Police Kill Rates Compared to the General Public

this is a repost of a submission i made awhile ago. while i was happy with the body of the post itself, pasted below, the title failed to garner any attention and so was buried.

The murder rate in america among the general population is about 5 per 100 000 every year. 1

police kill an average of three people a day, or about 1000 a year. that we know of, it is hard to track these numbers correctly because they are not officially counted. even though we track the amount of people who die from any other cause. there are just under 700 000 police in america. 2 3 4

before i try break down these numbers, i do want to clarify something. this comparison is skewed, not all police killings are unjustified. and murder rates among the general public do not include accidental deaths, or manslaughter. so 5 per 100 000 is only a reflection of your likelihood to be murdered, not necessarily killed, by any given non-cop. whereas the police kill count does include accidental (read – negligent) deaths, as well as those that would be defined as manslaughter.

that said, the disparity between the two metrics is still very telling.

1000 per 700 000 works out to a kill rate of 142 per 100 000. which is 28 times higher than the national murder rate. even if we generously assume 90% of police killings are justified, which i think is a stretch considering the frequency we see them kill people for no cause and lie about every detail afterwards, that is still 14 per 100 000, or just under 3 times the national murder rate.

which means, statistically, you are significantly more likely to be killed by any given cop than by someone who is not one. by an order of magnitude.

and for a bonus fact… police also steal twice as much as non police. and this number is NOT per capita, but overall. so a group of 700 000 people are stealing twice the amount as a group of 320 million. or to put it another way… the average police officer steals 900 times that of the average non police. 5 6