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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Do you see?

You certainly don't.

You don't because I have your eyes.

I have them right here:

.

[syvarris]

but expecting them to do so when they don't have the appropriate resources is kinda pointless.

The US has more police officers per capita then Ireland, Poland, New Zealand, England, Norway, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, Canada, Japan, Denmark and Finland.  These countries do not have this problem.  So clearly it's is in fact possible with the current level of manpower.  So what's the issue?  Not enough bulletproof vests?  Not big enough guns?  Not enough armored personnel carriers?

Y'know, this strikes me as somewhat misleading.  Sure, those countries have fewer officers by population, but they also have much lower crime per population.  RPGeek's argument was that our police are overworked (which results in more wrongful shootings), so the more important statistic is how many crimes there are for each officer to deal with.  So I checked wikipedia, and yeah, we have way more homicides per officer than those countries; RPGeek's kinda right.  Also, we have more guns, but everyone knows that.

I'm not necessarily saying we need more cops, or less, or that our cops are justified/unjustified in their shootings, I'm just throwing more statistics into the pot.  I am saying that I think RPGeek's right on the topic of overworked cops, though.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers  ((mainiac's link))
USA:         266
Ireland:     261
Poland:      261
New Zealand: 247
United Kingdom:     227
Norway:      222
Australia:   217
Iceland:     211
Sweden:      208
Canada:      202
Japan:       197
Denmark:     193
Finland:     143

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate  ((Homicides rather than crime rate because this is the page I got when I googled crime rate.  If you want me to find and use a different metric, I can go look.))
USA:         3.9
Ireland:     1.1
Poland:      0.7
New Zealand: 0.9
United Kingdom:     0.9
Norway:      0.6
Australia:   1.0
Iceland:     0.3
Sweden:      0.9
Canada:      1.4
Japan:       0.3
Denmark:     1.0
Finland:     1.6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
USA:         112.6
Ireland:     4.3
Poland:      1.3
New Zealand: 22.6
United Kingdom:     6.6
Norway:      31.3
Australia:   21.7
Iceland:     30.3
Sweden:      31.6
Canada:      30.8
Japan:       0.6
Denmark:     12
Finland:     34.2

[RedKing]

So maybe someone needs to crunch the numbers and come up with a "cops-per-gun" rate.

[Starver]

Those mentions of England (which is, BTW, not a monoculture) in those figures should probably be rewritten as "England and Wales", lest the Taffia¹ decide to leave a sheep's head in your bed to show their displeasure².

For fun, though, add to the lists the seperate Scotland and Northern Ireland lines, too.


¹ The Welsh Mafia.

² To show you that they are happy with what you are doing, they leave instead a whole, live sheep.

[syvarris]

Redking, I was halfway done with that before I realized you were trolling.

Starver, blame mainiac--I just copied his list.  I changed the England entries to United Kingdom anyway, because that's the actual entry name in the articles

[Frumple]

Have to say, though, I am now a little curious as to comparative armories. How many guns per officer each enforcement system is floating, maybe respective equipment expenditures. Dunno if I've ever seen that particular statistic before...

S'actually something I vaguely recall being an issue in the US -- something about budgetary constraints meaning a lot of their funding can only be spent on equipment, even when they badly need better personnel (training, recruitment, etc.) funding.

[mainiac]

It feels like special pleading to me to claim that Americans are more criminal.  First of all, the homicide rate aint a great metric.  You are claiming that the US is hard to police because of the guns but the number of guns inflates the US homicide rate by making people much more likely to kill each other.  For another thing, other countries have problems too.  France for instance has a complicated colonial history that is still with them today and living in the suburbs of Paris.

[Playergamer]

1) What is your name?

2) What is your quest?

3) What is your favorite color?

1) John Miller

2) Make sure everybody understands how great a guy Donald is.

3) Gold.

[mainiac]

I was worried Obama was gonna cause trouble but you are here to protect us.

[Starver]

Starver, blame mainiac--I just copied his list.  I changed the England entries to United Kingdom anyway, because that's the actual entry name in the articles

(Dunno about anything but the first one, but "England, 227" matches "England and Wales (United Kingdom)[...] 227" but there are separate lines for Northern Ireland (376) and Scotland (326) that are sufficiently different to indicate non-homogenuity across the Home Nations, which you ideally need to convert into actual numbers, combine then return to a UK-wide proportion to make for a half-way valid figure for the UK as a whole.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some might complain about the Isle of Man (279) also being "United Kingdom" if it weren't for the likes of the Cayman Islands (625) and Bermuda (729) being given UK classification, when they're Crown Dependencies/British Overseas Territories, so not part of the UK.

But I meant to just point this out to avert the common misconception that was clearly about to happen, not actively re-educate anybody about the mistake thence made.

Anyway, E&W has the lowest figure for police of all (so labelled) 'UK' lines on that page, with "Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha" being at 939, Montserrat at 1471 (and apparently a high rate of murder, based upon the actual single recorded instance in the small population) and Pitcairn Islands at 1785, but obviously skewed by their lower than 100k populations rendering the 'police per' figure a little wild. Not that these should be included in the UK figure-mashing.)

That being off-topic (save for being statistical) it is not intended as an argument, just an aide memoire upon the way of anyone trying to using the figures with any degree of verisimilitude.  And I can't nest Spoiler tags, so a multi-paragraph parenthetical pair has to do for the outer lot.

[mainiac]

and Pitcairn Islands at 1785, but obviously skewed by their lower than 100k populations rendering the 'police per' figure a little wild

Partly that but also the Pitcairn Islands are a more wretched hive of scum and villainy then Mos Eisely.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I was worried Obama was gonna cause trouble but you are here to protect us.

WHERE WE'RE GOING

WE WON'T NEED MEMES

TO SHITPOST

[syvarris]

It feels like special pleading to me to claim that Americans are more criminal.

Upon further analysis, yeah, it kinda is.  All that can be said is that (non-canadian) Americans are more murderous.  Even then, you could argue it's just easier for us.

First of all, the homicide rate aint a great metric.  You are claiming that the US is hard to police because of the guns but the number of guns inflates the US homicide rate by making people much more likely to kill each other.

Fair point.  Like I said in the spoiler, I went with homicides because there's no wikipedia article for countries organized by crime rate (and I just assumed homicides would roughly mirror general crime, despite knowing better).  I also figured homicides were somewhat more relevant, as I imagine most police shootings are done in fear of homicide (whether or not that's a likely outcome of the situation), and therefore would likely be more closely tied to police shootings.

Anyway, as I said in the spoiler, I'm perfectly willing to find another metric if you want.  So I did.

Spoiler: http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Total-crimes-per-1000  ((All data from 2002)) (click to show/hide)

USA:         41.42
Ireland:     20.67
Poland:      36.73
New Zealand: 108.2
UK:          109.96
Norway:      72.73
Australia:   Not available?
Iceland:     209.52
Sweden:      138.25
Canada:      80.25
Japan:       22.39
Denmark:     91.34
Finland:     100.03

Is that accurate?  If not, please go find something yourself.  I'm sleepy.

For another thing, other countries have problems too.  France for instance has a complicated colonial history that is still with them today and living in the suburbs of Paris.

Sure.  I'll admit to being rather worthless at understanding other countries problems, due to my lifetime spent within the US, and my general lack of interest in such topics up until very recently.  However, I'd like to point out that France doesn't have such a massive issue with police shootings, which I believe was our topic?

TBH, I don't think overwork of police is the main reason for the high number of police shootings, I just thought your counter-argument was worthless on its own.

[RedKing]

Redking, I was halfway done with that before I realized you were trolling.

Who's trolling?? We seem to have at least three variables at play here:

1) Rate of crime
2) Rate of gun ownership
3) Rate of policing per capita.

If we have the highest policing rate, but also one of the highest crime rates, then that would indicate we have a godawful ineffective police force. If the counterargument to that is that the high rate of gun ownership exacerbates the crime rate, I'm willing to buy that but let's crunch some numbers. What's the p-values for crime vs. gun ownership, policing rate vs. gun ownership, and a multivariate regression analysis on all three?

[Kot]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
Poland:      1.3

Wat.
MAYBE if you count in all the military stocks (muh AKs and PPShs) and even then it would be pushing it.