US cops train 20 weeks — less than hairdressers. Germany: 2.5 years. Japan kills 170x fewer civilians. We transform training, demilitarize, and end qualified immunity.
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American police kill approximately 1,100 people per year. Police in Japan kill roughly 2. Police in the UK kill roughly 3. Police in Germany kill roughly 15. Adjusted for population, American officers kill civilians at a rate that dwarfs every peer democracy. This is not an accident. It is the predictable result of specific policy choices.
The first and most fundamental problem is training. The average American police officer receives approximately 20 weeks of training before being handed a badge, a gun, and the legal authority to use lethal force. That is less time than most states require to become a licensed cosmetologist. In Germany, police training lasts 2.5 years. In Finland and Norway, it takes 3 years and includes a bachelor's degree in policing. In Japan, training runs 15 to 21 months with extensive focus on de-escalation, martial arts restraint techniques, and community integration. The correlation between training length and civilian deaths is not subtle.
The second problem is militarization. Through the Department of Defense's 1033 program, local police departments have received $7.4 billion in surplus military equipment — armored vehicles, grenade launchers, military-grade rifles, bayonets, and even helicopters. Research from multiple universities has demonstrated that departments receiving military equipment use more force against civilians, conduct more aggressive raids, and are more likely to kill. When you give officers the tools of war, they adopt the mindset of war.
The third problem is use-of-force standards. Most American police departments authorize lethal force whenever an officer has a "reasonable belief" of imminent danger — a subjective standard evaluated almost entirely from the officer's perspective. Other countries require officers to exhaust all alternatives before using lethal force, impose strict reporting requirements after every use-of-force incident, and treat civilian deaths in police custody as automatic grounds for independent investigation.
Fourth, qualified immunity — a judicially created doctrine that shields officers from civil liability — removes the primary mechanism through which victims of police misconduct could seek accountability. Fifth, the warrior mentality permeates American police culture. Officers are trained to see every interaction as potentially lethal, every civilian as a potential threat, and every hesitation as a potential death sentence. This stands in stark contrast to the guardian model used in countries like Norway, Finland, and Japan, where officers are trained to see themselves as protectors of the community, not occupiers.
None of these problems are inevitable. Every one of them is a policy choice — and every one can be changed.
Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine — invented by the Supreme Court, not passed by Congress — that makes it nearly impossible for victims of police misconduct to hold officers civilly accountable. It shields roughly 99% of officers from lawsuits, even when their conduct is objectively unreasonable.
The doctrine works like this: to sue an officer for violating your constitutional rights, you must prove not only that the officer violated your rights, but that the specific right was "clearly established" at the time — meaning a prior court ruling addressed conduct with nearly identical facts. If no previous case matches closely enough, the officer is immune — regardless of how egregious the conduct was. Courts have dismissed cases involving officers who stole $225,000, who shot a child while aiming at a family dog, and who used excessive force during routine traffic stops — all because no prior case with sufficiently similar facts existed.
Qualified immunity was not part of the original Civil Rights Act of 1871 — the law that was specifically written to allow citizens to sue government officials who violated their constitutional rights. The Supreme Court created the doctrine gradually through a series of rulings beginning in 1967 and expanding dramatically in 1982 with Harlow v. Fitzgerald. Congress never voted for it. No legislature debated it. It exists solely because the Court decided to protect government officials from the very accountability mechanism Congress created.
The practical effect is devastating. Attorneys refuse to take police misconduct cases because qualified immunity makes them virtually unwinnable. Victims of excessive force, illegal searches, and even officers who fabricate evidence have no civil remedy. The deterrent effect that civil liability is supposed to create — the incentive for departments to train better, supervise more carefully, and discipline bad actors — is eliminated entirely.
No other profession in America operates with this level of legal protection. Doctors face malpractice suits. Lawyers face disbarment. Accountants face licensing consequences. Only police officers are shielded from the civil consequences of their professional conduct — and the result is a system where accountability is the exception, not the rule. The Common Good plan ends qualified immunity for law enforcement officers, replacing it with a system modeled on medical malpractice: clear standards, independent review, and real consequences for misconduct. See the full criminal justice policy for legislative detail.
The Common Good plan transforms American policing through eight interconnected reforms — each targeting a specific failure in the current system. Together, they shift policing from a warrior model to a guardian model while making communities genuinely safer.
These reforms are not aspirational. Each one has been successfully implemented in other democracies or in American jurisdictions that have adopted them voluntarily. The plan takes what works and makes it national.
For the complete plan with legislative detail, cost projections, and sourcing, see the full criminal justice issue page.
The United States is a dramatic outlier among wealthy democracies in virtually every measure of policing — training length, civilian deaths, accountability mechanisms, and militarization. The differences are not marginal. They are staggering.
| Country | Training Length | Annual Kills | Accountability | Armed? | Misconduct Registry | Community Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 20 weeks | ~1,100 | Internal affairs | Yes (all) | None | Warrior-dominant |
| United Kingdom | 2-3 years | ~3 | IOPC (independent) | Mostly unarmed | National (IOPC) | Peelian principles |
| Germany | 2.5 years | ~15 | Independent prosecutors | Yes (strict rules) | State-level | Guardian |
| Japan | 15-21 months | ~2 | Public Safety Commission | Yes (rarely drawn) | National (NPA) | Koban (community box) |
| Norway | 3 years (BA) | ~0-1 | SIA (independent) | Unarmed patrol | National | Guardian |
| Finland | 3 years (BA) | ~0-2 | Independent prosecutor | Yes (strict rules) | National | Guardian |
The pattern across every metric is identical: countries that train officers longer, hold them to stricter accountability standards, and operate under a guardian philosophy kill dramatically fewer civilians. The United States is not an outlier because of unique challenges. It is an outlier because of specific policy choices that no other wealthy democracy has made.
Sources: Mapping Police Violence, OECD, national police training data. See the Compare Parties page for detailed comparisons.
CAHOOTS — Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets — is a program in Eugene, Oregon that dispatches unarmed teams of medics and crisis counselors to mental health emergencies instead of armed police officers. It has been running since 1989, handles roughly 24,000 calls per year, and less than 1% of those calls require police backup.
The premise is simple: when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, a substance abuse episode, or a welfare check situation, the most effective response is not an armed officer trained to assess threats — it's a medic or crisis counselor trained to de-escalate, assess needs, and connect the person to appropriate services. CAHOOTS teams are dispatched through the same 911 system, arrive in marked vehicles, and handle calls that would otherwise require police response — freeing officers to focus on actual crimes.
The results are extraordinary. The program costs the city of Eugene approximately $2.1 million per year — compared to an estimated $14 million in police response costs for the same call volume. CAHOOTS has been credited with significant reductions in use-of-force incidents, arrests, jail bookings, and emergency room visits for mental health crises. The program diverts thousands of people per year away from the criminal justice system and toward the health system — which is where they belong.
Following Eugene's success, similar programs have launched or been piloted in Denver (STAR program), San Francisco, Portland, Olympia, Oakland, and dozens of other cities. Denver's STAR program, modeled directly on CAHOOTS, reported zero arrests and zero use-of-force incidents in its first six months of operation. The evidence is overwhelming: for a large category of calls currently handled by armed police, unarmed crisis response is safer, cheaper, and more effective.
The Common Good plan makes CAHOOTS-style crisis response a national standard. Every jurisdiction receiving federal policing funds must establish a civilian crisis response program for mental health emergencies, substance abuse calls, and welfare checks. Federal grants fund startup costs. For details, see the full criminal justice plan and the mental health policy page.
Police reform is one of the most deliberately mischaracterized policy areas in American politics. Opponents spend millions creating fear around reforms that have been proven effective in other democracies and in American cities that have adopted them. Here are the four most persistent myths — and what the evidence shows.
Myth: "Police reform means defunding — or abolishing — the police."
Reality: The Common Good plan does not reduce police budgets. It restructures how policing dollars are spent — investing in longer training, higher professional standards, civilian crisis response teams, and real oversight. Officers who entered policing to protect and serve benefit enormously from these reforms: better training, clearer standards, and colleagues who meet the same professional bar. The CAHOOTS model, for example, frees officers from mental health calls they are not equipped to handle — which is exactly what most officers say they want. Reform strengthens policing. It does not weaken it.
Myth: "Police reform makes communities less safe."
Reality: Countries with the strongest police accountability and the longest training programs have lower crime rates and dramatically fewer civilian deaths at the hands of police. Norway, Finland, Germany, and Japan all have more rigorous training, stricter oversight, and lower crime rates than the United States. Within the US, departments that have adopted de-escalation training, civilian oversight, and crisis intervention programs have seen reductions in both use-of-force incidents and violent crime. Reform and safety are not in tension. Bad policing and safety are in tension.
Myth: "Most cops are bad — the whole system is rotten."
Reality: Most officers entered policing to serve their communities. The problem is not individual character — it's a system that trains officers inadequately, shields misconduct from accountability, and punishes officers who report wrongdoing by their colleagues. A national misconduct registry, duty-to- intervene laws, and civilian oversight don't punish good officers — they protect them. In every profession, from medicine to law, accountability mechanisms exist to protect the majority of practitioners from the damage caused by the minority. Policing should be no different.
Myth: "Training doesn't matter — it's about who you hire."
Reality: Training is the single strongest predictor of use-of-force outcomes. Countries with 2-3 years of police training kill a fraction of the civilians killed by American police. Within the US, departments that have implemented extensive de-escalation training have seen 25-40% reductions in use-of-force incidents. Hiring matters — and a 2-year training program is itself the most effective screening mechanism. People who should not be officers are far less likely to complete a rigorous multi-year program than a 20-week course. Training is screening. For more on how training standards work in practice, see the full criminal justice plan.
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American police kill 1,100 people per year. Other democracies have solved this problem. Read the full plan and see exactly how we transform policing — with sources, evidence, and implementation details.