A whopping 54,500 people were killed or hospitalized by cops in a single year compared to approximately 14,000 deaths caused by overdosing on heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine combined. Judging from this astounding comparison one can determine it is much safer to snort coke, inject smack, and smoke crystal than it is to be searched or arrested by an American cop.
A new study published in a British Medical Journal specified, in 2012, U.S. police killed or seriously injured 54,500 people during arrest or search situations. The international peer-reviewed journal for health professionals cites, "On average, an estimated 1 in 291 stops/arrests resulted in hospital-treated injury or death of a suspect or bystander."
TheFreeThoughtProject.com, a popular police accountability website and friend of NeverGetBusted, quoted Dr. Ted Miller who was the leading author of the paper. Miller stated,
"In one in eleven cases where someone died because someone else intentionally shot them, a police officer is the one who pulled the trigger."
CNN reports that Dr. Miller was "surprised to find that on a typical day, about three people die and 150 are injured during incidents involving police nationwide."
These unbelievable and conscience shocking figures continue. CopCrisis.com keeps a "death by cop" counter on their front-page that reports cops kill an American citizen every 7 hours. In 2015 cops killed 1307 Americans and have already shot down or choked to death 868 humans in the first ten months of 2016.
The mortality rate for certain combined drug overdoses are approximated at only 13,200 in the same year. In comparison, this number is minuscule when set side by side to the number of cops killing and seriously injuring civilians.
Graphs published by the National Center For Health Statistics, CDC Wonder, show in 2012, approximately 4,500 persons overdosed to death from cocaine and 6,000 perished from heroin. In 2013 and coming in last place, only 2,700 persons fatally overdosed on methamphetamine.
One is unable to determine the number of meth deaths in 2012 because the CDC did not report these incidences prior to 2013.
One famous philosophy insists citizens can police themselves better than uniformed government agents. This growing portion of the population rationalizes the Drug War must end and police must stop patrolling in search of citizens to arrest. Instead, the bad boys should act like nice fireman and remain in their offices.
When a crime is committed against persons or property, cops can be called who arrive at the crime scene as detectives. These true servants can then gather evidence and hopefully capture the perpetrators. This philosophy is not hard to accept considering police catch less than one percent of violent crimes in progress.
One can't be certain what scale is used when considering if a country is officially a police state or not. We do know "The Land of the Free" numerically and proportionately holds the all time world record for the number of citizens it incarcerates. Since there are no other countries in the world boasting this type of police violence, one can logically classify the United States as a nation ruled, commanded and dominated by law enforcement.
Since it's been established that using narcotics is safer than using cops, we should all seriously ponder the question asked during the opener of the cable T.V. reality show that features cops as heroes, "Watcha gonna do when they come for you?"
Please leave a reporter's tip in my jar by Upvoting this article now.
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Thanks for giving me a break from my first passion of telling you my life stories in Steemit's, "Former Narc Turned Humanitarian - A Life Series by Barry Cooper." Sometimes I like publishing other content I think you will appreciate. Peace, Love and NeverGetBusted.
Update:
I received a critique in the comments after publishing this article. A valid point was raised so I'm including parts of my rebuttal here. I really care about the reputation of my content so thanks to @modprobe for calling me out.
When I published this article, I was aware I compared deaths and hospitalizations by police to deaths by narcotics. I almost explained this statistical can of worms before publishing but I didn't want to bore the reader. I realize now I should have. My bad.
I fully agree cops killed 1307 citizens in one year and the three drugs mentioned only killed about 14,000. Despite this truth, my claim stands: "Using drugs is safer than using cops."
Tons and tons of cocaine are imported into the U.S. each day. We can determine millions and millions of Americans have daily used cocaine for decades and still do. In comparison, that number of humans are not daily arrested and searched by cops. This means an exponentially higher number of people use cocaine than who are arrested or searched.
This is only considering cocaine users and not the millions of daily heroin and methamphetamine users. Proportionately, it's valid to say snorting coke, shooting heroin and smoking crystal is much safer than snorting, shooting or smoking a cop. Puns not intended. lol.
As stated in the original article, the U.S. has incarcerated more citizens than any country in history...numerically and proportionately. China has one Billion more in population yet we have more prisoners. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population but houses 25% of the world's inmates in their prison camps. Over 40 million people have been caged for drug crimes and their are currently over 2 million in prison at this time.
Cocaine, heroin or meth have never thrown a user in a cage. I have been jailed on many occasions and can testify sometimes death would be better than jail. American jails and prisons are pure torture dungeons. Along with cops killing 1307 citizens, they have also tortured millions and millions of people and narcotics haven't.
Future readers of this article deserve to hear more support of my claims. I am always looking for ways to improve so I sincerely appreciate people who take their time to call me out.
Peace and big love @modprobe.
$51 billion per year claiming to be trying to prevent 13,200 deaths. Countless ruined lives for being kidnapped and caged for possession of a vegetable, half of them for possession of a weed that has never caused a single death (cannabis hemp, aka marijuana). The war on some drugs is a crime against humanity. End it. Hang the narcs, for kidnapping.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statistics
It’s not stricty true that weed has never caused a single death. The title gives away the punchline - 3 years ago a man in Brazil was crushed to death by half a ton of it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2442411/Brazilian-man-crushed-death-weed-cannabis-trafficking-chase.html
lmao
lolz
yeah right!
I feel that @billstclair!
Now I certainly won't argue that we don't have a problem, but I also won't overlook a misleading use of statistics. The post opens with a comparison of the number of people killed or hospitalized by cops, then compares that with the number of people killed by substances. These numbers are not measuring the same thing and thus can't be compared in any meaningful way. Extrapolating from KilledByPolice.net's data, we can safely assume the number of people killed by police in 2012 was somewhere north of 1,000, which, even though KBP's numbers are a lower bound, doesn't compare nearly as dramatically with the 14,000 deaths by substances.
It's generally difficult to determine how many people were killed by police in a given year. As the Washington Post points out, the government is more than happy to track spurious shark attacks per year, or how many domesticated pigs live in the country, but they simply can't be bothered to keep track of how many people their goons have killed [1]. This indicates that we should be talking about the issue, but publishing apples-and-oranges statistics comparisons probably won't help. It may even undermine our arguments.
We can do better than this.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/08/how-many-police-shootings-a-year-no-one-knows/?utm_term=.2e90ac7e5c63
Mr. @modprobe. I upvoted your comment because I respect critiques that help my content become the best it can be. I really care about the reputation of my content so thanks for calling me out. I agree with part of what you said and was fully expecting someone to raise that issue when I published the post. I was surprised more people didn't say something so congrats for catching it.
You ended your comment a little cold so I'll chalk that up as you may have had a fight with your wife. lol. Nowhere in the article do I speak of apples or oranges. Oranges are not the drug of choice for most and pigs like apples but I am not comparing fruits....lol.
I was aware I compared deaths and hospitalizations by police to deaths by narcotics. I almost explained this statistical can of worms before publishing but I didn't want to bore the reader with detailed micro-obsessive stats. I realize now I should have so I am adding parts of my rebuttal to the article. Thanks.
I fully agree with your discovery that cops killed 1307 citizens in one year and the three drugs mentioned only killed about 14,000. Despite this truth, my claim stands: "Using drugs is safer than using cops." Your argument stands numerically but not proportionately. Again, I should have explained this in the publishing. My bad.
For instance, tons and tons of cocaine are imported into the U.S. each day. We can determine millions and millions of Americans have daily used cocaine for decades and still do. In comparison, that number of humans are not daily arrested and searched by cops. This means an exponentially higher number of people use cocaine than who are arrested or searched.
The above paragraph is only considering cocaine and not the millions of daily heroin and methamphetamine users. Proportionately, it's valid to say snorting coke, shooting heroin and smoking crystal is much safer than snorting, shooting or smoking a cop. Puns not intended. lol.
I didn't title the article, "Cops kill more people than drugs," we can consider a fact I included in the article. The U.S. has incarcerated more citizens than any country in history...numerically and proportionately. China has one Billion more in population yet we have more prisoners. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population but houses 25% of the world's inmates in their prison camps. Over 40 million people have been caged for drug crimes and their are currently over 2 million in prison at this time.
Cocaine, heroin or meth have never thrown a user in a cage. I have been jailed on many occasions and can testify that sometimes, death would be better. American jails and prisons are pure torture dungeons. Along with cops killing 1307 citizens, they have also tortured millions and millions more while narcotics haven't.
I added this rebuttal to the post because I think you have a good point. Future readers of this article deserve to hear more support of my claims. I am always looking for ways to improve so I sincerely appreciate people who take their time to call me out.
Peace and big love @modprobe. I enjoy your blog and your huge support of the Steemit community. Keep it coming homie.
Barry
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When I was a kid anyone who thought TV shows were real was crazy. But these days everyone’s world view is formed by (fictional!) TV shows. The cops are the good guys who go to extraordinary lengths to keep you safe. Tell them “54,500 people were shot by cops” and they’ll say “They were probably bad people who deserved it”. Even when they hear about innocent people being killed they’ll say “There was probably more to it”. Sometimes they don’t even question their beliefs when tragedy strikes close to home – they’ll continue to make excuses like “It was just one bad apple” or “It was just an error of judgement.” Apart from THC in the water supply I don’t know what it would take to wake some people up.
I know @lensessions. There is a large piece of the population who thinks exactly like you described however, there are millions and millions of us who don't. Government propaganda wants us to believe we are few in number but the truth is we are quickly becoming the majority. It's still maddening to hear those who blindly continue defending the killer police. I feel you.
Dam this seems to be getting worse then.. btw thanks for the upvote my turn.
I love the WAVES you're making Barry! A great grounding rod of Sanity in a co-creative rebound effect. THIS Article is Great Work, among others you've shared. Thank you! Will seed it virally!
Thanks so much @frankbacon. I appreciate your words and willingness to share, share, share this article. Big love.
Great post, these types of stats are really good for arguing w statists ;)
haha. True that @tatianamoroz. You should be able to beat up at least 10 statist per day with this article...lol. Peace.
The situation in America has become so completely insane it is almost not even worth trying to rationally debate these crazy policies. The people in opposition to these ideas are simply either brain dead or completely illiterate, much like the average officer who enforces these unconstitutional laws. Just this morning, a "Self identified cop", was arguing with me that all "Black Lives Matter" protestors are basically "domestic terrorists" on twitter, and in this cop's profile his location is "WHERE MUSLIMS ARE NOT", yes in all caps, and his behavior was just as ridiculous. There are certain people that just buy the propaganda, because they are racist like this cop and the multitude of cops outed by OpKKK. See for yourself:
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
And a paid vacation. So why wouldn't I kill you or someone in your family and if you aint white all the better to reason to be afraid of you and kill you.
I love cops. I just can't eat a whole one.
Damn that would choke you.
Aha @barrycooper. Imagine finding you here on Steemit. We met at the Rethinking Everything Conference in Texas. My son and your daughter took a liking to one another. It's always inspiring to see people who once were so inundated and indoctrinated into the system wake up and share the profound truth of the situations they have seen first hand. Many blessings to you. Shellie Smith