These are some of the statistics from Mapping Police Violence, which released its 2017 Police Violence Report at the end of December.
In the majority of the incidents — 631 — officers were responding to non-violent offenses or when no crime had been reported at all. Eighty-seven people killed had been stopped for a traffic violation.
Additionally, the data reveals:
• Most of the unarmed people killed were people of color (48 were Black, 34 were Hispanic, 2 were Native American and 2 were Pacific Islander — 50 were white, and 11 were unknown).
• Of those unarmed when they were killed, 35 percent were Black, and of those unarmed and not attacking, 37 percent were Black — despite only constituting 13 percent of the population.
• 92 percent of the deaths were shootings. The rest primarily involved Tasers, physical force, and police vehicles.
• About half of those killed by police had a gun on them at the time — but 1 in 5 of those people were not threatening anyone at the time they were killed.
• There were only 14 days in 2017 when no one was killed by a cop.
• During training, police recruits spend 58 hours — almost two and a half days — on firearms training — seven times longer than they dedicate to de-escalation training.
• Of the officers involved in killings that researchers were able to identify (534), at least 43 had previously killed someone, and 12 had multiple prior shootings.
• In the 12 instances officers were charged with a crime for the killing, nine had video evidence.
One argument is that Black people commit violent crime at higher rates than people of other races. According to FBI statistics, 26.9 percent of all people arrested in 2016 were Black. Of those arrested for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, robbery and aggravated assault, 52.6 percent, 54.5 and 33.3 percent, respectively, were Black.
For the rest of this article… please visit POLICE DISPROPORTIONATELY KILLED BLACK PEOPLE
