TheGuardian.com has published the names of people killed by police officers in the United States so far this year.
The BBC reported that the data was first collected by the Washington Post newspaper, suggesting that the number of people killed by the police was higher than what the police had claimed.
The police’s official statistics had indicated that about 400 people have been killed each year since 2008. However, they admitted that the figures were based on self-reported incidents from various law enforcement agencies.
The newspaper’s disturbing count puts the number at 479 deaths from January up until today, with the highest figures being recorded in the State of California where 75 people were killed by the police.
Police in four states: North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Vermont did so well by not killing anybody in their respective states so far. We encourage the police in those states to continue with that civility in the performance of their official duties.
By race and ethnicity, whites were killed more than any other race, at 238; African-Americans are in second, with 138; 71 Hispanic/Latino have perished at the hands of the police, 10 Asian/Pacific Islanders and 10 Native Americans have thus far met their fate at the hands of officers, and finally, 19 ‘unidentified’ by race were also killed.
But is said that the number of unarmed blacks killed were high than any other race. That might have explained why we witnessed many protests across cities by the African-American community.
Broken down by months, we see that 90 people were killed in the month of January, February recorded 84 deaths, March saw 114 being killed and it was the worse month for citizens at the hands of the police. April followed closely with 97 deaths, 83 people died in May and for June so far, at the time of publishing this article, 11 people have perished.
The Washington Post said it logged every fatal shooting in 2015 by police in the line of duty using interviews, police reports, local media reports and other sources. The Guardian also claimed to have done the same thing.
Statistically, homicide rates by the police against citizens is almost 2.6 people per day so far this year, which is more than double the average of 1.1 deaths per day reported in FBI records over the past decade.
US laws allow police to use deadly force when they fear for their lives or the lives of others, however there are currently no reliable way of tracking police shooting deaths.
Instead, the government relies on self-reported figures from the nation’s 17,000 law enforcement agencies. The figures exclude killings deemed not to have been justified.
“These shootings are grossly underreported. We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information,” former Police Chief, Jim Bueermann admitted in an interview.
Activists have said that the initiative taken by the media to bring this out publicly is a step in the right direction as the public will now know the true state of affairs regarding the police officers’ brutalities against innocent citizens.
SOURCES:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32950383
I love the sign above, “Justice for Freddy Gray, disarm police”. News flash, there were no weapons involved, except Gray’s illegal spring assisted opening knife.