POLICE in the United States kill roughly 1,000 people a year. No other rich country comes close. Finnish police fired only six bullets in 2013, fewer than half the number that one Chicago cop put into Laquan McDonald, a black teenager, in 2014 as he was walking away.

在美国，警察每年大约杀死1000人，成为所有发达国家之首。2013年，芬兰警方只射出6发子弹，不到芝加哥警察射击到拉全·麦克唐纳身上子弹数的一半。该案件发生在2014年，当时这名黑人少年正路上走。

Next to police in some poorer countries, though, America’s cops look almost Nordic. Police in El Salvador are 22 times deadlier. Cops in Rio de Janeiro, a Brazilian state with just 17m inhabitants, killed more people in 2017 than all of America’s police. (In February Brazil’s president ordered the army to take over policing Rio.) In countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and the Philippines it is impossible to say even roughly how many people the police kill, but it is a lot. “Police brutality is as common as water,” says Justus Ijeoma, a human-rights activist in Nigeria’s Anambra state.

然而，与在一些穷国的警察相比，美国警察就像是北欧警察一般。萨尔瓦多警方杀死的人数是美国警察的22倍。在里约热内卢，巴西的一个只有1700万居民的州，在2017年杀死的人比所有美国警察都多。(今年2月，巴西总统命令军队接管里约热内卢。)在肯尼亚、尼日利亚和菲律宾等国，几乎不可能说出警察杀人的人数，但这是非常多的。“野蛮的警察就象水一样常见，”尼日利亚Anambra州的一位人权活动人士Justus Ijeoma说道。

Why are some cops so likely to kill? Partly because they fear for their own lives, or for those of bystanders. In general, the more murderous the country, the more deadly are its police (see chart). American cops shoot more people than police in other rich countries largely because more people shoot at them. They are 36 times deadlier than German police officers, but also 35 times likelier to be killed on the job.

为什么一些警察如此轻易地杀人呢?一个因为是他们惜命，或者唯恐伤及旁观者。总的来说，一个国家凶杀案死得人越多，警察就容易杀人(见图表)。美国警察射杀死的人数比其他一些富裕国家的警察多，这在很大程度上是因为朝他们开枪的人更多。美国警察殉职的人数比德国警察多出36倍，但殉职的可能性也多出35倍。

The other big difference is incentives. In America, as in Europe, a cop who kills unlawfully can expect to be punished. (The officer who shot McDonald was suspended and has been charged with murder; he has pleaded not guilty.) In many developing countries, by contrast, the authorities encourage extrajudicial executions, either to get rid of dissidents or to suppress crime. Voters often applaud them for it.

另一个重要的区别是激励机制。在美国，与在欧洲一样，一名警察违法杀人的话，可能会受到惩罚。(枪杀麦克唐纳的警官遭停职，并被指控谋杀；他拒不认罪。）相比之下，在许多发展中国家，当局鼓励法外处决，要么驱逐持不同政见者，要么压制犯罪。选民经常支持他们的作法。

In the Philippines, for example, President Rodrigo Duterte openly urges the police to kill suspected drug dealers and even drug users, to fulfil a campaign promise to dump their corpses in Manila Bay and “fatten all the fish there”. Since he became president in May 2016 more than 12,000 people have died in extrajudicial killings, according to human-rights groups. The police give a smaller but still staggering number. They say that 3,850 died in anti-drug operations between July 2016 and September 2017. Another 2,290 drug-related murders are “under investigation”.

例如，在菲律宾，总统罗德里戈·杜特尔特公开敦促警方击毙毒贩疑犯甚至吸毒者，以履行竞选承诺，要将这些人的尸体倾倒在马尼拉湾，“把所有的鱼都养肥”。据人权组织称，自他2016年5月就任总统以来，有1.2多万人死于法外处决。警察的数据小得多，却仍然惊人。警方表示，在2016年7月至2017年9月期间，有3,850人死于扫毒行动，另外还有2,290宗与毒品有关的谋杀案正在“调查中”。

Imelda Hidalgo, who lives in a slum of Quezon City, in Manila, says the police gunned down her brother last year, probably because they heard that he took shabu (methamphetamine). Trigger-happy cops sometimes shoot bystanders. “We are scared,” says Ms Hidalgo, “What if a user comes to our local store and then there’s a drug operation right here?”

住在马尼拉奎松市的一个贫民窟里的伊梅尔达·伊达尔戈表示，去年警察枪杀了她的哥哥，原因可能是他们听说他服用了沙布(甲基苯丙胺)。喜欢开枪的警察有时会射杀旁观者。“我们都很害怕，”伊达尔戈说道。“如果一个消费者来到我们当地的商店，然后在这里有扫毒行动，会怎么样?”

Elizabeth Mago, a food-seller in Quezon City, says her son “just had a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time”. One evening last year, he asked for 10 pesos ($0.20) to pay for a video-gaming session and headed for the local computer shop. While there he was shot. His mother suspects the police were involved, but cannot be sure. Such confusion is normal. “On operations the first thing the police do is take out the CCTV cameras and the lights,” says a church volunteer who helps those bereaved by violence.

奎松市的一位食品小贩Elizabeth Mago称，她的儿子“只是在错误的时间出现在错误的地方”。去年的一个晚上，他要了10比索(约合0.20美元)买一款玩电子游戏，走到当地的一家电脑商店。在商店里，他中枪身亡。他的母亲怀疑有警察涉入，但没法证明。这样的怀疑很正常。“在行动中，警察首先要做的就是拿出监视器和灯光，”一位帮助那些因暴力丧失亲人的教会志愿者说道。

The government insists that killing criminals cuts crime. This is impossible to verify. What is certain, however, is that many of the killings are murder, pure and simple, and that having a licence to kill makes it easier for corrupt police to intimidate civilians. “Extortion now is more rampant somehow, because the police can choose who to kill and who to put in jail,” says a local official.

菲律宾政府坚持以暴制暴。这是不可能证实有效的。然而，可以肯定的是，许多杀戮都是谋杀，纯粹而简单，而拥有杀人执照可以让腐败的警察更容易地恐吓平民。一名当地官员说道：“如今，敲诈勒索在某种程度上更加猖獗，因为警察可以选择谁来杀人，谁来坐牢。”

Still, more than three-quarters of Filipinos approve of the government’s approach. Even those harmed by the brutal campaign sometimes favour it. Both Ms Hidalgo and Ms Mago want it to continue.

然而，有超过四分之三的菲律宾人赞成政府的做法。即使是那些被残酷的运动伤害的人，有时也会喜欢它。Hidalgo和Mago都希望这种作法继续下去。

A similar drug war in Thailand, which began in 2003, was a fiasco. A public report four years later found that in its initial months about half of the 2,819 extrajudicial killings involved victims who had nothing to do with drugs. Villagers sometimes grumble that addiction is as bad as ever. Yet many long for a return to violence. “If you kill a dog, do you have to apologise to his family?” asks a rice farmer. “No. And it’s the same with drug dealers.”

泰国在2003年发动的一场类似的扫毒战争，结果却很悲惨。四年后的一份公开报告发现，在最初的几个月里，在2,819名法外处决案件中，约有一半是与毒品无关的受害者。村民们有时抱怨说吸毒和以前一样糟糕。然而，许多人渴望重新实施暴力性做法。“如果你杀了一只狗，你必须向他的家人道歉吗?”一个稻农问道。“没有。毒品贩子也是这样。“

In 2015 the vice-president of El Salvador told police that they could shoot gang members “without any fear of suffering consequences”. Such “implicit impunity” spurs police over-zealousness, observes Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. After the government announced a mano dura (iron-fist) policy, the number of alleged gang members shot by police and soldiers rose 15-fold, from 39 in 2013 to 603 in 2016. Over the same period, the murder rate doubled. Police are supposed to shoot to wound, but the ratio of suspects killed to wounded jumped from 3.1 in 2015 to 6.3 in the first six months of 2017. The ratio of dead suspects to dead police rose almost eight times, from 15 to one in 2014 to 113 to one in June 2017.

2015年，萨尔瓦多副总统向警方表示，他们可以“不记后果地”击毙黑帮成员。联合国法外处决问题特别报告员Agnes Callamard认为，这种“明确的豁免”的行为刺激了警方的狂热行为。在政府宣布了“铁拳”政策后，警察和士兵击毙的团伙成员数量增长了15倍，从2013年的39人增加到2016年的603人。在同一时期，谋杀率翻了一番。警方本应开枪击伤人，但在2015年的前6个月里，击毙的嫌犯比例从2015年的3.1跃升至6.3。嫌犯死亡人数与警察死亡人数的比率上升了近8倍，从2014年的15人上升到2017年6月的113人。

Last year more than 600 Salvadorean officers were arrested for allegedly belonging to death squads, participating in shoot-outs or committing other crimes. Hardly any were prosecuted or even sacked. At one point journalists got access to an elite unit’s WhatsApp chat group where officers shared videos of suspects being tortured, celebrated the “elimination” of gangster “rats” and traded tips on how to plant evidence. The officers in the WhatsApp chat were arrested, but freed three days later.

去年，有600多名萨尔瓦多警察遭逮捕，被指是行刑队成员，参与了枪决或犯有其它罪行。几乎没有对任何人起诉甚至解雇他们。记者一度进入了某个精英小组的WhatsApp聊天群，在那里，警罕分享了折磨嫌疑人的视频，庆祝了“消灭”黑帮“大老鼠”以及交流收集证据的方法。WhatsApp聊天群里的警察遭到逮捕，却三天后释放。

One-directional shoot-outs

单方面施暴

Advocates of mano dura policing in Latin America say it is the only way to deal with drug gangs. In other countries the excuse is terrorism. Consider the case of Naqeebullah Mehsud, a 27-year-old aspiring male model in Pakistan. Before his death he posted a video online in which he and a friend dance in a woodland clearing. He smiles, claps and sways. His long hair flicks in the breeze. He does not look like a member of the Taliban, an Islamist movement that abhors music and hairstyles. Yet on January 13th a police team killed Mehsud in what they termed an “encounter” with four terrorists.

拉丁美洲的“铁拳”行动的支持者称，这是对付贩毒团伙的唯一方法。在其他几个国家，理由是反恐。例如巴基斯坦27岁的有抱负的男模Naqeebullah Mehsud。他在去世之前在网上发布了一段视频。视频中他和一个朋友在林中空地上跳舞。他笑着拍手，摇摆着身子。他的长发在微风中摇曳。他看上去不像是塔利班的一员——一个厌恶音乐和发型的伊斯兰团伙。然而，在1月13日，一队警察在他们所谓的“遭遇"四名恐怖分子过程中击毙了Mehsud。

“Encounter killings” are common in Pakistan and India. Between 1997 and 2016 some 8,800 cases were tallied in Pakistan. The term implies that suspects perish in shoot-outs. Police seldom die during these battles, however. In the house where Mehsud died, blood colours the floor but bullet-holes pock only one wall.

在巴基斯坦和印度，“遭遇杀人”很常见。在1997年到2016年间，巴基斯坦约有8800起案件。这个词暗指嫌疑人在枪战中死亡。然而，在这些战斗中，很少有警察死亡的情况。在Mehsud身亡的那所房子里，鲜血染红了地板，弹孔却布满了仅有的一堵墙。

Mehsud had gone missing ten days before his death. Some people told local media that police had picked him up in an attempt at extortion. A police investigation found no links between him and the Taliban. The encounter, it found, was probably “staged”. Mehsud’s fellow Pushtuns, who say the police have been harrying them for years, held protest marches.

Mehsud在离世前失踪了10天。一些人告诉当地媒体，警方捉住了他，想要敲诈勒索。警方的调查发现他与塔利班没有任何联系。调查发现，这次遭遇很可能是“钓鱼”行为。Mehsud的族人普什图人表示，警察多年来一直在追捕他们，并为此发动抗议游行活动。

The unit that killed Mehsud has reportedly carried out 262 encounter killings since 2009. Its leader, Rao Anwar, has become a celebrity. Journalists with cameras routinely arrive at the scene of a shoot-out minutes before it begins, says Afzal Nadeem Dogar, of Geo News, a local channel. “It’s like Anwar’s a movie hero,” scoffs Jibran Nasir, a lawyer and campaigner. “Bombs go off all around but he emerges scratchless every time.”

据报道，杀死 Mehsud的警察部队自2009年以来进行了262次遭遇杀戮行动。领导人拉 奥•安瓦尔成为一个知名人士。当地电视台Geo News的Afzal Nadeem Dogar称，摄像记者通常会在枪战前几分钟赶到现场。“这就像安瓦尔的一部电影英雄，”律师兼活动家Jibran Nasir嘲笑道。“到处都是炸弹，但他每次都毫发无损。”

Mr Anwar’s career may now be over. He has gone into hiding to escape an arrest warrant for murder. Yet attempts to root out extrajudicial killing run up against a phalanx of incentives supporting it. Pakistan’s courts are drowning under a backlog of 1.9m cases. Judges fear to try terrorism cases, lest they be murdered by jihadists. Witnesses seldom come forward. Police are tempted to take shortcuts. Worst, officers who rack up “encounters” can expect professional advancement. “I worked hard all my life,” sighs a senior officer, “but I was not part of any encounters, so I was unable to get a promotion.”

安瓦尔的警察生涯现在可能要结束了。他为逃避一项谋杀罪的逮捕令而藏匿了起来。然而，试图根除法外杀戮的努力却与支持它的一系列激励措施背道而驰。巴基斯坦法院积压了190万案件。法官害怕审判恐怖主义案件，以免遭圣战分子杀害。目击者很少站出来作证。警察很想走捷径。最糟糕的是，那些击倒“遭遇”的警员想要获得职业晋升。“我一辈子都在努力工作，”一名高级警员叹息道，“但我没有参与过一起遭遇战，因此无法获得晋升机会。”

One globally popular idea to curb killings is for police to wear cameras. Yet a study in Washington, DC, in which roughly half the cops were given body cameras and half were not, showed no difference in the use of force between the two groups. This might not mean that body cameras are useless. It may be that American police generally follow the rules, and so did not need to change their behaviour when being filmed. Other police forces might be different; and body cameras might make civilians behave better, too.

各国遏制滥杀无辜的一个观点是让警察佩戴摄像机。然而，对华盛顿特区的一项研究显示，在华盛顿特区有大约一半的警察配戴了摄像机，一半没有，这两组人在使用武力方面没有任何差别。这可能并不意味着配戴摄像机的行为是无用的。也许美国警察一般都遵守规则，在拍摄的时候无不改变他们的行为。其它的一些警察队伍可能有所不同；而配戴摄像机也会让平民的行为变得更好一些。

Technology can restrain cops only if the authorities want to restrain them—someone has to watch the body-camera footage and punish misconduct. Building a culture of accountability takes time and political will, but is not impossible. In the early 2000s Colombia purged 12,000 corrupt officers and taught new ones to be better detectives. In Guatemala a UN-backed team of independent prosecutors secured convictions in 2013 against four cops responsible for systematic killings of prisoners. Such high-profile cases drove down police killings and homicides in general.

只有当局想要限制警察的时候，技术才能做到——必须有人监控录像，惩罚不当行为。建立问责文化需要时间和政治意愿，但并非不可能。在21世纪初，哥伦比亚清除了1.2万名腐败官员，并教导新警察具有更好的侦探行为。在危地马拉，一个由联合国支持的独立检察官团队在2013年对四名负责系统杀害囚犯的警察定罪。这些引人注目的案件很大程度上降低了警察杀人事件和谋杀案的数量。

In the short term, police need better training in the use of non-lethal means of incapacitating suspects, such as tasers. Franklin Zimring of the University of California, Berkeley, argues that many American lives could be saved if the police reassessed tactics such as emptying a 15-bullet magazine into a knife-wielding civilian standing 20 feet away “just to make sure”.

在短期内，警察需要更多地接受使用非致命方式降服嫌疑人的训练，如泰瑟枪。加州大学伯克利分校的富兰克林·齐姆林认为，如果警方重新评估一些策略，比如清空一个装有15发子弹的弹匣，扔到20英尺外的持刀平民里，“只是为了让对方相信（会开枪）”，那么，就能救许多美国人的命。

In the long run, cops in many poor countries need better pay (so they are not tempted to moonlight as assassins), tougher consequences for abusing their powers and a functioning legal system to work with, so they do not face a choice between killing a suspect and seeing him bribe his way out of prison. Most of all, such countries need leaders who think that civilian lives matter, and that punishments are for courts, not cops, to decide.

从长远来看，众多贫穷国家的警察需要更高的薪水（他们不会受诱惑，去兼职做杀手），滥用职权会有更为严厉的后果，以及有一套行有效的司法体制，因此，他们不会面临一个选择：杀害嫌疑人和发现他受贿赂，不用进监狱。 最重要的是，这些国家需要看重平民生活的领导人，而惩罚是由法院来决定的，而不由警察决定。

编译：苏思莹

编辑：翻吧君

来源：经济学人（2018.03.08）