New Evidence Confirms
Police ARE Killing Black People at an Alarming Rate
June 8, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The Washington Post is compiling a database to keep track of every police shooting that has killed someone in 2015. And it has just released a finding that at least 385 people have been shot and killed by police nationwide during the first five months of this year. (This statistic reflects tracking through May 29.)
This amounts to more than two people killed a day—twice the rate of fatal police shootings that the federal government has reported over the past decade. And the actual figure of people killed in 2015 so far by the police is probably even higher since these figures don’t count people killed by other means such as Tasers and in police custody. Government officials themselves admit that their numbers are incomplete. (“Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide,” Washington Post, May 30, 2015)
The Post also tracked more than a dozen details about each killing, including the victim’s nationality, if the person was armed, and the circumstances surrounding the shooting. What is revealed is a picture of how what begins as many minor incidents gets escalated into deadly violence and death. According to the Post, most of those killed by the police have been poor and/or have had a history of “run-ins” with the police over mostly small-time crimes—sometimes because they were emotionally troubled.
The Washington Post found that:
- About half the victims were white, half were non-white. When it came to those who were unarmed, two-thirds were Black or Latino and Black people were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities (when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred).
- Police say the vast majority of victims (more than 80 percent) were armed with potentially lethal objects. According to police, this included guns, knives, machetes, revving vehicles and, in one case, a nail gun. NOTE: This is based on what was in a police report—and we know that police LIE all the time and also plant weapons on people.
- Forty-nine people had no weapon, while the guns wielded by 13 others turned out to be toys. In all, 16 percent were either carrying a toy or were unarmed.
- The dead ranged in age from 16 to 83.
One statistic here bears repeating: The “guns” wielded by 13 people shot down dead by the police turned out to be TOYS—16 percent of the people killed were either carrying a toy or were unarmed.
Here’s another outrageous finding by the Post: “About half of the time, police were responding to people seeking help with domestic disturbances and other complex social situations: A homeless person behaving erratically. A boyfriend threatening violence. A son trying to kill himself. Ninety-two victims—nearly a quarter of those killed—were identified by police or family members as mentally ill.”
The Post article gives these examples:
“In Miami Gardens, Fla., Catherine Daniels called 911 when she couldn’t persuade her son, Lavall Hall, a 25-year-old black man, to come in out of the cold early one morning in February. A diagnosed schizophrenic who stood 5-foot-4 and weighed barely 120 pounds, Hall was wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt and waving a broomstick when police arrived. They tried to stun him with a Taser gun and then shot him.”
Another example is Shane Watkins, a 39-year-old white man, who died in his mother’s driveway in Moulton, Alabama:
“Watkins had never been violent, and family members were not afraid for their safety when they called Lawrence County sheriff’s deputies in March. But Watkins, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was off his medication. Days earlier, he had declared himself the ‘god of the fifth element’ and demanded whiskey and beer so he could ‘cleanse the earth with it,’ said his sister, Yvonne Cote. Then he started threatening to shoot himself and his dog, Slayer. His mother called Cote, who called 911. Cote got back on the phone with her mother, who watched Watkins walk onto the driveway holding a box cutter to his chest. A patrol car pulled up, and Cote heard her mother yell: ‘Don’t shoot! He doesn’t have a gun!’ ‘Then I heard the gunshots,’ Cote said.”
According to the law, police are only allowed to use “deadly force” when they fear for their lives or the lives of others. Many of the situations described in these killings at the very least are questionable on this point, meaning the cops involved should be tried in a court of law. But according to the Post findings, just three of the 385 fatal shootings have resulted in an officer being charged with a crime—less than 1 percent.
Dozens of people in 2015 so far have been killed by what the Post says is called (one is to assume by the police) a “foot tax”—people being killed while fleeing from the police.
When it comes to police shooting people dead—the daily death toll for 2015 so far comes close to 2.6 a day. As the Post article points out, at this pace the police will have shot and killed nearly 1,000 people by the end of the year.
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