I don't off hand. I know tons of people who hunt and own rifles. Ownership of rifles in rural areas I would imagine to be quite high. I have never even seen a handgun in person in canada, aside from those carried by cops.

Most petty crimes, at least here, occur without guns. Seems only hells Angels and other gangs involved in the flow of drugs have them, but, they generally use them on one another. The likelihood of your average crazy homeless or druggie having one is pretty damn low.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

This post might be the crowning achievement of your slowtwitch lifetime. I agree with you 100%.

The belief that police are more "trigger happy" than in the past doesn't seem to be borne out by statistics tracking police shooting incidents. Admittedly I've only looked at one department, the NYPD, but I suspect that other large departments, such as the LAPD, have similar numbers. NYPD officers were involved in roughly 600-800 shooting incidents a year in the 1970s. By the last decade that number had declined to approximately 100 incidents per year. Perhaps the NYPD is an outlier but I'd be surprised if it was.

Heard the Fresno County Sheriff on the radio yesterday. Over the last five years, 1.3 mil stops, 11 cases where the deputy discharged their firearm.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

How many mentally ill people are engaged incorrectly by the police, resulting in their injury or death? Much like the conversation on black deaths by cop, it's probably important to establish if this is really a significant problem, or if it's just an issue of having seen a handful of videos that may not be representative of what usually happens.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

I don't come here to only engage in intelligent conversation. Most of my low common denominator post are a purge of the garbage in my mind so it doesn't seep into my real life.

But every now and then we do discuss a topic that is important to me that I think everyone could agree in part on. His to me is a no brainer.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

Incorrectly? Hard to say. Not only are people here adamant that the cops don't make mistakes, the cops are even more so. Which makes it real hard to track.

At least 125 people with signs of mental illness have died in police encounters in the U.S. so far this year, according to the latest accounting from The Washington Post.

"Unless the families identified the deceased as somebody who was mentally ill or the police department identified them as mentally ill, we did not — even if it may on the surface of things [have] appeared as if they might be," she tells NPR's Eric Westervelt. "So it's a conservative number — but even with it being conservative, it was a quarter of the killings."
http://www.npr.org/...ice-are-mentally-ill

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

By the last decade that number had declined to approximately 100 incidents per year. Perhaps the NYPD is an outlier but I'd be surprised if it was.

Couple points.

1) Violent crimes are down since the 70's so one would expect shootings to be down as well.
2) By the 70's the militarization of the police had already begun and the war on drugs was underway.
3) NYC is actually an outlier. Crime has dropped significantly more in NYC then other major US cities.
4) I think when people are talking about "The way cops used to deal with people" they are talking more about the 40's and 50's where they were "Community Police". On beat in urban areas etc not 70's and 80's.

~Matt

Incident this morning about an hour north.

Man with knife wants to kill self, ends up shot.

Man was known to police and worked with him for a half hour...

...then shot him.

Not sure what else they could have done.

http://www.ksby.com/...d-man-in-santa-maria

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

Well, they obviously saved him from killing himself, didn't they?!?

I suppose.

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

How many mentally ill people are engaged incorrectly by the police, resulting in their injury or death?

I think my larger point is that this is not just an issue with mentally ill people but with everyone. The tendency, at least from what I have seen and experienced, is for the police to enter into situations very aggressively and demand complete compliance immediately and escalate to force if that doesn't happen.

Human nature is to match aggression with aggression. I'm simply saying we may be better off to move toward something that may allow a better chance at deescalation.

~Matt

Not sure what else they could have done.

Different scenario no? They tried multiple different less lethal approaches and negotiations. He then charged the cops with a knife. Little bit different then pulling your gun on a person you haven't even exchanged more then a couple words with and going after him when he was completely unarmed and moving away from you into a confined and controlled area, no?

~Matt

Heard the Fresno County Sheriff on the radio yesterday. Over the last five years, 1.3 mil stops, 11 cases where the deputy discharged their firearm.

Is that just traffic stops? I would guess that discharging of a weapon happens more often in situations like domestic calls, crazy dude in the street etc then traffic stops. Although traffic stops are more dangerous then most other scenarios it's largely because they are walking into a complete unknown and they are completely exposed not because there is a high rate of people pulling guns on them while being pulled over for doing 57 in 45 :-)

That being said I think it's a very good point to show how little officers fire their weapons. The vast majority of police officers never fire their weapons in the line of duty during their career and only a percent of a percent ever do it twice. I think the number is less then 1/2 of 1% of officers fire at people each year. The majority of shootings are dogs.

~Matt

Those Employees should have been less aggressive and more understanding.

or

Possibly their ability to read the patients mind wasn't at an acceptable level.

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#WeAreTheForge #BlackGunsMatter

"Look, will you guys at leats accept that you are a bunch of dumb asses and just trust me on this one? Please?" BarryP 7/30/2012

Crime in NYC was at its all time high in the early 1990s yet police shootings were way lower than in the early 1970s. I attribute the drop in police involved shootings to increased professionalism and training. The scrutiny such shootings get doesn't hurt either. You'd be surprised at how thoroughly even the shooting of a dog is investigated.

Indeed and 30 minutes is long enough for innocent bystanders to clear the immediate area before lethal bullets are actually fired.

Let's not forget about how cops should handle those handling the mentally ill.

Probably not like this.

http://reason.com/...ot-behavioral-therap

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

That was "calls for service."

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

Jesus fucking Christ. Does this rise to the leveL of all the time yet?

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

The police don't make mistakes. That man was a menace. He could put an eye out with that toy truck if you let him get within 22 feet of you.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.