Although I'm against the death penalty and I think it's used too much here in the US, I don't think it's used 'all of the time' and I'm pretty sure it's never for something trivial. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
An alarmingly large number of police have acquired the delusion that it is permissible for them to exercise the state's power to punish suspected criminals, without affording them the courtesy of due process.
I don't think this behavior is increasing by all that much. I think the increasing ubiquity of cameras capable of recording decent quality video and the increasing ease in distributing that video is making the existing behavior more noticeable.
The fact that police killings are not capital punishment executions is largely a semantic distinction. Some people feel it is important, while others are less apt to recognize it.
As such, whether the death penalty is used "all the time" or not, and whether it is used for "something trivial" depends largely on how you count the bodies. People have been killed by police for misdemeanor offenses, or even no reasonable suspicion whatsoever.
I don't erase that semantic distinction entirely, but it is rather counterproductive to abolish the post-conviction capital punishment without also rigorously investigating and prosecuting all police-involved deaths. If cops believe that a suspect deserves the death penalty, and the state does not employ it, that person may never get the benefit of a single hearing before a judge.
Around 1,000 people were killed by police in the US last year[1].
I assume that in the vast majority of those cases the use of lethal force was justified to protect the officer(s) or bystanders. Then there are the mistakes.
In what percentage of these cases would you guess that suspect was killed because the officer decided to play judge, jury and executioner? 1%? Even a shockingly high 10%, that would not be an order of magnitude more than the number of capital punishment executions per year.
It's a matter of perspective. In how many of those cases might the police have had other options? According to http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/15/... an (unfortunately politicized) article I just found, it looks as though US law enforcement is several orders of magnitude more bloodthirsty that the UK's. Now situations differ, but the US isn't some lawless third-world country. If the the will was there to limit these killings, there's no way that difference would be THAT large.
By these numbers, it looks as though the vast majority of the US police killings are preventable - which doesn't mean that the agents at the scene at the time were Judge Dredd, it just means that they, their department, and society as whole put them on the spot. I'm sure some people like the power trip, but with disparities in death rates like these, that doesn't sound like plausible major factor to me.
I'd need much more information to decide whether I think US law enforcement is more bloodthirsty. The fact is our cops are much more heavily armed. They have to be because our criminals are too.
Assume all you like. The written police reports all say "officer safety" and "feared for their lives", but it has become more common these past few years, with the rise of camera-equipped mobile phones and retail establishment surveillance cameras, for a video to surface after the report has been filed that completely contradicts the police perspective.
For instance, the report says "suspect reached for my gun" while the video shows "suspect attempting to flee". The report says "aggressive posture", "belligerent", or "combative stance", and the video shows "police employee suddenly attacks someone for no apparent reason".
This is exactly why Wisconsin took away the ability for police to investigate their own public mistakes and clear themselves of all wrongdoing.
So we cannot assume anything. We know that it is at least theoretically possible to employ people as professional police with a lower annual body count by examining other countries (and also that it is possible to kill more per year). Without an open process to examine and investigate the police-involved deaths, we cannot say with certainty that any percentage of them, from 0% to 100%, is due to intentional malicious acts.
It is certain that a positive percentage of all police reports involving use of force are falsified and later contradicted by bystander video recordings. And that is exactly why Colorado is implementing a "right to record" law, with a $15k penalty every time police interfere with people recording them doing their jobs.
And I dispute your later assumption that police are more heavily armed because they need to be to counteract criminals that are more heavily armed. They are more heavily armed because they can use civil forfeiture seizure proceeds to buy decommissioned or surplus military equipment. These "toys" are then used to conduct no-knock raids on people not known to be armed with anything at all.
If you stop assuming things about the police that tend to paint them in a more positive light, and look at only the facts that you can prove, the naked numbers are frightening.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that all killings by police in 2014 were completely random and 100% malicious. Then my chances of being killed by police in the US during that year were about double my chances of getting hit by lightning in the US that year. It wouldn't even place on the list of things I'm frightened about.
Maybe we can agree on this: more transparency is needed. Resistance to transparency is very suspicious.
My point about US/UK police was not about police militarization. That is a different issue. Regular cops out on patrol every day in the US carry guns. Their counterparts in the UK do not. I believe US cops should carry guns because it's so easy for everyone else in the US to get guns, including the criminals they will encounter. A consequence of everyone (cops & crooks) having guns is that there will be more exchanges between them that involve lethal force. Another consequence of cops having guns is that they will use them whenever they believe at the time that lethal force is justified. Sometimes they will be mistaken.
It's not really relevant to someone who is murdered whether it is a judge or a cop who sentences them to death. The result is the same: someone is murdered and those doing the killing face no consequences whatsoever.
