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Notes -
I'm getting the sense that you switch between taking my words overly literally in some cases and loosely reinterpreting it in a way that is convenient for your argument in others. To rehash:
I think that searches, SWAT calls and other similar "they come to your house because they think there is a threat in it to neutralise" situations in particular are a scenario in which I would feel much less safe around US police than around European police.
Data supports that US police in general are much more likely to injure and kill those they interact with than European police
Personal experiences support that US police are more hostile and less helpful than their European counterparts. This is in their interactions with me as a Caucasian academic with naive good-kid vibes; who knows what they would do if they were responding to a SWAT call or following a lead from someone in the computer security "industry" I know.
I grant that there are reasons they turned out like that, but I see no evidence that they are not like that to everyone, i.e. that the hostility is precisely targeted at the uniquely American problem elements. There are more YouTube bodycam videos of American police roughing up harmless-looking white kids than total incidents of German police doing that.
Okay, I’ll respond only to the explicit claims you are making here:
If you find yourself in this scenario, there is likely a very good reason the feds are after you, and frankly I don’t mind that people in that scenario are not safe. Again, I think that most uses of deadly force by American police are a good thing — not a tragic-but-unavoidable outcome which we should strive to eliminate, but rather something that produces a long-lasting positive good for society at large — so I’m perfectly comfortable with the outcome in which some substantial percentage of the targets of federal raids get smoked in the process.
Yes, but not for the same exact actions, as far as I’m aware. American police do not appear to be significantly more likely to injure or kill blameless, non-violent, unarmed, compliant suspects — a descriptor which describes a much higher percentage of the individuals encountered by European police than by American police. The significant discrepancies are due to the much higher incidence of violent/armed noncompliance in America.
I cannot comment on this, as I have not had any interaction with European police. I’m willing to believe that there might be some average difference, and I can imagine a number of plausible explanatory mechanisms. American police turnover is quite high, and a large part of that is simply that American police officers get worn down into a siege mentality by the absolute scum of the earth with which most of them are forced to interact regularly.
As someone who watches a massive amount of police bodycam content daily, I can only say that you are being exposed to a very different type of bodycam content than I am. I see very little of police “roughing up harmless-looking white kids”, and I contend that this simple is not happening with any great frequency.
By the way, do you do this for any particular reason (analyzing them for the purpose of forming some conclusion, which we might one day get to see as an effort post?), or is it just a hobby?
It’s both! Obviously my consumption of this content profoundly affects my perceptions of American policing, and that shines though in my posting about the topic (and about other topics, such as race) on this site, as well as my appearance on the Motte-adjacent podcast The Bailey.
Ultimately, though, it is a hobby which originated out of a genuine intellectual interest. I was in college when the Trayvon Martin shooting happened, and fresh out of college when the Black Lives Matter movement started gaining steam. I was a dutifully-committed progressive at the time, and I cared deeply about whether or not the conversations I was involved in were grounded in actual verifiable reality. That inspired me to start doing a bunch of research on policing, and to expose myself to the (at the time very limited) police bodycam footage I could get my hands on. Discovering just how wildly the narrative deviated from the reality I encountered was the single biggest contributing factor to my ideological evolution.
If officer Darren Wilson had been equipped with a bodycam at the time he shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, the public could have been exposed to footage of Brown attacking Wilson in his car and attempting to grab his holstered firearm, and subsequently charging at Wilson outside of the car. This could have smothered the nascent BLM abomination in its crib and saved this country ten years of racial fabulism and misery. The ubiquity of bodycams — sold to the public as a way to document widespread police misconduct — has demonstrated to curious Americans the sheer barbarity with which law enforcement deals on a daily basis, and has certainly helped to take the wind out of the sails of the police-abolitionist movement.
As for why I watch it nowadays? It’s mostly a nice way to blow off steam by indulging my schadenfreude toward criminals, but it also allows me to stay abreast of any notable policing incidents and to acquaint myself with the details before the story goes viral and the narrative begins to take over.
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