The Role Of Mental Illness And Suicide In Deaths Due To The Use Of Lethal Force
Agencies of LE frequently serve as first-line responders to mental health emergencies, including crises involving violence., Officers in a study of three U.S. cities reported responding to an average of 6.4 calls/month involving mental health crises. About 20% of people hospitalized for severe mental illness, in another study, had been arrested or picked up by police for a suspected crime in the prior 4-month period. Indeed, two decades of research have documented high rates of LE contact, arrest, and incarceration rates for individuals with mental illness. Officers often report feeling inadequately trained to assess and respond effectively as gatekeepers for both the criminal justice and mental health systems, and community leaders have raised concerns for many years about the safety of citizens with mental health crises who often encounter, and rely on, LE.,,,
Related incidents in which the victim engaged in life-threatening or criminal behavior to provoke the use of lethal force by policewidely referred to as suicide by cophave also been recognized by LE and criminal justice researchers for several decades as a unique challenge. In the current study, 17.9% of fatalities due to the use of force were identified as potential suicide by cop incidents, a number within range of prior estimates.,
Are Black Americans Disproportionately Killed By Police
Are Black Americans disproportionately killed by the police? According to the media, yes. According to data, no.
Black Americans make up less than 15% of the US population. However, Black Americans make up a much higher percentage of the population in the cities many of them live.
What you will find below is data proving that black people are not shot disproportionately by police in the neighborhoods they live. As an example, according to World Population Review Black Americans make up 51.88% of the Atlanta population.
Fact Check: Black People Do Not Suffer Disproportionately From Police Brutality
The facts about murder and police killings underscore this reality. Black people represent about 13% of the U.S. population, at least 53% of murder offenders, and roughly 33% of people killed by police.
A recent New York Timesarticle by Jeremy W. Peters claims it is a fact that black people suffer disproportionately from police brutality. He also asserts that President Trumps rejection of this accusation is racially inflammatory and racially divisive. To the contrary, comprehensive facts show that this allegation against police is false. Furthermore, this deception has stoked racial divides and driven people to despise and even murder police officers.
In an interview with CBS News that is slated to air in full tonight, reporter Catherine Herridge asked Trump, Why are African-Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country? He responded that this is a terrible question and that more white people are killed by police than black people.
CBS News, the New York Times, and many other media outlets are criticizing Trumps response because blacks are a much smaller portion of the U.S. population than whites. Thus, the odds of being killed by police are higher for each black person than each white person. This frequent argument is highly misleading because it omits facts that are vital to this issue. As detailed in a 2018 paper in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science:
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Killings By Police Are Undercounted By More Than Half New Study Says
More than half of police killings in the United States over the past 40 years have been mislabeled, according to a new study, leading to a stark undercount of deaths at the hands of officers and a lopsided perception of what experts say is a public health crisis.
Researchers from the University of Washington found that from 1980 to 2019, more than 55 percent of 31,000 deaths attributed to police violence were assigned other causes in official federal death data. Black men are killed by police at disproportionately high rates, and their deaths are mislabeled at higher rates than for any other race, according to the study, which was published Thursday in the Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal.
The study underscores a grim reality: Despite years of scrutiny, criticism, protests and calls for reform, no government agency tracks how often law enforcement officers in America kill people. Since 2015, The Washington Post has been counting how often on-duty police shoot and kill people. But there is no comprehensive federal attempt to keep track of these deaths or other uses of force by law enforcement, including chokeholds and nonfatal shootings. One of the studys authors called the deaths poorly catalogued and preventable, and an expert said the lack of meaningful tracking of these deaths underscores the deep-rootedness of systemic racism.
Read more:
‘none Of The Findings Are A Shock’
Racial justice lawyer Anthony Morgan, manager of the City of Toronto’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism Unit, said at a Monday morning news conference that Black communities and their allies don’t need another report showing the systemic problems with policing in Toronto.
“None of the findings in these reports are a shock or really a surprise,” Morgan said.
Instead, he said, this report is for policy makers, politicians and people in positions of power in the justice system, and he hopes it will be discussed at length by people in those roles.
Included among the report’s other findings was data that showed Black people represented 34 per cent of people involved in single-charge “out-of-sight” driving charges like driving without insurance, which lead researcher and University of Toronto professor Scot Wortley noted could only be discovered by police observing the race of a driver or stopping and questioning a driver.
Black people were also involved in 25 per cent of all investigations from the Special Investigations Unit , which probes incidents of death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault, the report found.
They were also involved in 39 per cent of cases involving “low-level” use of force, which doesn’t meet the SIU’s threshold for an investigation.
WATCH | The Ontario Human Rights Commission‘s Monday press conference:
“We say the community deserves no less than that,” she said.
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Racial Inequities In Deaths Due To The Use Of Lethal Force
Recent public discourse has focused on racial disparities in legal intervention deaths. The current study found that, consistent with prior research,,,,, black victims were substantially over-represented relative to the U.S. population, comprising 34% of victims but only 13% of Americans,, and with legal intervention death rates 2.8 times higher than those among whites. Black victims were also more likely to be unarmed than whites or Hispanics, and less likely than whites to have evidence suggesting an immediate threat to LE. Incidents involving black and Hispanic victims were more likely to involve at least one black LE officer, potentially because of greater racial diversity in police departments located in areas with larger minority populations.
Tommie Dale Mcglothen Jr
Shreveport, Louisiana
According to the Associated Press, 44-year-old Tommie Dale McGlothen Jr. died after being repeatedly punched and tased by police officers.
Officers said they encountered McGlothen outside a home where he was blocking a driveway and allegedly following an individual into his house. The coroner said police reported McGlothen was mumbling and exhibited signs of paranoia and emotional disturbance.
A 4.5-minute witness video shows officers wrestling with McGlothen, with one officer repeatedly punching him and another hitting him with a baton. Someone is heard saying an officer tased him, the AP reported.
When police get McGlothen off the ground, his hands are handcuffed behind his back. He falls or is pushed back to the ground. Officers then walked him to the police car, pushed him against it and hit his head on the hood, the AP said.
McGlothen died at the hospital the next day. The coroner said McGlothen’s death could have possibly been prevented, and that it was obvious that he needed medical care when he was confronted by police.
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Reginald Leon Boston Jr
Jacksonville, Florida
According to CBS affiliate WJAX, 20-year-old Reginald Leon Boston Jr. was fatally shot by Jacksonville police who said they had set up an undercover operation to find a man who robbed someone at gunpoint. Police had three suspects, including Boston.
Officers attempted to arrest Boston and two others when suspects allegedly displayed a gun that they would not put down, WJAX reported. Officers shot two suspects, including Boston. Boston was killed at the scene.
It is not clear if Boston was the person holding the gun.
Already A Particularly Deadly Year For People Killed In Police Encounters Cbc Research Shows
CBCâs Deadly Force database looks at role of race, mental health in deaths
Inayat SinghCBC News ⢠July 23, 2020
It has already been a particularly deadly year in terms of people killed in encounters with police in Canada â and Black and Indigenous people continue to be over-represented among the fatalities.
There were 30 people killed after police used force in Canada in the first half of 2020, which is the full-year average for such deaths over the past 10 years . This is according to the Deadly Force database, updated and maintained by the CBCâs own researchers.
The database shows Black and Indigenous people are disproportionately represented amongst the victims compared to their share of the overall population.
The data also finds most of those killed in police encounters suffer from mental illness or substance abuse.
There is no government database listing deaths at the hands of the police available to the public in Canada, so CBC News created its own. The CBCâs research librarians have collected detailed information on each case, such as ethnicity, the role of mental illness or substance abuse, the type of weapon used and the police service involved, to create a picture of who is dying in police encounters.
The database focuses onfatal encounters where police used force. It does not include in-custody deaths, self-inflicted wounds as a result of suicide or attempts to evade police, or accidental police-caused deaths .
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William Howard Green Jr
According to CBS affiliate WUSA, 43-year-old William Howard Green was fatally shot by a Prince George County police officer while he was handcuffed.
Police said that the officer was responding to a 911 call alleging a male driver struck multiple cars along a road. The officer was told at the scene that Green was asleep in his car. The officer then took him out, handcuffed him and put him in the front seat of the police cruiser, police said.
Minutes later, a second officer heard gunshots and found that Green had been shot seven times. He later died at the hospital.
Claude Washington Fain Iii
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
CBS Philadelphia reported that 47-year-old Claude Washington Fain III was fatally shot by SWAT officers after authorities said they attempted to serve a warrant for his arrest.
Police said Fain fired at two state parole officers from a second-floor apartment. SWAT officers then exchanged gunfire with Fain, and killed him during the exchange.
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Latinos Are Disproportionately Killed By Police But Often Left Out Of The Debate About Brutality Some Advocates Say
Sometimes she watches the images from an officers body camera. Sometimes she watches a bystanders recording. She has watched them so many times that she can pinpoint the moment when her son, Ernie Serrano, took his final breath, she says.
I dont wish this for any mother, for any human being, to go through that. Something has got to be done so it doesnt happen as often as its happening, the Los Angeles woman said.
She doesnt believe that her son, if he had been White, would have died Dec. 15 when sheriffs deputies were called to a Riverside County grocery store for a disturbance.
Serrano, a 33-year-old Mexican American, was at a Stater Bros. market picking up snacks that night when the sheriffs office received a report about a man later identified as Serrano wandering in and out of the store. Another 911 call reported him tussling with a security guard. Video from a bystander shows sheriffs deputies beating Serrano with batons and using a Taser on him before wrestling him facedown onto a checkout counter.
Serrano is heard pleading Let me go, please several times in a body camera video, at one point saying I cant breathe and Youre using excessive force in between cries of pain. Several minutes later, an officer notices that the man is not breathing. The officers place him on the floor and try to resuscitate him. He is pronounced dead at a hospital.
Leonard Charles Parker Jr
Gulfport, Mississippi
According to CBS affiliate WKRG, 53-year-old Leonard Parker Jr. of Covington, Georgia, was killed by a Gulfport police officer.
Fox and CW affiliate WXXV reported that the officer was responding to calls of a disturbance in the area. As an officer was approaching the area, Parker was allegedly driving away and drove toward the officer. The officer then shot Parker, who was pronounced dead at the scene.
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Black People More Than Three Times As Likely As White People To Be Killed During A Police Encounter
Black Americans are 3.23 times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police, according to a new study by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers examined 5,494 police-related deaths in the U.S. between 2013 and 2017. Rates of deadly police encounters were higher in the West and South than in the Midwest and Northeast, according to the study. Racial disparities in killings by police varied widely across the country, with some metropolitan areas showing very high differences between treatment by race. Black Chicagoans, for example, were found to be over 650% more likely to be killed by police than white Chicagoans.
The wide variance in deaths by police shows how preventable these deaths are, study authors Jaquelyn Jahn and Gabriel Schwartz, recent graduates from the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, told UPI in a June 24 article.
William Dion Tolbert Simpkins
Atlanta, Georgia
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 39-year-old William Simpkins was fatally shot by Atlanta police officers who said they were responding to a call that Simpkins was firing rounds into the air.
The first officer who arrived at the scene attempted to speak to Simpkins, police said. Simpkins then allegedly started to shoot at the officer. Six officers were engaged in a gunfire exchange with Simpkins and dozens of rounds were fired, police said. One of the officers fatally shot Simpkins.
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Us Police Kill Up To 6 Times More Black People Than White People
Protesters at a demonstration against racism
Paco Freire/SOPA Images/Sipa USA
In some parts of the US, police kill black people at a rate six times higher than they kill white people. The differences are most stark in the northern Midwest, especially Chicago, and in north-eastern states like New York.
Protest movements like Black Lives Matter have highlighted the disproportionate killing of black people by US police, and called for major changes in policing practices. However, official data on police killings can be unreliable. The database run by the Bureau of Justice Statistics is known to undercount deaths, partly because police forces dont have to contribute data. That makes it harder to stop the killings.
Gabriel Schwartz and Jaquelyn Jahn at Harvard University compared police killings in different regions of the US between 2013 and 2017. They used data from Fatal Encounters, an independent organisation that gathers public and media reports of killings, and fact-checks them.
The researchers assigned each death to one of the USs 382 metropolitan statistical areas. These are cities and the areas surrounding cities, says Jahn, and reflect where people spend most of their time.
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‘they Are Black Lives And Black Lives Matter’
Chadha also said Monday that it’s important to remember that these numbers are more than just statistics.
“They are Black lives, and Black lives matter,” she said.
Wortley said it’s important to note that a public perception exists that Black people end up in interactions with police at disproportionate rates because of their involvement with guns and gangs.
“Our data challenges this stereotype,” he said.
Instead, the data found that most use-of-force incidents involve unarmed civilians with no criminal record. Few cases involved a gun but many cases involved people in a mental health crisis or suffering from addiction issues.
The next phase of the commission’s inquiry will involve a final report, which will examine police training, policies, procedures and accountability mechanisms. It is set to be released by the end of 2020.
Read the OHRC’s second interim report:
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Police In The Us Killed 164 Black People In The First 8 Months Of 2020 These Are Their Names
On May 25, George Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes. The incident sparked international protests against racism and police brutality but in the wake of this mass call for change, police are still killing Black men and women at disproportionate rates.
Using databases from Mapping Police Violence and The Washington Post, CBS News has compiled a list of 164 Black men and women who were killed by police from January 1 to August 31, 2020. Many of the cases remain under investigation.
This data is based on reported and verified cases, and does not necessarily account for all incidents in which a person was killed by police. But based on the known cases, police have killed at least one Black person every week since January 1, and only two states Rhode Island and Vermont have reported no killings by police this year.
Here are the known names and cases of the Black men and women who have been killed by police so far this year.