U.S. police violence disproportionately affects black citizens, but U.S. police violence affects the population as a whole at much higher rates than other wealthy industrialized countries. The U.S. has a violence problem, and the police violence problem is one part of that.

American police forces killed three people per day in 2019, for a total of nearly 1,100 killings.

Those numbers are far higher than in other wealthy western countries.

In comparison, The Guardian newspaper reported in 2015 that there was a total of 55 fatal police shootings in England and Wales between 1990 and 2014. Only 15 people were shot fatally by German police in 2010 and 2011 combined, the newspaper reported. The U.S. population is about six times that of England and Wales, and four times that of Germany.

CNBC

It would be nice for the reporter above to do the math for the reader, but here it is. If England and Wales were the size of the United States, they would have around 25 fatal police shootings per year, and if Germany were the size of the United States, they would have around 30 per year. Compare these numbers to 1,000 in the United States!

Look at statistics for other types of violence (which I don’t have handy, but have looked at in the past) like assault, homicides, suicides, traffic/cyclist/pedestrian fatalities, and the picture is similar.

The U.S. has a violence problem. Why? I don’t know – I can list factors that almost certainly contribute to it, but I can’t tell you which ones are the pivotal ones. Racism is certainly one factor, although I would speculate that removing racism alone would not come close to solving the problem. Ubiquity of guns is certainly a factor, because it turns what could be minor altercations and mental health episodes and accidents into fatal ones. Related to the ubiquity of guns is a lot of hidden advertising created by the gun industry and the larger military-industrial complex (free guns, even actors and settings for movie and TV producers, so that stories with guns are cheaper to tell than stories without guns, and sometimes guns are a substitute for bothering to tell stories at all). Economic inequality, and the underlying inequality of opportunity, is almost certainly a root cause. Lack of a functioning mental health care system for most Americans (especially those who lack economic opportunity) is a root cause. Criminalization of some common types of substance use (especially among those who lack economic opportunity) is certainly a root cause.

Solutions: I am probably a broken record, if you have read my other posts. But end the war on drugs now, provide universal health care (including mental health care) now, and continue the long-term project of providing education and job skills to all citizens. Stop tolerating violent death as a result of outdated transportation and urban design choices, when better designs are out there free to copy.

Police reforms are a good idea too – I am just suggesting that police reforms alone are not the leverage point that will bring our violence rates in line with the world’s leading countries. Notice I’m not even saying “other leading countries”. The U.S. is a great and powerful country that has run out of gas and is coasting on its past success. We slipped from a leadership position to the middle of the pack, and now we are slipping behind the middle of the pack. Solutions are out there, if we choose to acknowledge our problems and accept that we might be able to learn from others.