Black Deaths Matter; Improve Police Non-Lethal Arrest Methods

Black deaths from Police encounters matter. A Democracy that is more or less egalitarian except for great economic inequalities should not accept lethal arrest procedures as any sort of normal condition. While the statistics do not show much of a race factor in the killings considering that white people have a most common age 30 years older than blacks and also have a near zero population growth, killing people as a method of arrest is wrong unless it involves extreme circumstances such as hostages, armed robberies, terrorism and etc.

One gets the feeling that some police regard a gun and shootings as if it were a video game. A killing of a black man who ignored a female police officer in Oklahoma last year showed that shooting people because of frustration or incapability of making an arrest is not discouraged sufficiently. Any citizen should feel safe walking the streets of the nation, and of course that includes a police presence. Even so police should be able to use non-lethal methods to subdue offenders resisting arrest.

A choke hold or headlock is one of the most common roughhouse grappling holds that even children use in fights. If it is to be entirely replaced training police officers in M.M.A. skills for a year before hitting the streets will perhaps become necessary for the safety of policemen. In a fight police of course can use in the hold as may any citizen in self-defense.   Common sense however will inform anyone including police that the hold must be released before the individual on whom it is applied is killed. A possible circumstance would be if a policeman has already been shot and stabbed and to release the hold would afford the attacker an opportunity to finish the killing of the policemen too weak to otherwise defend.