Quentin Tarantino is getting flack from the right wing media in America for speaking at the rally in New York, opposing police brutality in the USA and stating that he was there 'to say I’m on the side of the murdered'.
There does seem to be a large amount of reporting of American police shooting citizens in the United States this year, a year that has seen 957 people killed by police in the USA so far this year.
Undeniably, due to America's bizarre and crazy gun laws the police in the US often contend with much more violent situations and more heavily armed individuals than police in other societies but comparing America to other countries, the protesters do have a point regarding just how trigger happy the US police are.
In the UK there have been 54 deaths by police marksmen in 29 years but in America there were 59 shootings by US police in the first 24 days of 2015.
In Iceland there has been just one fatal shooting since the country gained independence in 1944 while in the city of Stockton, California which has 25,000 fewer residents than all of Iceland – there has been three fatal shootings in the first five months of 2015.
Police in the US fatally shot more people in one month this year than police in Australia in the past 19 years, while police in Canada average 25 fatal shooting a year while in California, a state just 10% more populous than Canada, police in 2015 have fatally shot 75 people in just five months.
In all, almost a thousand people have been killed by police in the USA so far this year so maybe the shocking thing should be that the police shoot and kill hundreds of individuals on a yearly basis and the person being vilified is the one speaking out about it.
3 comments:
Iceland was compared to the city of Stockton, California for comparable population size, not the USA as a whole.
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