How Many People Do Police Kill Per Year

The Air We Breathe: Implicit Bias And Police Shootings

Nathaniel Pickett Sr., 65, said that Nate was the only child he had with Dominic Archibald, a two-time combat veteran and retired Army colonel. After their divorce in 1990 when Nate was not quite 5, the boy went to live with his mom. He became a Boy Scout and fancied Frank Sinatra music, art and sports except football because he didnt like getting dirty. Archibald eventually enrolled him at the Fork Union Military Academy, an all-boys college preparatory boarding school in Virginia. She agreed to let him transfer in his senior year to Woodrow Wilson High School, a public school in Washington, D.C.

We just wanted him to be happy, Pickett said.

Less than three years after Picketts death, Woods was involved in a second on-duty shooting of another unarmed man.

Woods was not wearing a body camera. Martinez did not respond to a request through his mother for an interview.

He was shot 3 times, his mother, Kathy Searcy, said in a Facebook message to NPR that included photos of his bullet wounds. Plus, he was being tased at the same time.

Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County district attorney at the time of both shootings, declined to charge Woods, saying the deputy was justified in shooting both men. He said in a recent phone interview with NPR that he doesnt remember the cases but said he always adhered to the law when deciding whether to charge an officer with killing someone.

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Woods, 28, could not be reached for comment.

How Many People Have Died At The Hands Of The Police

Its hard to get reliable figures on killings by police because many governments do not collect or publish this data.

The Small Arms Survey says that in each year between 2007 and 2012, an estimated 19,000 people were killed during legal interventions .

Most of the available data refers to specific countries or time periods, and are often estimates by NGOs or human rights groups.

Here are some examples:

• In 2019 police in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killed 1,810 people an average of five per day
• In 2019, Kenyan police killed 122 people
• Between October 2019 and January 2020, police in Iraq killed around 600 protesters
• Between 2015 and 2018, over 500 people were fatally shot by the police in Jamaica, and over 300 shot and injured
• Around 1000 people are killed by police in the USA every year.

Are Police Allowed To Kill People

There are strict international laws and standards governing how and when police can use force particularly lethal force.

The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials is the key international instrument that deals with police use of force.

The most important thing to remember is this: it is the utmost obligation of state authorities, including police, to respect and protect the right to life.

Under international law, police officers should only ever use lethal force as a last resort. This means when such force is strictly necessary to protect themselves or others from the imminent threat of death or serious injury, and only when other options for de-escalation are insufficient.

Many killings by the police that we have seen around the world clearly do not meet this criteria.

In the USA, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner and too many other Black people who have been killed by police were unarmed.

During protests in Iran in November 2019, police shot and killed hundreds of protesters who posed no risk, including at least 23 children.

And in the Philippines, witnesses have described seeing police shoot poor people who were suspected of using or selling drugs as they were on the ground begging for mercy.

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Police Killed 3 People Per Day Last Year

American police forces killed three people per day in 2019, for a total of nearly 1,100 killings.

Those numbers are far higher than in other wealthy western countries.

In comparison, The Guardian newspaper reported in 2015 that there was a total of 55 fatal police shootings in England and Wales between 1990 and 2014. Only 15 people were shot fatally by German police in 2010 and 2011 combined, the newspaper reported. The U.S. population is about six times that of England and Wales, and four times that of Germany.

According to Mapping Police Violence data, December and January were the months with the most police killings last year. In December, 110 people were killed by the police. In January, the figure was 105. In February, the month with the fewest deaths, 80 people were killed by the police.

There were only 27 days in which no police killings were reported, according to the data.

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The Washington Post began tracking the shootings after Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, was killed in 2014 by police in Ferguson, Missouri. A Post investigation found that the FBI’s tracking system undercounted fatal police shootings by about half, because of the fact that reporting by police departments is voluntary and many departments fail to do so. The ongoing project relies on news accounts, social media postings and police reports.

In the wake of the findings by The Washington Post and similar reporting by TheGuardian, the FBI in 2015 committed to improving its tracking and last month launched a system to track all police use-of-force incidents, including fatal shootings. The new system, however, is still voluntary.

The Post‘s reporting shows that both the annual number and circumstances of fatal shootings and the overall demographics of the victims have remained constant over the past four years.

The dead: 45 per cent white men 23 per cent black men and 16 per cent Hispanic men. Women have accounted for about 5 per cent of those killed, and people in mental distress about 25 per cent of all shootings.

About 54 per cent of those killed have been armed with guns and 4 per cent unarmed.

He said that every year there are a huge number of instances in which police interact with civilians. In each, there is a tiny probability that a shooting will occur, usually as the result of a chain of unpredictable events.

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Funding The Police Versus Redirecting Funding

For a period after Floyds killing, lawmakers vowed to cut police funding in many cities. But many of those budgets were restored or increased by the end of 2021. That happened even as the national rate of police killings overall, but especially of Black Americans, increased, according to The Washington Posts data.

Theyre turning these encounters into ghastly encounters, said Mac, the activist. I dont know any other instance where an apparatus can be so bad at its job and continue to get increased funding. It really flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Its just putting bad money on top of bad money.

Beyond defunding the police, she said, redirecting resources should be the objective.

I dont see a way out of this until we look beyond policing for safety for our communities, she said. The very righteous call to defund the police is not just about taking resources away from the police. Its also about where we put those resources to get us beyond these moments of people being killed.

Like others who want to abolish police and systems of incarceration, Mac said funds intended for police should instead address root problems like ensuring safe housing and sufficient clothing, food and mental health and addiction services.

John Crawford Iii Aug 5 2014

John Crawford, 22, was shot and killed by a police officer at a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio. There did not appear to be a confrontation with the police, and Crawford was unarmed he had been holding a toy BB gun.

Crawford picked up an un-packaged BB/pellet air rifle inside the stores sporting goods section and continued shopping in the store. Another customer, Ronald Ritchie, called 911 claiming that Crawford had been pointing the gun at fellow customers.

Security camera footage showed that Crawford was talking on his cellphone and holding the BB gun as he shopped, but at no point did he aim the BB gun at anyone. After the security camera footage was released, Ritchie recanted his statement that led to the fatal shooting and stated, At no point did he shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody, while maintaining that Crawford was waving it around.

Officers: Not charged

The officers involved in the shooting, Sean Williams and David Darkow, were not charged.

Following the shooting, a grand jury decided not to indict any of the officers involved on charges of either murder, reckless homicide, or negligent homicide. The Justice Department conducted its own investigation. Sean Williams, the officer who shot Crawford, was removed from normal duties until the DoJ investigation was complete. The Justice Department declined to issue charges against the officer.

Award: $1.7M

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The Lancet: More Than Half Of Police Killings In Usa Are Unreported And Black Americans Are Most Likely To Experience Fatal Police Violence

• Researchers compared data from the US National Vital Statistics System to three non-governmental, open-source databases on fatal police violence and found that NVSS under-reported deaths from police violence by 55.5% between 1980-2018.
• Over the 40-year study period , Black Americans were estimated to be 3.5 times more likely to die from police violence than white Americans.
• Open-source databases should be better utilized to improve reporting on fatal police violence and support policy changes to address systemic racism and reduce police violence.

More than 55% of deaths from police violence in the USA from 1980-2018 were misclassified or unreported in official vital statistics reports according to a new study in The Lancet. The highest rate of deaths from police violence occurred for Black Americans, who were estimated to be 3.5 times more likely to experience fatal police violence than white Americans.

Researchers estimate that the US National Vital Statistics System , the government system that collates all death certificates in the USA, failed to accurately classify and report more than 17,000 deaths as being caused by police violence during the 40-year study period.

Black Americans experienced fatal police violence at a rate 3.5 times higher than white Americans, according to this analysis, with nearly 60% of these deaths misclassified in the NVSS . From the 1980s to the 2010s, rates of police violence increased by 38% for all races .

NOTES TO EDITORS

Killings Of Black People In The Usa

On 25 May 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year old Black man, died after a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota kept his knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

This horrific killing sparked widespread protests across the USA and beyond, calling for the officers involved to be held accountable and systemic change in policing more broadly.

Georges death came in the wake of a series of acts of racist violence against Black people that illustrates astounding levels of violence and discrimination. The police in the USA commit human rights violations at a shockingly frequent rate, particularly against racial and ethnic minorities, and especially Black people.

Protesters want the US justice system to be fundamentally reformed to end the deadly police violence that ravages communities of colour, particularly Black communities, across the country.

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Annual Gun Violence Impacting People Of All Ages In The Us

Every year, 115,551 people are shot. Among those:

• 38,826 people die from gun violence
• 14,062 are murdered
• 76,725 people survive gunshot injuries
• 34,566 are intentionally shot by someone else and survive
• 23,437 die from gun suicide
• 3,554 survive an attempted gun suicide
• 483 killed unintentionally
• 521 are killed by legal intervention
• 1,376 are shot by legal intervention and survive
• 324 die but the intent was unknown
• 4,471 are shot and survive but the intent is unknown
• 547 women are killed by their husband or male dating partner**

Brazil Suffers Its Own Scourge Of Police Brutality

Police killings have added to suffering and anger in the middle of a pandemic

Close to 2 million residents of the Rio de Janeiros impoverished favelas are struggling to cope with two lethal threats. The first, Covid-19, affects us all, but is a heightened risk for those who live on cramped streets where social distancing is hard and homes lack decent ventilation, sanitation, and access to potable water. Most favela residents rely on informal jobs and cannot work from home. About 300 residents have died of coronavirus.

The other threat is entirely man-made. In the first four months of 2020, Rio police, by their own count, killed 606 people. In April, as isolation measures came into place, robberies and other crimes dropped dramatically, but police violence surged. Police killed close to six people a day, a 43 percent increase from the same month last year. They were responsible for 35 percent of all killings in Rio de Janeiro state in April.

To put that in perspective, imagine police in the United States killing at a similar rate they would be responsible for more than 36,000 deaths each year. Instead, US police shoot and kill about 1,000 people per year. That number includes cases where the use of deadly force was excessive and unwarranted, and too often indicative of flagrant discrimination against African-Americans. Some of those cases have led to public protest and unrest, as with the recent killing of George Floyd.

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Us Police Shootings: How Many Die Each Year

On Sunday morning, three police officers were shot dead in Baton Rouge. This attack came just 10 days after five police officers were killed in Dallas. Both events were revenge attacks for the killing of young black men by police.

The bloodshed has shocked the US, leading President Barack Obama to call for calm. But how many police officers are killed in the US in a normal year? And how many people are killed by police?

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Fatal shootings by police are the rare outcomes of the millions of encounters between police officers and the public. Despite the unpredictable events that lead to the shootings, in each of the past four years police nationwide have shot and killed almost the same number of people – nearly 1,000.

Last year police shot and killed 998 people, 11 more than the 987 they fatally shot in 2017. In 2016, police killed 963 people, and 995 in 2015.

Years of controversial police shootings, protests, heightened public awareness, local police reforms and increased officer training have had little effect on the annual total. Everyone agrees – criminal justice researchers, academics and statisticians – that all of the attention has not been enough to move the number.

Mathematicians, however, say that probability theory may offer one explanation. The theory holds that the quantity of rare events in huge populations tends to remain stable absent major societal changes, such as a fundamental shift in police culture or extreme restrictions on gun ownership, which are unlikely.

“Just as vast numbers of randomly moving molecules, when put together, produce completely predictable behavior in a gas, so do vast numbers of human possibilities, each totally unpredictable in itself, when aggregated, produce an amazing predictability,” said Sir David Spiegelhalter, a professor and statistician at the University of Cambridge who studies risk and uncertainty.

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List Of British Police Officers Killed In The Line Of Duty

This article lists British police officers killed in the line of duty since 1900.

Thousands of police officers in Britain are believed to have died during the course of their duties, but this article includes only those who were killed as a direct result of a crime or while attempting to prevent, stop or solve a specific criminal act. The list omits those who died in more regular circumstances such as traffic collisions, and the many killed by air raids during the Second World War. The list also omits the more than 300 officers of the former Royal Ulster Constabulary, and current Police Service of Northern Ireland who were killed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

‘this Is Without Question A Murder’

The cycle kept repeating. A shooting or other deadly encounter with police would propel the issue back into the news. Graphic video of it would go viral. People would mobilize and march. Again and again, activists called for the justice system to punish those involved.

Sometimes the flash points for demonstrations have not involved police officers such as the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager shot to death in Florida by a neighborhood watch volunteer who had followed him, an incident that helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.

In most cases, the protests, marches, pleas and painful moments followed an incident involving a person with a badge captured on video.

It happened in November 2014 in Cleveland, where a police officer shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice. A 911 caller reported a boy playing with a gun that was presumed fake information that never made it to the officers who responded. A grand jury declined to charge the officer.

Two days before that shooting, a grand jury made the same decision about Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.

After Ferguson, some prosecutors moved quickly to charge officers, though those have been the exceptions.

Michael Slager, a white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was recorded in 2015 firing bullets into the back of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man fleeing after a traffic stop.

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