only time most people even interact with a police officer will be for a traffic citation.

mahyarm• 14 years ago

I know of people who have recently done vehicle sobriety tests (while sober), very obviously failed in trollish ways and blow zero on the breathalyzer just to annoy the police officer here in the USA and then let go. Police can be polite.

batista5• 14 years ago

>German Police Used Only 85 Bullets Against People in 2011

Only? That's far too many for Europe. 20-30 would be a much better number.

davidw• 14 years ago

If the top comments on an article are about whether the US is a "civilized country", it's probably not Hacker News.

gnarbarian• 14 years ago

That's only because they made people line up to save bullets.

German Police Used Only 85 Bullets Against People in 2011

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