Police kill around 1,000 every year despite protests and reform, advocacy group says
Protests against police brutality and calls for reform have gripped the U.S. since the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody on Memorial Day in Minneapolis.
In 2014, after Darren Wilson, a white police officer, killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, there were also demonstrations and renewed calls for reform, according to The New York Times.
But analysis by advocacy group Mapping Police Violence found that the number of police killings has remained relatively consistent since 2013 despite the push for reforms.
The data, compiled from FatalEncounters.org, the U.S. Police Shootings Database and KilledbyPolice.net, was also analyzed to determine the race of 90% of the victims in the database. Police killings are defined as “being shot, beaten, restrained, intentionally hit by a police vehicle, pepper sprayed, tasered, or otherwise harmed by police officers, whether on-duty or off-duty.”
Mapping Police Violence found police killed around 1,000 people every year from 2013 to 2019 and 99% of the killings didn’t result in police being charged.
Black people were three times as likely as white people to be killed by the police, Mapping Police Violence found. Black people comprised 24% of those killed despite only being 13% of the U.S. population. They were also 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed while killed by police compared to white people.
The Washington Post found a similar rate of police killings. The outlet began recording deaths since 2014 and found officers killed nearly 1,000 people every year.
“It is difficult to explain why we haven’t seen significant fluctuations in the shooting from year to year,” former Charlotte police chief Darrel Stephens told The Washington Post. “There’s been significant investments that have been made in de-escalation training. There’s been a lot of work.”
Police departments have implemented body camera, use-of-force policies, and required implicit bias training, according to The Washington Post. Some police departments stopped using or postponed body camera programs. Police reform advocates say that there aren’t national standards for police use of force, according to The Washington Post.
Some activists say that weakening police unions and preventing the police from being militarized can bring about change.
Democrats introduced a new bill on Monday, the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, that would create a national database of police conduct, ban chokeholds, restrict no-knock warrants, and reform “qualified immunity,” The Washington Post reported.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said during a Monday press briefing that there “are some non-starters” in the bill, according to The Washington Post.
This story was originally published June 8, 2020 at 2:18 PM with the headline "Police kill around 1,000 every year despite protests and reform, advocacy group says."