A new report has revealed that in the US, police shoot and kill more people relative to any other nation. Their actions come as they deal with the most diverse, armed and distressed population globally.
Rates of fatal police shootings in the US are very high
According to experts at Rutgers University, deadly policemen shootings occur here five times more frequently than in comparable industrialized such as France but also 22 times more frequently than in nations like Australia. Moreover, the nations with the highest rates of gun homicides overall also had the highest rates of police violence. According to the study’s authors, American law enforcement has an “exceptionally lethal” track record, especially when contrasted to nations with high crime rates, such as Spain and Chile.
Other developed nations with high rates of deadly police shootings include Canada, Brazil, Belgium, and Venezuela. Although Australia is top of the list, it has low rates of gun deaths. According to the study, the US is an example of how low police training rates are related to fatal police shooting outcomes.
Nearly every country with the greatest rates of lethal police violence has a recent history of totalitarian rule or origins in colonial dominance, ethnic genocide, or slavery, according to researchers. Slavery was still practised in the top four nations on the list: the US, Australia, Canada and Venezuela, at least through the second part of the 19th century.
Lengthy police training related to low fatal police shooting
Lead study author Paul Hirschfield said that slavery was so pervasive in the US and Brazil that the harms it caused, the advantages it provided, and the ethnic structure and ideology that supported it persisted long after it was abolished. These effects have irreparably changed the social and systemic landscape of today.
In 2019 police firearm killings in the US were 3.1 per million relative to 0.14 per million in France. Interestingly, in countries with lengthy police training, there were low fatal police shooting rates. But, surprisingly, in Canada, where police training takes around four weeks, there was still a high fatal police shooting rate.
