Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 15, 2015, police officers in the United States shot, beat, used stun guns on or otherwise killed an astonishing 1,152 people, according to a recently released report from law enforcement watchdog Mapping Police Violence.
The whole analysis is
troubling: Officers with 59 of the nation's 60 largest police
departments killed at least one individual or let someone die in custody
at rates far above those in other developed countries.
But there's one statistic that stands out.
According to the
report, 14 U.S. police departments "killed black people exclusively in
2015" — as in "100% of the people they killed were black." By
comparison, Mapping Police Violence found just five U.S. police
departments killed only white people.
Source: Mapping Police Violence
Those cities include St. Louis, where massive protests have ensued since 2014, following the death of 18-year-old Ferguson man Michael Brown; Atlanta, where the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports police rarely face criminal consequences for dubious use of force; and Kansas City, Missouri, where the FBI is currently investigating the local police department's use of force following a string of controversial shootings.
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The list also includes Cleveland, where a "jaw-dropping"
Department of Justice report about the Cleveland Police Department
issued in late 2014 documented systemic use of excessive force and
unsafe policing tactics that put the public at risk; the DOJ reached a
binding reform agreement with CPD in May. Baltimore, which boasts a dubious record as one of the U.S.' most-segregated cities,
and also became the center of massive controversy when 25-year-old
black man Freddie Gray died while in police custody, prompting protests
and mass civil disturbances, also features on the list.
Other areas where 100%
of police shooting victims in 2015 were black include Virginia Beach,
Virginia; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Minneapolis; Raleigh, North
Carolina; Milwaukee; Detroit; Philadelphia, and Charlotte-Mecklenberg,
North Carolina.
Together, these departments police millions of Americans — and yet they only killed black people in 2015.
The report is full of
other concerning details, such as there apparently being no immediate
correlation between violent crime rates and rates of police shootings —
the report's authors wrote this was yet more evidence the root cause of
the killings is "a lack of accountability in the culture, policies, and
practices of the institutions of policing."
The high rates of
killings are also occurring as U.S. police increasingly stock up on
equipment like armored vehicles, body armor and military-grade weaponry
originally designed for military use, as described in a June 2014 report from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Source: Mapping Police Violence
The 1,152 people
tracked by the project do not constitute a complete and total list,
merely a best-possible estimate compiled from various sources, including
tracking websites and original research into media reports. The Death
in Custody Reporting Act, which passed
last December, requires all states to begin reporting the number of
deaths in custody or during an arrest, but no prior mandatory database
existed.
It may take years for a comprehensive system to be put in place.
Compared to other
wealthy, developed countries, the U.S. remains a total outlier. In fact,
police in the United States continue, on some days, to fire more
bullets than entire countries like Norway fire in an entire year — and
as these and other troubling stats show, the lead is disproportionately flying at people of color.
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