militarization of police 7
© Armstrongeconomics.com
Police violence in the US is now so prevalent that it has become 'the new normal', although just how extreme the situation it is becomes apparent when we compare it with other developed countries. Take my country, Finland, for example, where cops discharged their firearms just six times in 2013, and 120 times over the last decade, with the use of firearms by police rarely resulting in death.

Finnish police have fired guns about 120 times in the last ten years, and the use of firearms by police rarely results in death: the Finnish National Police Board reported that police killed just three people from 2003-2013, and injured 20.

However, in the US, 2015 statistics show that by June, police have killed over 500 people, and it's understood that this number is under-reported due to a lack of official record keeping. The London Guardian is keeping track of American police killings, and at the time of writing the count was about 540. A similar number of people were killed by US cops last year.

Finnish cops do occasionally encounter violent situations. A shooting incident in November 2014 in Halikko (Salo), stands out because the police really should have returned fire when suspects opened fire at them, but they chose not to. Here's a description of what took place, translated from iltalehti.fi:
When the the police patrol car approached the man, the man turned and suddenly opened fire on the police with a pistol machine gun.

Detective Chief Inspector Pertti Läksy related that the police patrol came within 30-40 meters, when they encountered a blind hail of bullets.

The shooter did not give any kind of warning.

According to Läksy, the police crouched down in the car for cover, as a number of shots broke the windshield and bullets struck the door of the patrol car. At least more than ten shots were fired according to the police.

Despite the tight situation, both police officers emerged without injury. The situation was diffused during the time after the shooter emptied his magazine.

The shooter's weapon ran out of bullets, Läksy confirmed.

After this, one of the police officers got out of the car and captured the shooter, commanding him at gunpoint.
Here's another shooting incident that took place in Urjala in 2009:
Police Tackle Drunken Gunman

An inebriated man fired shots at two police officers from his front yard in the municipality of Urjala in southern Finland on Saturday evening, reports the provincial daily Aamulehti. The paper writes police were called after the man had earlier fired shots in an adjacent field. Upon their arrival, the man fired six to seven shots towards the officers.

No-one was injured and the police did not return fire. The man tried to escape by taxi after the incident but was quickly apprehended. The Tampere Unit of the National Bureau of Investigation described the incident as one of attempted murder.
Image
© YLE/ Marjukka Talvitie
Contrast this police behavior with the utterly inane (and frankly unjustifiable) reasons US cops give for 'shooting first, asking questions later'. A recently released body-cam video - which is extremely graphic and disturbing - shows Utah cops shooting and killing an unarmed man, peacefully exiting a store. This all happened within seconds of them encountering him, so he had no time to react to police commands.

Undoubtedly US cops face violent encounters that are not of their own choosing, however there have been far too many reports of the police themselves escalating non-violent situations into violent, fatal conflict (often starting with bullying and beating, if not outright shooting and electrocuting with tasers). If Finnish cops - in dangerous situations where they are being shot at - can use their training, and apply cool-headedness and intelligence, to professionally take the suspects into custody without riddling them with bullet-holes, why can't American cops do same?

Further highlighting how out-of-control America's policing has become, consider these: Now watch how professionally off-duty Swedish cops dealt with an assault on the New York subway:


High among the factors that led to this inhuman policing situation in the US has to be the fact that recruiters there explicitly seek people of lower intelligence! And then there's the impunity US cops enjoy from the legal system, which encourages more psychopathic and violent individuals to fill police forces' rank-and-file.

The militarization and systematic brutality of American police since 9/11 is one of many symptoms indicating how advanced the process of ponerization is there: the US is literally rotting from the inside out. While, on the one hand, I'm glad I'm nowhere near it, when I watch the government of my country dance to America's tune with respect to the militarization of Europe against Russia, I wonder how long it will be before the rot sets in here...