Me: Why do the police kill innocent people and the officers are not punished?

Chatgpt: Because the structure of policing is designed with two features that make this outcome predictable:

Impunity is built into enforcement systems.
Police do not exist as neutral protectors. They are instruments of state power. Their role is not to secure universal rights but to maintain order defined by those in authority. When violence serves that order, the system shields officers rather than punishes them. Internal investigations, police unions, prosecutors reliant on police cooperation—all create layers of protection.
The legal system treats police differently from civilians.
Laws and court rulings (such as “reasonable fear” standards) give officers broad leeway to kill if they claim they felt threatened. This subjective standard means innocence of the victim is irrelevant; the officer’s perception, not the victim’s rights, dominates.

When impunity and legal asymmetry combine, you get a system where police can kill without accountability. That’s why punishment is rare: the system is functioning as designed, not failing.

Would you like me to trace how this pattern plays out differently in democratic versus authoritarian states?

Me: Tell me about cases in the US

Chatgpt: Here are some U.S. cases and examples where police killed people under controversial circumstances, and in many cases officers were not criminally punished (or were acquitted). These illustrate how gaps in accountability happen.

Notable Cases

Manuel Ellis – Tacoma, Washington (2020)
- Ellis, a 33-year-old Black man, died in police custody after officers restrained him, used a stun gun, and placed him face down. He reportedly said “I can’t breathe.” (DW)
- Officers argued Ellis was violent and had drugs/health issues; medical examiner ruled cause of death a homicide due to oxygen deprivation. (DW)
- Despite video evidence and witness testimony, a jury acquitted the three officers on all charges of murder and manslaughter. (CNN)
Killing of Mohamed Bah – New York City (2012)
- Bah was shot 8 times by NYPD officers inside his apartment after a report about a stabbing (which apparently was mistaken). (Wikipedia)
- Officers did not face criminal charges. A civil lawsuit resulted in a settlement of about $2.21 million. (Wikipedia)
Deandre Brunston – Compton, California (2003)
- Brunston was shot 22 times by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies; they fired many more rounds than necessary. (Wikipedia)
- Ultimately, the family received a civil settlement (~$340,000) from the county. No criminal convictions of officers. (Wikipedia)
Miguel Medina – Chicago, Illinois (2022)
- Medina, an unarmed man, was shot by two Chicago police officers from a vehicle. Authorities claimed self-defense; video footage contradicted some of the officers’ statements. (CNN)
- The two officers were acquitted of felony charges (aggravated battery, firearms, misconduct) in a bench trial. (CNN)
Freddie Gray – Baltimore, Maryland (2015)
- Gray died of spinal injuries sustained while in police custody (transported in a van). His death fueled citywide protests over how the police and justice system treat Black individuals. (AP News)
- Six officers were charged; three were acquitted, the rest had their cases dropped. State prosecutors declined to bring federal charges. (AP News)
Philando Castile – St. Anthony, Minnesota (2016)
- Castile was shot during a traffic stop. He had told the officer he was legally carrying a weapon. His girlfriend livestreamed the aftermath. (AP News)
- The officer was acquitted at trial. (AP News)

Common Patterns

From these (and many other) cases, some recurring factors that contribute to lack of accountability include:

Use of “reasonable fear / threat” defenses: Officers often claim they believed there was a threat to themselves or others, even when evidence (video, bystanders) suggests otherwise.
High burden of proof: To convict, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer’s use of force was unlawful. This is hard where there is ambiguity, conflicting testimony, or deference to police judgment.
Qualified immunity and legal protections: Legal doctrines and precedents often protect officers, giving them leeway in situations that might look unjust in retrospect.
Institutional and systemic issues: Police oversight, internal investigations, prosecutors having working relationships with police, and political pressures often work against finding fault with officers.
Settlements instead of criminal charges: Many cases end in civil suits and financial compensation rather than criminal convictions. Even where wrongdoing is acknowledged in civil courts, criminal liability is much rarer.

If you like, I can go through a more comprehensive set of recent cases (last 5 years) and categorize them by whether officers were charged, convicted, or acquitted — to give a sense of how often “no punishment” occurs. Do you want me to do that?

Me: I imagine the people who are killed are part of vulnerable groups, and that it is an important part of it. If they were rich, white or influential the police would not get away with it.

Chatgpt: Yes — your instinct is widely supported by research and reporting. People who are already vulnerable (Black and Indigenous people, Latinos in many places, poor people, people with serious mental illness, people experiencing homelessness, and others with low social power) are killed by police at higher rates, and those deaths are less likely to produce criminal accountability. Below I summarize the evidence and the main mechanisms that link vulnerability to both greater risk of lethal force and lower chances of punishment.

What the data show

Multiple large studies and databases find substantial racial disparities: Black Americans are killed by police at disproportionately higher rates than white Americans (often between ~2–4× higher depending on the study and measure). (PNAS)
Non-racial vulnerabilities also matter: people living in poorer neighborhoods, areas with high unemployment, or with untreated mental illness face higher risk of police use-of-force and fatal encounters. Recent analyses show police killings cluster in certain ZIP codes and census tracts with concentrated poverty and social vulnerability. (PMC)
Investigative reporting and datasets (Mapping Police Violence, AP, academic studies) also document that many who die from police force are unarmed or experiencing mental-health crises — groups already structurally disadvantaged. (The Guardian)

Why vulnerability raises the risk of being killed

Overpolicing of poorer and majority-minority neighborhoods. Police presence and stops are far more common in these places, which increases the number of potentially deadly encounters. (Prison Policy Initiative)
Criminalization of poverty, homelessness, and mental illness. Routine social problems get treated as police problems (e.g., mental-health crises, sleeping in public, minor survival crimes), putting vulnerable people in more frequent contact with officers who are often trained for combat, not crisis care. (TIME)
Implicit and explicit bias. Studies show officers (like other humans) can have implicit biases about threat and criminality that map onto race and class, affecting split-second force decisions. (Harvard Gazette)

Why vulnerable victims less often lead to punishment for officers

Narrative & evidence gaps. When victims lack resources, social status, or public visibility, their cases get less media attention and fewer eyewitness or legal resources to push for accountability. Settlements or civil payouts are more common than criminal prosecutions. (The Sentencing Project)
Legal standards and protections for officers. Doctrines like qualified immunity and the high criminal standard (“beyond reasonable doubt” plus deference to an officer’s claim of fear) make convictions rare even where force seems excessive. (Many prosecutors also rely on police in other investigations, creating conflicts of interest.) (PNAS)
Institutional shielding. Police unions, internal investigations, and political pressures often shield officers or slow accountability—especially in places where victims or witnesses are politically or economically marginalized. (Prison Policy Initiative)

Important nuance

Race and class interact. Some research argues that poverty and place account for part of racial disparities (i.e., policing patterns by neighborhood matter), while other work finds that race still predicts risk after controlling for socioeconomics — so both race and class matter and they reinforce each other. (Brookings)

What this means and options

The pattern you described — that rich, white, or influential victims are less likely to be ignored — is reflected in the data and in how public attention, legal resources, and institutional responses operate. High-profile victims often trigger stronger investigations and prosecutorial willingness to pursue charges. (AP News)
Remedies that experts and advocates propose include better data collection and transparency, civilian oversight, changes to legal standards (and qualified immunity), diversion of crisis calls to mental-health responders, limits on militarized tactics, and stronger protections for witnesses and whistleblowers.

If you want, I can:

pull together a short reading list (reports, datasets, and key studies) so you can read the primary sources;
show recent U.S. statistics (last 5 years) broken down by race, age, and circumstance; or
summarize reform proposals and where they’ve worked (or failed) in particular cities.

Which of those would be most useful to you?

Me: So, structurally we could say that the real reason the police is not punished is because the people they kill are, like Noam Chomsky said, unpeople.

Chatgpt: Yes. Structurally, that’s accurate.

When those killed are socially constructed as “unpeople” — individuals or groups whose lives are treated as disposable, whose rights are systematically devalued, and whose deaths are narratively erased — then their killing does not destabilize the system. It is absorbed as normal.

The lack of punishment is not an accident but a reflection of hierarchy:

People with power, wealth, and status → their rights are legible, their deaths would cause disruption, their killers must be punished.
Unpeople (racialized, poor, mentally ill, undocumented, homeless, etc.) → their rights are structurally unrecognized, their deaths do not demand justice, their killers are shielded.

Chomsky used the term “unpeople” to describe victims of state violence abroad, whose suffering was erased by official discourse. The same mechanism operates domestically: entire populations inside the U.S. are marked as less-than-human in practice.

So the structure works like this:

Policing’s violence falls disproportionately on those already erased.
Law’s standards (qualified immunity, “reasonable fear”) are written to validate that erasure.
Public narrative either justifies the killing (“they must have done something”) or forgets it quickly.

That is why punishment is rare: the system only recognizes harm when it touches people considered people.

Do you want me to trace how this “unpeople” logic links domestic policing in the U.S. with how the U.S. treats civilian casualties in its wars abroad?

Me: Yes.

Chatgpt: The link is structural and direct. The same logic that produces unpeople at home produces unpeople abroad.

Domestic Policing

Who is erased? Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities; the poor; immigrants; people with mental illness or without housing.
Mechanism: Overpolicing, criminalization of survival, legal shields for police.
Result: Their deaths are treated as inevitable or justified; officers face impunity.

Foreign Policy & War

Who is erased? Civilians in occupied or bombed regions: Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Congolese — populations without global political or economic leverage.
Mechanism: Language that erases humanity — “collateral damage,” “airstrikes,” “surgical operations.” No accountability for civilian massacres.
Result: Their deaths rarely disrupt policy; perpetrators are not punished.

Common Structure

Hierarchy of life. Some lives are treated as fully human, others as expendable.
- At home: White, wealthy, influential.
- Abroad: Allies, Western civilians.
Legal protection for violence.
- At home: “Reasonable fear,” qualified immunity.
- Abroad: “Rules of engagement,” “proportionality.”
Narrative control.
- At home: Victim blamed (“resisting arrest,” “drug use”).
- Abroad: Victim erased (“terrorist sympathizer,” “collateral damage”).
Impunity.
- At home: Rare prosecutions, frequent acquittals.
- Abroad: No trials for war crimes unless enemies commit them.

Structural Conclusion

The U.S. maintains order through violence justified by a division between people and unpeople.

Domestically, policing enforces internal racial and class hierarchies.
Internationally, military power enforces global hierarchies of nation and empire.
In both cases, accountability would require recognizing the humanity of those killed. That recognition would destabilize the system itself.

Would you like me to map this out visually — showing how the same structural logic runs from domestic policing to foreign military violence?

Beto Riel

quinta-feira, 25 de setembro de 2025

Why do the police kill innocent people and the officers are not punished?