In This Story: George Floyd
George Floyd was an African-American man who died on 25th May 2020 in Powderhorn, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, following police arrest. Video recording by a witness, showing Floyd repeating Please, I cant breathe, and Dont kill me, was widely circulated on social media platforms and broadcast by media. The incident led to widespread protests across the United States.
London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom.
Criticism By Dallas Police Association
The then-president of the Dallas Police Association, Mike Mata, stated that due to the criticism of militarization of police, someone within the Dallas Police Department‘s chain of command ordered the officers assigned to the protest to not wear military-style bulletproof vests because they did not want the officers to look too “militaristic, aggressive” and instead to wear standard issue kevlar vests, which were not able to protect against the rifle rounds Johnson fired. For the same reasons, officers were not able to arm themselves with long guns, such as AR-15s. Mata was interviewed by the local CBS affiliate KDFW and said, ” lot of those shots, and a lot of those wounds were chest shots, lower abdomen wound shots, and those heavy vests would have covered them”.
The Vast Majority Of People Shot And Killed By Police Are Armed
Nearly six in 10 people shot and killed by police had a gun. Many others were armed with a knife or other weapon. However, determining the threat posed by a weapon can be tricky. For example, 155 people killed by police since 2015 were found after the shooting to be wielding toy guns.
What leads to shootings?
Recommended Reading: How Long Is Police Training
William Wade Burgess Iii
St. Louis, Missouri
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 27-year-old William Wade Burgess III was killed by an off-duty St. Louis sheriffs deputy. Burgess had allegedly stolen a pickup truck and tried to run over the trucks owner and a young boy.
Burgess crashed the truck and the deputy chased and eventually shot him in the chest, the Post-Dispatch reported. Burgess, who was not armed when he was shot, died at the hospital.
Burgess mother said he had been in a mental health facility months prior and that, at the time of the incident, he was battling heroin addiction and paranoia.
Tamir Rice Nov 22 2014
Tamir Rice, 12, was shot and killed by Cleveland police after officers mistook his toy gun for a real weapon.
The two police officers involved, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, have not been charged.
Rices family has filed wrongful death lawsuit against the officers and the city of Cleveland.
Officer: No charges were filed
Award: $6 million
Dont Miss: Where To View Police Reports Online
You May Like: Does Smoking Weed Disqualify You From Becoming A Police Officer
Police Killing Of Blacks: Do Black Lives Matter
Data collected by the Washington Post on the use of lethal force by police officers since 2015 indicate that, relative to the proportion of the population, Blacks are over-represented among all those killed by police. As is evident in the figure below, according to the US Census estimates, Blacks made up 12% of the population. However, from 2015 2019 they accounted for 26.4% of those that were killed by police under all circumstances. In other words, Blacks were the victims of the lethal use of force by police at nearly twice their rate in the general population. Whites make up the majority of victims of police use of lethal force from 2015 2019, BUT they also currently make up the majority of the population . Asians make up about 5% of the US population but just 2% of the victims of the lethal use of force by police. Hispanics make up 18% of the US population and just over 18% of the victims of the use of lethal force by police. Native Americans make up 1% of the US population and 1.7% of the victims of the use of lethal force by police.
Is that the right comparison? Shouldnt we compare the percent of those killed by police to the percent of interactions with the police? Even more precise, shouldnt we compare the percent of those killed by police to those encounters that were actually life-threatening to either the police officers or other people? There are several problems with such comparisons.
Mapping Police Violence puts it this way :
Police Kill More Whites Than Blacks Is True And It Isnt
Men lie, women lie and they both use numbers when it favors them.
This rebuttal is used to downplay black Americas outrage and its sad to say, the stats are unfairly true whats more concerning is that its unfairly used. Whether the stats are true or not, its insensitive to use statistics to indirectly tell a parent that the unjustifiable acts by the police
Read Also: What Do You Have To Do In The Police Academy
Willie Lee Quarles Sr
May 21, 2020Greenwood, South Carolina
According to the Associated Press, 60-year-old Willie Lee Quarles Sr. was fatally shot by a Greenwood police officer who was responding to a domestic violence call.
When police arrived at the scene of the alleged domestic violence incident, Quarles allegedly shot the officer. The officer then shot Quarles in the chest, killing him.
Akai Gurley Nov 20 2014
Akai Gurley, 28, was shot and killed by a police officer while walking in a dimly lit New York City public housing stairwell with his girlfriend. Gurley, who was unarmed, was pronounced dead at a hospital. New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton called the shooting an accidental discharge.
Officer: CHARGED and convicted of negligent homicide
Rookie Peter Liang, was charged with second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and two counts of official misconduct.
Award: $4.1 million
Read Also: How Do I Become A Police Officer In California
Germonta Wallace: The First
Germonta Wallace, 30, was shot and killed by police on Jan. 4, 2016. Wallace was on the run from police after being named a suspect in the killing of Norris Martin, whose body was found in the trunk of a burning car. Wallace had reportedly gotten out of prison a few months prior and was working with a janitorial service.
According to the Charlotte Observer, Wallace died after a lengthy gunfight with eight Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers. His aunt, Deborah Wallace, said to reporters regarding how the fight between her nephew and police started: âI actually donât know how it went down. We donât know who was doing the shooting. We donât know if it was police or who.â The officers involved in the shooting did not face charges.
April 201: Walter Scott
Walter Scott was shot in the back five times by a white police officer, who was later fired and eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Mr Scott had been pulled over for having a defective light on his car in North Charleston, South Carolina, and ran away from the police officer after a brief scuffle.
The killing sparked protests in North Charleston, with chants of “No justice, no peace”.
Recommended Reading: Can Police See If You Have Insurance
Alton Sterling July 5 2016
Sterling, 37, was shot to death on July 5, 2016, as the officers pinned him to the pavement outside a convenience store where he had been selling CDs. The killing was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely online, sparking demonstrations across the city. U.S. Attorney Corey Amundson said Sterling was armed during the confrontation and the investigation didnt find enough evidence to pursue charges. State authorities are investigating.
Record:
Records show that Sterling was a registered sex offender with a lengthy criminal record that included convictions for weapons offenses, confrontations with police officers, property crimes, and domestic violence and other batteries.
Officer: Not charged
Federal prosecutors announced in May they would not seek charges against two white police officers who were involved in a deadly encounter with Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Lo., last summer.
Award: $0
Recommended Reading: How Do I Get My Police Report
Fatal Police Shootings Of Unarmed Black People In Us More Than 3 Times As High As In Whites
Overall fatal shooting rate not budged in 5 years public health emergency say researchers
The rate of fatal police shootings of unarmed Black people in the US is more than 3 times as high as it is among White people, finds research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
And the total numbers of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour killed in police shootings hasnt budged over the past 5 years, prompting the researchers to describe the figures as a public health emergency.
Deaths caused by police violence in the US are disproportionately high among BIPOC, but its not clear if the rate of these deaths might have changed over time.
The researchers therefore looked at trends in fatal police shootings, overall, and according to whether the victim was armed, to quantify years of life lost across racial/ethnic groups between 2015 and 2020.
They drew on publicly available data compiled by The Washington Post on every person killed by on-duty police officers in the US during this period.
The data, which were sourced from local news reports, independent databases, and additional reporting at the paper, include details of the race, age and sex of the victims, as well any item in their possession perceived to be a weapon.
Estimates of years of life lost were based on national historical life expectancy data for US citizens in the victims birth year compared with their actual age at death.
Read Also: How To File A Police Report For An Accident
Different Worlds Different Worldviews
On Aug. 9, 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking national outrage. The Black Lives Matter protest movement grew out of that moment, and debate continues about how and why people of color are targets for police violence.
Over the years, police-involved shootings of unarmed people of color further fueled efforts to increase accountability of public safety officials and better understand the needs of the communities they are meant to serve.
In 2016, the Pew Research Center surveyed the publics opinions about police performance and found wide gaps in perception between black and white respondents, said Rich Morin, a pollster and senior editor for Pew. In the survey, only 33 percent of African Americans said police do a good or excellent job of using the right amount of force in each encounter compared to the 75 percent of white Americans who believed in the judgement of police.
Blacks and whites live in two very different worlds with two very different worldviews on a variety of issues. One of those areas is police, Morin said in 2016.
But following Ferguson, the increased attention paid to police brutality complicated the ability to collect data, Burghart wrote on his blog.
Trolls spent more time breaking the publicly editable sheet than I had time to fix it, he wrote. He had to restrict editing privileges to preserve the work.
Recommended Reading: What Level Body Armor Do Police Wear
Nationwide Police Shot And Killed Nearly 1000 People In 2017
For the third year in a row, police nationwide shot and killed nearly 1,000 people, a grim annual tally that has persisted despite widespread public scrutiny of officers use of fatal force.
Police fatally shot 987 people last year, or two dozen more than they killed in 2016, according to an ongoing Washington Post database project that tracks the fatal shootings. Since 2015, The Post has logged the details of 2,945 shooting deaths, culled from local news coverage, public records and social-media reports.
While many of the year-to-year patterns remain consistent, the number of unarmed black males killed in 2017 declined from two years ago. Last year, police killed 19, a figure tracking closely with the 17 killed in 2016. In 2015, police shot and killed 36 unarmed black males.
Experts said they are uncertain why the annual total shows little fluctuation the number for 2017 is almost identical to the 995 killed by police in 2015.
Some believe the tally may correspond to the number of times police encounter people, an outcome of statistical probability. Other experts are exploring whether the number tracks with overall violence in American society.
The attention may have helped police reduce the number of unarmed people shot and killed each year, according to interviews with experts and police departments. Officers fatally shot 94 unarmed people in 2015, but that number has been lower in the past two years, with 51 killed in 2016 and 68 in 2017.
Also Check: How To Get A Police Affidavit
Before The Final Frame: When Police Missteps Create Danger
In dashboard- and body-camera footage, officers could be seen shooting at cars driving away, or threatening deadly force in their first words to motorists, or surrounding sleeping drivers with a ring of gun barrels then shooting them when, startled awake, they tried to take off. More than three-quarters of the unarmed motorists were killed while attempting to flee.
We have got to take him out, an Oklahoma state trooper declared over the radio in 2019 to patrolmen chasing a man in McAlester suspected of shoplifting a bottle of vodka. The officers used their cars to forcehis S.U.V. from the road,opened a door as it rolled slowly past and shot from both sides, killing the driver, dashcam footage shows.
A Tennessee sheriff ordered his deputies to fire at a motorist with a suspended license in 2017: Dont ram him, shoot him! he later recounted saying, according to a body-camera recording. Knocking the man off the highway might tear my cars up!
Some families of the drivers said that their relatives were not blameless.I dont have my head buried in the sand, said Deborah Lilly, whose 29-year-old son, Tyler Hays, had drugs in his car and tried to run away when he was pulled over for tinted windows last year by a sheriffs deputy in Hamilton County, Tenn. I am just saying he did not deserve to get shot in the back.
The overemphasis on danger has fostered tolerance for police misconduct at vehicle stops, some argue.
Where Do Most Fatal Police Killings Happen
A common assumption is that fatal police shootings most often occur in urban locations, because some of those areas are perceived to be plagued by high levels of community gun violence. But a study by the Harvard School of Public Health and published in the Journal of Preventive Medicine in May 2020 found fatal police shooting rates were as high in rural areas as in urban areas. Suburban locations were found to have somewhat lower rates.
And a separate, 2019 study from Harvard suggests that different neighborhoods present disparate risks of police violence: Researchers found that the risk of Black people being killed by police was highest in predominantly white neighborhoods.
Read Also: How To File A Civil Rights Complaint Against Police
Statements Of Attorneys For Yanez And Castile Family
The reasonableness of the initial traffic stop, and the facts of what occurred in the 103 seconds of the stop were hotly disputed almost immediately after the shooting occurred. On July 9, Yanezs attorney, Thomas Kelly of Minneapolis, said his client reacted to the presence of that gun and the display of that gun and that the shooting had nothing to do with race. This had everything to do with the presence of a gun.
In the video recorded shortly after the shooting, Reynolds said that the car was pulled over for a broken taillight. Yanezs attorney Kelly stated following the shooting that his client stopped Castile in part because he resembled a suspect in an armed robbery that had taken place nearby four days earlier, and in part because of a broken taillight. A Castile family attorney, Albert Goins, questioned this account, said that if Yanez actually thought Castile was a robbery suspect, the police would have made a felony traffic stop rather than an ordinary traffic stop . Goins said, Either was a robbery suspect and didnt follow the procedures for a felony stop, or was not a robbery suspect and shot a man because he stood at his window getting his information.
Castiles mother Valerie Castile and her lawyer Glenda Hatchett called for the case to be referred to a special prosecutor and called for the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct a federal investigation.
Young Black Men Again Faced Highest Rate Of Us Police Killings In 2016
The Counted project points to continuing racial disparities, with black males aged 15-34 nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed
Young black men were again killed by police at a sharply higher rate than other Americans in 2016, intensifying concerns over the expected abandonment of criminal justice reform by Donald Trumps incoming administration.
Black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers last year, according to data collected for The Counted, an effort by the Guardian to record every such death. They were also killed at four times the rate of young white men.
Racial disparities persisted in 2016 even as the total number of deaths caused by police fell slightly. In all, 1,091 deaths were recorded for 2016, compared with 1,146 logged in 2015. Several 2015 deaths only came to light last year, suggesting the 2016 number may yet rise.
The total is again more than twice the FBIs annual number of justifiable homicides by police, counted in recent years under a voluntary system allowing police to opt out of submitting details of fatal incidents. Plans to improve the government records have been thrown into doubt by the election of Trump, who campaigned as a law and order conservative.
Also Check: How To Become A Police Officer In Montana