The U.K's Solution to Police Brutality Is Something the U.S. Would Never Consider
/Fact: Police officers in America keep shooting — and killing — unarmed (and largely innocent) black men.
Nearly every 28 hours the police shoot and kill an unarmed person, usually a black male (man, teenager or child), and they're doing so without repercussion. This has resulted in myriad calls to "demilitarize the police," but no one has stated the obvious. To "demilitarize the police," and to find a solution to police brutality, there is one clear solution: Disarm the police.
This isn't a new idea, yet Americans, especially American politicians, willingly avoid having this specific conversation.
In 2012, 409 out of 410 "justifiable" killings by American police were caused by guns. Conversely, that year in the U.K., there was just one fatality. And in 2013, the Economist reports, "British police officers actually fired their weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero."
The difference? American police carry guns. The police patrolling Britain, Scotland and Wales don't.
Indeed, only roughly 5% of police in the U.K. are even authorized to carry guns. This nearly 200-year-old tradition was born of the mandate of the police to function as servants of the public rather than to the state. "In terms of the police being approachable, in terms of the public being the eyes and ears of the police, officers don't want to lose that," former police deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick said in an interview with the BBC.
Meanwhile, Japan has cut its firearm homicide rate to the low double and sometimes single digits due to restrictive gun laws. Japan's police force does carry guns, but only after submitting to a rigorous training process. [MORE]
