Granted, every death is a tragedy, but the statistics of police related shootings are very interesting.
In 2015, a police officer was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a police officer. Black males have made up 42 percent of all cop-killers over the last decade, though they are only 6 percent of the populationThe data available classifies only 16 black male victims of police shootings as "unarmed", and if so those are 16 too many. Still, the problem is not nearly as big as many people want to think it is.
Go read the whole thing at the link above.
3 comments:
I wouldn't say that it's 16 too many. Sure, a shooting of an unarmed individual that was not at threat is wrong, and should not happen. If that's the case with each of these 16, incidents, then yes, it is 16 too many. But you know as well as I that just because someone is unarmed doesn't mean they are incapable of threatening life.
If you get into a fight with someone while carrying a gun, and they grab for it, *you* don't have a gun; *y'all* have a gun.
There are a lot of situations where it could be the best course of action for the po-po shoot an ostensibly unarmed person. They teach this in every police academy in the country.
I find it interesting that if you dig into the data, officers are LESS likely to shoot blacks than whites, even though blacks commit a large portion of crimes (both against the public and against law enforcement), and officers interact with blacks much more often
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/black-lies-matter/article/2600164
Also, whites were more likely to have lethal force used against them than blacks... where are the protesters saying 'white lives matter'? Oh, right, they are at WORK ...
The caveat with the data is that while the reporting of fatal shootings by police officers is probably pretty close, this information is not systematically collected by the FBI and so its figures are at best not completely accurate.
The Washington Post has been collecting reports of fatal shootings by police for several years and for 2015 found about twice as many as the FBI reported.
The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention log fatal shootings by police, but officials acknowledge that their data is incomplete. In 2015, The Post documented more than twice as many fatal shootings by police as had been recorded by the FBI. Last year, the FBI announced plans to overhaul how it tracks fatal police encounters.
Does the Post have an agenda? Yes.
Is the FBI doing a good enough job collecting this data? No.
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