The Washington Post gathered data on the shootings from police reports, interviews and other sources in compiling their report that shows over two people a day have been killed by police in the last five months of this year. In analyzing the figures, this is almost 2.6 people a day being killed by police.
The figures by the newspaper are based on actual research and gathering of real data, whereas the federal government relies on self-reporting of such incidents by law enforcement agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s figures compiled over the past decade show 400 deaths from police shootings annually, accounting for 1.1 people being killed per day.
On Saturday, the Huffington Post quoted Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving law enforcement as saying, “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”
Of course, the Washington Post’s analysis comes at a time when police shootings of unarmed black men have caused a national furor, many of then in just the past few months. And that is a problem because police are allowed to use “deadly force” if they feel their lives or the lives of the public are in danger.
The breakdown of the shootings is interesting and definitely troubling in many respects. Of the 385 people killed, half were white and the other half were minorities. Of the unarmed victims, two-thirds were black or Hispanic.
Adjusting for census figures in the areas where the killings by police took place, black people were killed at three times the rate of whites or minorities.
Most of the 385 people, 80 percent, were armed, but one out of six or 16 percent were unarmed or carried a toy gun. By sex, 365 were men and 20 were women. As far as ages go, 118 were between the ages of 25 to 34, and 94 were between the ages of 35 to 44. Eight were children, younger than 18-years-old.
The circumstances behind the initial police calls to the scene were also interesting. Almost half had to do with some sort of domestic violence or other social issues. One was a homeless person behaving strangely, one was a boyfriend threatening violence. Fully a quarter of the killings involved a person family members or neighbors said was mentally ill.
There were three cases where charges were filed against police officers in 2015 for shooting an individual. Videos emerged showing the officers shooting the suspects during or after a chase on foot in all the cases.
It is important that the public know that the report only looked at police shootings, and not killings by any other means, including stun guns or deaths while in police custody. And it is relevant to note that in many of these shootings, they began as minor disturbances, and for whatever the reason, quickly escalated.
