- A meme, shared in particular by Snoop Dogg and Mia Farrow, compares the duration of police training in the Nordic countries to that of the police in the United States.
- The image draws a parallel between this duration and the number of deaths caused by the police.
- If certain data are correct, it is necessary to be wary of a too rapid parallel between duration of training and number of victims.
Does police training have an effect on the number of deaths caused by the police? This is what suggests an image, viral, shared in particular by actress Mia Farrow and musician Snoop Dogg.
This meme opposes the Nordic countries to the United States. According to this image, Norwegian and Finnish police officers would receive three years of training, while their German counterparts would spend two years learning their trade. Four people were reportedly killed by police bullets in Norway in fifteen years, and seven in nineteen years in Finland. In Germany, the police have reportedly caused 267 victims in 30 years.
To become a police officer in the United States, the meme specifies that you have to be a high school graduate and train for about 21 weeks. The police would have killed 1,004, only for the year 2019.
Compare US police training with that of Norway, Finland, Germany. pic.twitter.com/KFMyY3xaWF
- Mia Farrow (@MiaFarrow) June 18, 2020FAKE OFF
In Norway, the training of future police officers lasts three years, as for their Finnish counterparts. In Finland, training takes place in a single establishment for the whole country. To be admitted, Finnish and Norwegian applicants must have obtained the equivalent of the baccalaureate.
In Germany, federal police officers are also trained for three years, which include fifteen months of practical preparation.
Law enforcement training in the United States is shorter: according to a 2016 Ministry of Justice report, training in 2013 spanned 21 weeks, just over four months. This excludes field training, which lasts an average of thirteen weeks, or three months.
Across the Atlantic, police training is not unified. Academies, spread across the country, train future police officers. Law enforcement agencies work at the federal level, or for municipalities and counties.
Are the American police officers then much more violent than their Nordic counterparts, as the meme suggests? The figures for Norway are correct: official data show four dead, killed by police fire, between 2002 and 2016. An additional victim is to be deplored in 2019. In Finland, a police spokesperson provided in Snopes, a US fact-checking site, a list of nine police deaths between 2000 and 2018.
In Germany, the newspaper TAZ published in 2017 a census of the deaths caused by the police since 1990. The journalists counted 269. They were based on official statistics, as well as articles and annual reports published by the magazine Cilip.
In the United States, federal statistics regarding the number of people killed by police last year have not been released. The Washington Post , which has identified these victims for several years, counted 999 police victims in 2019. The Mapping Violence project identified 1,098 victims.
However, one must beware of an overly rapid interpretation between the duration of police training and the number of victims. Other factors may come into play, such as a more widespread gun culture in the United States, the crime rate observed in the territory, or a lower selection of police officers due to lack of resources.
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