It would be a tough bet, mostly because I always lose on sure things. If I were to bet $500—which I can hardly scrape up at the moment, much less lose—I would bet that… ah… ummm… jesus… I’ll bet that they will walk.
Here’s why:
The Washington Post found that an average of five officers per year have been indicted on felony charges over the previous decade; this year, 18 officers have been charged with felonies including murder, manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm. Such accusations rarely stick, however. Only 11 of the 65 officers charged in fatal shootings over the past decade were convicted.
Cops walked 14 times in 2014:
Tamir Rice, 12, he was playing with a toy gun in a park.
Jason Harrison, 39, armed with a screwdriver, shot 5 times by officers after his mother had called to have him hospitalized during a schitzophrenic episode.
Cameron Redus, 23, unarmed, shot 5 times during a traffic stop.
Brian Beaird, 51, unarmed, after a car chase in his Corvette.
Autumn Steele, 34, unarmed, she called the cops during an argument with her husband. She was shot dead after her dog bit a responding officer.
Jerame Reid, 36, unarmed, shot after stepping out of his car with his hands up.
Jessica Hernandez, 17, unarmed, shot during a traffic stop while driving a stolen car.
Davin Guilford, 17, unarmed, during a traffic stop.
Abdul Kamal, 30, unarmed, shot 13 times.
Nicholas Thomas, 23, unarmed, shot in the back after a stop for “driving quickly around a building.”
Danny Elrod, 39, unarmed, shot in the back after running and trying to jump a fence. The same officer had earlier killed another unarmed suspect in 2012. No indictment was brought in either case.
Jeremy Lett, 28, unarmed, shot while resisting the officer in a case of mistaken identity.
Gilbert Flores, 41. Flores had brandished a knife during a domestic dispute, but cell phone video shows he dropped it and had his hands raised when officers shot and killed him.
Daniel Isaac Covarrubias, 37, armed with a cell phone. Shot and killed when he refused to climb down from a pile of lumber that he owned and pointed his cell phone at the officers.
All the suspects in the cases above were killed by police officers. None of the cases made it to trial.
Indictments have been dropped against 2 of the 6 officers involved in the Baltimore case of Freddie Grey killing during Grey’s circuitous transport to jail in early 2016.
Headline in today’s USA Today: 26 Police Officers Killed So Far in 2016, up 44% from 2015
Here’s My Headline: As of this afternoon (Houston), 610 civilians have been killed by police officers so far in 2016. Up 22% from this time last year.
Cops, 621 to People, 26 and we’re only halfway through the year.
As of June 1st, 2016, the count looked like this:
509 people were shot dead by police officers.
484 were male.
25 were female.
238 White.
123 Black.
79 Hispanic
46 Unknown.
23 Other.
Weapons: 35 unarmed, 27 unknown weapons, 22 toy weapons, 35 threatened officers with vehicles, 88 knives, 282 guns, 20 Other.
According to the data compiled by the Washington Post a large proportion of those killed obviously showed signs of mental illness. Of the 509 killed as of June 1st this year at least 124 were thought to be suffering from such conditions.
Many of those killed carried guns according to police records. In at least 22 cases officers mistook toy guns for the real thing.
In 2015, the last year of complete statistics, 986 people were shot dead by police officers, 274 of them were unarmed..
Twice as many whites were killed by police than blacks between Jan. 1st and Dec. 31st, 2015, BUT black men—who make up 6% of the US population—represented 40% of unarmed civilian shooting deaths by police.
The landscape of police shootings is surprisingly thinly explored. The FBI is charged with keeping statistics on such shootings, but a Post analysis of FBI data showed that fewer than half of the nation’s 18,000 police departments report their incidents to the agency.
The research also noted whether victims were mentally ill or experiencing an emotional crisis, a category that came to account for one-quarter of those killed. Officers fatally shot at least 243 people with mental health problems: 75 who were explicitly suicidal and 168 for whom police or family members confirmed a history of mental illness.
The Washington Post analysis found that about 9 in 10 of the mentally troubled people were armed, usually with guns but also with knives or other sharp objects. But the analysis also found that most of them died at the hands of police officers who had not been trained to deal with the mentally ill.
This is a bet I sorely want to lose. But it sure looks like a sure thing that I will win this one. Maybe I should make it an even Grand.
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Composing members:
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