Thursday, February 19, 2009

A modest proposal to save lives

'Suicide By Cop' Phenomenon Occurring In Over A Third Of North American Shootings Involving Police
ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2009) — “Suicide by Cop” (SBC) is a suicide method in which a person engages in actual or apparent danger to others in an attempt to get oneself killed or injured by law enforcement. A new study in the Journal of Forensic Sciences examined the prevalence of this phenomenon among a large sample of officer-involved shootings.

Results show that SBC occurs at extremely high rates, with 36 percent of all shootings being categorized as SBC. The findings confirm the growing incidence of this method of suicide, with SBC cases more likely to result in the death or injury of the subjects 50 percent of the time.

. . .

SBC was found to occur at a momentous rate among officer-involved shooting cases. The fact that 36 percent of all shootings in the sample could be categorized as SBC underscores the significance of suicidal impulses among those who become involved in shootings and other uses of force with police officers.

The study also verifies that suicidal individuals can in fact threaten, injure, and kill others in their quest to commit suicide. These individuals are quite lethal to themselves, with a 97 percent likelihood of being injured or killed. There was a one in three chance of others being harmed during the incident.
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Since 36% of all police shootings according to this study are due to "SBC", there's only one thing to do to save lives.

Ban Police of course, if it saves just one life its worth it. The prevention of all these suicides by cop is a worthy goal, and if there were no cops, there could of course be no suicide by cop.

Discuss.

Points will be given for pointing out the blatant logical fallacy of this proposal.

For even more bonus points, name that item for which people seriously argue, with a straight face, that such a ban on said item would save lives.
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Note: The author of this blog does not advocating banning police, after all some of his best friends are cops.

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