Why are there so many police shootings compared to other countries?

http://bluenationreview.com/why-are-there-so-many-police-shootings-compared-to-other-countries/

Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first degree murder November 24 in the death of Laquan McDonald. A video released by police shows Van Dyke shooting the teenager 16 times.

Van Dyke is an extreme example of a pattern of unnecessary deadly force used by US police. American police kill a few people each day, making them far more deadly than police in Europe.

Historic rates of fatal police shootings in Europe suggest that American police in 2014 were 18 times more lethal than Danish police and 100 times more lethal than Finnish police, plus they killed significantly more frequently than police in France, Sweden and other European countries.

As a scholar of sociology and criminal justice, I recently set out to understand why rates of police lethality in the US are so much higher than rates in Europe.

Read more: http://bluenationreview.com/why-are-there-so-many-police-shootings-compared-to-other-countries/#ixzz3sXT6aL6P