The recent rial of Darren Wilson is a very sad event for our country, but hardly an unusual event. Reading the story of the encounter Michael Brown was definitely had problems (since he had just stolen a box of cigars less than an hour before the shooting) and Darren Wilson overreacted. He didn't have to shoot to kill, there are other ways to make sure someone who is a suspect (as Brown definitely was) can be held in custody and tried. This is definitely one of those cases.
When it comes to police shootings in the United States the biggest issue is that they too often go right to shooting people where they will die on the spot. This was the biggest issue with the latest publicized story, and is truly a tragedy. The saddest thing about all of this is this happens every day.
Wikipedia has to organize police shootings in the United States by month because there are so many. In comparison, there is only one page for police shootings in Canada and only one for Germany. The different has many factors, and they have to do with economic factors as well as the social systems set up in this country.
The first problem behind this major issue is the poverty of people (predominately African American) who are shot more than any other group. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-ferguson-race-data
The first goal of all police officers should always be to bring suspects in alive to minimize casualties. It is far better to bring someone in if you are suspicious they have committed a crime than to end their lives on the spot. People can and should be rehabilitated, it is wasteful to not do this.
Fivethirtyeight points out piece of the puzzle which is the rate of indcitments is far lower for police officers than other people. Such a difference is almost certainly due to less than honorable factors. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-indictment-darren-wilson/
When it comes to getting the biggest picture possible, there is no searchable FBI database. This is the most insulting and infuriating thing of all about this issue in my opinion. Such a massively important issue requires that we have good data so we can be certain certain case fit within the general trend so we can know the general trend. This is necessary for good analysis along with ensuring we make the right policy and appropriately understand what is going on in our country. We need to understand the big picture of these issues, and in order to have the big picture accurately means we need to have the pertinent details for the issue. gawker
Despite this failure of our system (which should be remedied ASAP) what data social scientists do put together in surveys of police shootings all demonstrate that people are far more likely to be shot if they are African American than if they are any other race. This is an absolute tragedy and we need to find ways to end this once and for all. Mother Jones
We have a lot of work to do in order to make our system work for all people. We need to finally be able to put together the big picture in one master database in a Federal agency so everyone can know the truth and put together the demographics to find trends. This will move forward to hold all people in the system accountable for their actions and lead to a better society.
We need to build a great society and fight poverty in communities across this country, because it is the right thing to do.
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