At least 385 people ranging in age from 16 to 83 have died by the hands of police throughout the US this yr, The Washington Post revealed. One in six victims have been unarmed, principally black or Hispanic, and officers have been charged in lower than 1% of circumstances.
Using a wide range of sources, together with police experiences, native information and one-to-one interviews the publication discoveredthat the each day officer-involved killing fee throughout the US for the reason that starting of 2015 stands at 2.6. This quantity stands opposite to the FBI statistics over the previous decade that recorded 400 deadly police shootings a yr, or a median of 1.1 deaths a day.
“These shootings are grossly underreported,” Jim Bueermann, president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, instructed the paper. “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”
In greater than 80 p.c of the circumstances the victims have been armed on the time of the incident lots of which began as minor incidents earlier than escalating into violence. Gun assaults on police topped the checklist with 221 circumstances, adopted by knives and blades with 68 circumstances.
However, roughly one in six victims have been unarmed and will hardly pose any risk to officers. In 13 circumstances civilians have been killed by cops after mistaking toy weapons for the actual factor.
The publication found that two thirds of the unarmed people killed by police have been both African American or Hispanic. The total rely for each armed and unarmed victims cut up in half between Caucasians and completely different minority teams.
In about half of the circumstances, police have been responding to home or social disturbances. The different half happened due to the routine duties of patrol officers. The victims have been 16 to 83 years previous, with almost 1 / 4 having been recognized as mentally unwell.
The problem of extreme use of police power, particularly in opposition to minorities, turned heated in the US after a jury in Ferguson, Missouri again in October determined to not indict white policeman Darren Wilson over the killing of a black teenager, Michael Brown.
The state of affairs was then exacerbated in December, when one other grand jury declined to indict Daniel Pantaleo for the July dying of Eric Garner. Both cases sparked a wave of protests all throughout the US and the globe beneath the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.