Just how pervasive is police brutality?

It is only as pervasive as the media makes it out to be. In my 33 years, every experience I've had with law enforcement has been pleasant. Some people would attribute that to my skin color. I attribute that to the fact we didn't have social media back then to sensationalize every little instance with law enforcement. Everyone wants to think they are a Facebook lawyer, but none of them want to actually go to law school. Most people would rather escalate a situation because "well I saw this on Facebook".

Well sir, maybe mere numbers would bear that out as we have only 800,000 plus/minus cops to interact with 300,000,000 folks.
But then you can say that roughly 2%, a reoccurring 2%, commit the most crimes and interact with LE. So cops now have a smaller pool to abuse, as it were, and appear to abuse far less then they could (?).

I am almost willing to bet that these two cases will turn out to be justified.

It is happening too much and I think everything is backwards. Cops in the smaller towns and cities were more Mayberry RFD, now we have officers covering for each other. If we had an internal affairs investigation not conclude that police had followed protocols. This adds insult to injury. This burns in everyone; we elect leaders and they avoid us.

In almost every case of what the media portrays as "police brutality", you find the individual failing and outright refusing to follow instructions given them by the police. Their actions often escalate the situation to a point that is totally unnecessary but caused by them, not the police. Yes, there are hotheads on the force but those are few and far between. If you want to spout your rights, you will have a chance in court. You will never win when confronted by the police so just comply and your experience will be less "brutal".

A lot depends on what you count as "police brutality" -- and that absolutely depends almost entirely on who is doing the counting.

I have no doubt that unprovoked police brutality did occur in some places at some times and still occurs occasionally. I also have no doubt that nearly all instances of police brutality that do occur are covered up by police and politicians at all levels.

But the questions of how pervasive and how frequent "police brutality" is are different -- and again, both vary with what gets counted.

If we define "police brutality" as unnecessary force used by police, my unscientific guess would be that it is very nearly 100% pervasive in that it does occur in nearly every department in the nation. I would also suggest that your chances of experiencing physical police brutality are very nearly zero if you aren't involved in one of a few triggering activities (most of which are illegal). One way to nearly guarantee being the victim of police brutality is to be the subject of a high speed car chase.

Like it or not, police officers are human -- with human emotions, human physical responses (such as adrenaline dump) -- this isn't an excuse, but it is reality -- and unfortunately it is a reality that is not well addressed in police training or procedures.

Yes, there are a few bad cops out there -- and there are a few departments where they are tolerated or even encouraged. Not the majority, not even a large number, but even one is too many.

Civilians don't want to hear statistics or facts. There are bad people in every job, sex, religion, color. Those are the ones you hear about, the good people you don't hear about. I don't know the ratio between them, but I'm damn sure it's high for the good. And it's the good people that get hurt by the unchecked violence that happens afterwards.

This I can tell you: out of 10-30 billion contacts, known and unknown, between police and the public every year, and increasing, you literally see or read about one or two of these "events" every week or two. Across the entire nation. How pervasive, indeed.

"7X more likely to be murdered, 15X more likely to be killed in an auto accident, and 42X more likely to be raped than to experience excessive police brutality."

How much police brutality must you experience before it is considered excessive?

I work as a correctional officer at a prison and as for the many years that I have been in this profession I have had 3 uses of force 2 reactive uses and have been in about 6 or 7 planned uses of force all due to the actions of the offender, this has happened over 10year period and in that time I have NEVER seen anyone cross over that line of excessive force against an offender even when a staff member has been injured by the offender.
My Facility has a good history of treating the offenders with respect and compassion and when we are lefty with no choice due to the offenders actions we have security cameras always watching and we document everything especially during and incident, and we hold no grudges against the offenders when thing happen because everybody at some point in their life feels like they are backed into a corner with no way out. we just do our paperwork and document and do our checks to make sure everyone is safe.
its a rare thing when an law enforcement agency has to start paper work and investigate a excessive force incident on one of their own because any sworn officer can have a real bad day. thank GOD its a rare deal when it does happen.
to those of us who work in law enforcement even on the military side always, always be vigilant because when no body is watching somebody some body is always looking and vice versa.