I see your point, and the US officers surely are more willing to use their handcuffs than their colleagues in Germany, but assault is assault - be it in Germany or in the US (btw, we have a common Penal Code for entire Germany). The statistics cannot be that wrong, there is a tendency that there´s more violence against people, more crime against life and the physical integrity in America than say, in Europe. One can blame it on the ghettos, or a greater difference between rich and poor but it is true. Sure, what you say about the educational system is true, the comparisons are questionable, but we were talking about the riots here. When a man is beaten up in Stuttgart, the police reports it in their crime statistics, same in the US. And in these cases there´s "zero tolerance" from the policemen - in both countries. So we can compare battery, murder and these kinds of criminal behaviour. Just wanted to note that.
Have you followed the world cup a bit?
I am no lawyer, so I do not feel completely comfortable in this subject matter. However, unless proven otherwise I will stick to my argument that the definitions and enforcement of laws in Germany is largely different than in the US.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mord The Germans see “Mord” and define it differently than in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder
In the US, premeditation is not a prerequisite to meet the legal requirement to be tried for murder.
Example (From http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=481&page=137 ):
“Even someone who did not kill, attempt to kill or intend to kill can be executed if it is shown that he was a "major participant" in the murder and showed "extreme indifference to human life." For example, three brothers who broke their father out of prison and went on a crime spree killed a family traveling along a highway. They did so by flagging down their car under the pretense of being distressed motorists, then leading them out into the desert and shooting them execution-style. The father was the one who actually pulled the trigger, but the brothers were present at the killings and could have stopped them. A statewide police manhunt ensured; the father and brothers parted ways, and the father and one of the brothers died of exposure in the desert. The two remaining brothers were later apprehended, and the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that imposing the death penalty on them did not violate the Constitution.”
In Germany would they get tried for “Mord”? No. But in the US they did get tried for “murder”. The legal criteria and definitions are different.
Mord in Germany: In Germany the term Mord (murder) is officially used for the premeditated killing of another person.
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The problem with statistics on the Web:
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/homicide.htm
This site throws around a lot of statistics. I’m sure other people quote them too! Unfortunately I can find some website that will claim all Germans wear lederhosen and do the Schuplatler all day while yodeling, or that they are all NAZI’s or whatever else you want to prove.
That site is nothing but a bunch of numbers that in reality mean nothing.
Going out to find proof of a specific predetermined answer and only searching for those shreds of data, leaving out contradicting information, presenting them as factual but the sources are at times dubious, dated, without a control group, lacking unified or common definitions on what things mean, presented out of context…… That sort of information is just trash. It’s worthless garbage.
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Not really. I watch little TV to begin with, and sports I watch practically never. I would watch a game in real life, since then the whole atmosphere, people, sounds etc is an experience worth witnessing.