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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPolice killings since Ferguson, in one map
Samuel DuBose, Freddie Gray, and Jessica Hernandez are just three of at least 1,091 people killed by police since August 9, 2014, the day of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.
Fatal Encounters, a nonprofit, has tracked these killings by collecting reports from the media, public, and law enforcement and verifying them through news reports. Some of the data is incomplete, with details about a victims race, age, and other factors sometimes missing. It also includes killings that were potentially legally justified, and is likely missing some killings entirely.
Voxs Soo Oh created an interactive map with data from Fatal Encounters. It shows some of the killings by law enforcement since the Brown shooting:
A huge majority of the 1,091 deaths on the map are from gunshots, which is hardly surprising given that guns are so deadly compared with other tools used by police. There are also a lot of noticeable fatalities from vehicle crashes, stun guns, and asphyxiations. In some cases, people died from stab wounds, medical emergencies, and whats called suicide by cop, when people kill themselves by baiting a police officer into using deadly force.
The FBI already collects some of this data from local and state agencies, but as Voxs Dara Lind explained, that data is very limited. Reporting homicides for participating agencies is mandatory, but reporting the circumstances of homicides is not. So we might know that thousands of people die in a certain state, but we wont always know why those homicides happened and whether they involved police. Participation in the FBI reporting programs is also voluntary, making the number of reported homicides in the federal data at best a minimum of whats going on across the country."
http://www.vox.com/a/police-shootings-ferguson-map
dragonfly301
(399 posts)It is shameful.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)When it comes to police use of lethal force, all lives matter.
melman
(7,681 posts)I don't think they're allowed here.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)I'm not contesting the crime statistics. I'm pointing out at least two things:
A. Black criminality is more severely punished than white criminality.
B. Black people are more likely to be the target of excessive and unnecessary police force than white people.
This leads me to my original conclusion. Which is that black lives matter. In other words, the lives of black people are of equal importance to everyone else. And they assuredly do not deserve to suffer under inequitable police enforcement simply because of the color of their skin.
B Calm
(28,762 posts)Igel
(35,282 posts)It's why a lot of the data is subject to misinterpretation.
There's a difference between
somebody shot, unarmed, because the cop was scared
somebody shot because the cop was ducking his bullets and was scared
somebody who died from suicide in a cell
somebody who died from a heart condition in a cell
somebody who was a civilian and was shot during an offender-initiated shootout
The first shouldn't happen. It's a "police killing."
The second is totally justified. It's a "police killing."
The third happens: If you suspect the suspect is suicidal, you watch, otherwise you don't. It's not a "police killing." But it's in the database because it's a death during or involving police contact.
The fourth also happens: Some things you can't anticipate. It's not a "police killing." But it's in the database because it's a death during or involving police contact, even if the police aren't involved in any way.
The fifth also happens, even if the only police involvement was just showing up in response to a call.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)John Martin Whittaker
http://www.ktuu.com/news/news/apd-names-driver-fatally-shot-by-police-in-sunday-chase/31196860
Michael Bonty
http://www.frontiersman.com/news/attorney-no-evidence-of-second-gunshot-at-bonty-scene/article_572a7d38-51cd-11e4-af3b-9b6f833b11a4.html
Whittaker's, at least, appears to have been a last resort. That guy was totally out of control.
1939
(1,683 posts)29% of those who die as a result of police actions are black versus ??13%?? of the population. Sounds about what you would expect.