A small US city has had more police-involved shooting deaths since 2010 than all of Britain
By RYAN GORMAN
A startling new comparison of gun violence in the United States has shown American police officers to be among the most violent in the world.
A total of 409 people were "justifiably" killed – 409 with guns – by U.S. police in 2013 while British police officers fired only three shots in total, according to government statistic cited by The Economist.
The disparity is so wide that, between 2010 and 2014, police in Albuquerque, New Mexico 23 people – nearly seven times number shot dead by police in both England and Wales combined.
The two U.K. countries have a total of 43 police departments between them.
A lack of fatal police shootings in Britain compared against those in the U.S. can be explained in many ways. Less guns, less people, a less militarized police force.
The last time a British police officer was shot dead was in 2012, which happens to be the last year a suspect was shot dead in the country by a cop. The incidents were not related.
Suspects shot 30 cops dead in the U.S. during 2013, a tiny fraction of the more than 10,000 gun murders in the country every year.
Another factor is that police in the U.S. are trained to aim for center mass, to shoot to kill.
"The likelihood of success is low" when trying to aim for limbs, John Firman, director of research, programs, and professional services at the International Association of Chiefs of Police, told Huffington Post.
"If you feel sufficiently threatened or if lives are threatened and you feel the need that you must use lethal force, then you must take out the suspect," he added.
A city the size of London had zero police-involved shooting deaths in 2013 – there was not a single one in all of Britain.
That is staggering when compared against New York and Chicago – or St. Louis County.
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