Is reddit a good place to get an unbiased impression? Probably not.

Not to bee too blunt or rude, but you really need to stop using reddit to judge American police. This website has a HUGE slant against police. Just look at any /r/news thread about the police to prove my point.

But the sheer quantity of questionable events shows there is a systematic problem.

As of 2008 there were 1.1 mil LEO in the US and for even 1% of officers to use excessive force that's 10,000 cases of excessive force. Can you find me 10,000 cases for 2014?

See this link: http://www.policemisconduct.net/statistics/2010-annual-report/#_Summary

From that article:

From January 2010 through December 2010 the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project recorded 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct that involved 6,613 sworn law enforcement officers and 6,826 alleged victims.

That's 4800 cases of 'misconduct' which could literally be anything from a disgruntled person who got a ticket to someone who was shot unjustly. That comes out to less than 40 a month out of 313 million individuals and 1.1 million police for literally ANY kind of 'misconduct'.

And these are just ALLEGATIONS of misconduct! Many of them may be completely unfounded.

Even if police misconduct is grossly under reported it still doesnt show a "systemic" problem. Unless these numbers are off by orders of magnitude.

Please, for the love of common sense and good statistics, please dont use reddit as a gauge of American police violence.

If you can provide empirical evidence of systemic police misconduct please let me know so i can update my information.

credit to user one_cool_cat for the initial post where ive gotten most of my sources.