Just because you do not like police, do not want to be held accountable for your unlawful actions, or profit off of the lie that police officers are “systematically racist” or aggressively heavy handed - does not make it reality.
What occurs in the real world between humans still matters to objective adults.
Anyone who glances just past the dishonest narratives from anti-police activists will undoubtedly stumble upon concrete data that proves - police are not the problem.
Accountability Database
Last week the Biden Administration launched the “National Law Enforcement Accountability Database”.
This database will “track records of law enforcement misconduct” and “ensure that federal agencies have ready access to records of serious misconduct when hiring federal law enforcement officers.”
The official public statement by the White House also took this opportunity to urge Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Pointless
This “accountability database” is almost as meaningless of the pandering press conference where it was announced.
Here’s why.
Law enforcement agencies conduct thorough and comprehensive background investigations on applicants as part of a multi-level hiring process. Prior misconduct and problematic behavior of applicants should be easily uncovered during this process.
The larger issue is that the number of reasonable people applying for police jobs is low. Recruitment and retention of police officers is a serious issue that nearly every law enforcement agency faces heading into 2024. The cause of this crisis - is the demonization and scapegoating of police officers.
The Biden Administration is pushing policies that make working conditions far worse for police officers - then they ponder aloud quizzically about the quality of applicants for police departments.
When politicians make the job of policing so awful that no reasonable person would ever choose do it - predictably, no reasonable people will be left to patrol the streets and answer emergency calls for service.
Homicide
The definition of “homicide” is:
the killing of one person by another.
Homicide statistics therefore include not only unlawful killings but incidents of “self defense” and otherwise lawful killings.
The Numbers
In 2021 there were 26,031 homicides in the United States (per the CDC).
In 2021 there were 1048 fatal officer-involved-shootings (OIS) (Statista).
We know that the vast majority of OIS are justified. Meaning:
Within department policy.
In accordance with relevant training.
Within the law.
“objectively reasonable”
With that in consideration - the total number of fatal OIS incidents accounted for 4% of all homicides in 2021.
Local and federal prosecutors who investigate police shootings believe that each year between 1 and 2% of OIS cases are unlawful.
That would be approximately 15 OIS incidents in 2021.
Those 15 (possibly) “unlawful” police shootings would account for .057% of homicides.
Let’s take this a little further
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics there are approximately fifty million individuals who report having contact with a police officer each year (some people have more than 1 contact).
So, we are talking about 15 (possibly) unlawful police shootings out of 50 million police-citizen contacts. This means that well over 99.99999% of all police-citizen contacts are incidents where police are not unlawfully killing people.
Missing the point
Those at the highest ranks of the U.S. government are not very worried about the violent maniacs slaughtering each other in the street - but instead, are deeply concerned about the selfless men and women who respond to those incidents.
If the goal was to save lives and restore communities to a basic level of normalcy - “accountability” would start with the 99.5% of homicides that do not involve possible police misconduct.
Final Thoughts
Police are not the problem.
Dishonest media and politicians are the problem.
Naw man...!? Why'd you have to bring out "facts"!? LOL! Great truthful and accurate perspective! Like Moravits below said, the lying media and the politicians who drive them are the megaphone for the .5% to the ignorant public.