Wong Chin Huat's 'Saving the Police' in The Nut Graph:
Excerpts:
Holding the police accountable
Police shootings are commonplace in many countries, including the US. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell documents how Amadou Diallo, a 23 year-old Guinean immigrant, was killed by police in the Bronx, New York City. Police fired 41 shots at him while he was standing in his apartment doorway. Apparently when he reached into his jacket, they thought he was pulling out a gun — it was really a wallet, there were no weapons on Diallo's body.
But police in many other countries rarely shoot suspects dead, the UK being one example. England and Wales have recorded only five deaths by police shootings per year, on average, for the past 10 years, with only single deaths in 1994 and 2006, and none in 1997.
Why? One simple explanation is that every time a person is killed or injured from the UK police's use of firearms, an automatic investigation is triggered. If the person dies, a coroner's inquest will follow to examine the causes of the fatality.
And as much as the independence of the UK's Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is questioned, at least the Britons have it.
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