THE TOTAL NUMBER OF AMERICANS KILLED BY LOCAL POLICE IS UNKNOWN



 

..The militarized Ferguson, MO. Police Department

 

Most other countries publish reports of those killed by their authorities, but the US number is so high, no one actually knows.

I did not realize until I read a recent report that came out regarding the Ferguson, MO, Grand Jury decision that there is no annual report showing how many American civilians are killed by US police officers.  That’s amazing to me. 

 

Oh, there is the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.  The latest report said that in 2013 there were 461 “justifiable homicides” by US police.  These are defined as “the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.” But this is not the actual annual total of all US civilian killings by US police officers.

Most other industrialized countries publish such reports.  As examples, there were no fatal police shootings in Great Britain last year.  In Germany, there were only eight police killings in the past two years. In Canada, (another nation with no great aversion to firearms), their police killings of civilians have averaged only about a dozen a year.  But for the USA, there is no report.  On top of that, many major US cities do not report their numbers to the FBI Crime Report database. 

American newspaper journalists have attempted to compile more complete data by collating local news reports.  This has resulted in estimates as high as 1,000 US police killings a year.  In addition, there is also no way to know exactly how many victims, like Michael Brown in Ferguson, were unarmed when they were killed.

Based on the major difference between those killed by “our American city’s finest”, and those police officers in other nations, it’s no wonder why both liberals and conservatives alike are outraged at the frequency with which police in this country use deadly force.  As one journalist recently wrote, “There is no greater power that we entrust to the state than the license to take a life.”

My question is, “Why is there such a disparity between America, and those other countries that also allow their police officers to use some form of deadly force?”  Is the training given police officers inadequate?  Are the procedures that they are instructed to follow, really that wrong-headed?

Personally, after following the Ferguson police department’s response to the Ferguson protestors, I think it is the “us vs. them” mentality that had developed between the local black civilians and the Ferguson and St. Louis police departments.  That is what separated these civilian communities from the authorities.

Living in Northern California, and even if you go back to the Watt’s riots; the Rodney King episode; the results that occurred after the first O.J. Simpson trial; and then to watch what continues to happen locally today in Oakland and other East Bay communities, there has continued to be an increasing “us vs. them” mentality between the local police and the minority communities.

Of course, with the slow recovering economy for the nation’s poor; the overall stagnate US wages and not enough new jobs; the conservatives always against increasing the minimum wage, for those individuals not included in the nation’s top financial 2%, they are in a world of financial hurt.  Historically, under these conditions, there will always be a need to increase local police involvement.  But not in the way it’s being done today.

Based on what has been occurring with these situations, starting back with the the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida.  Now with the killing of the unarmed Eric Garner and Mr. Brown, and those being followed by the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley, another unarmed man who was suspected of no crime in Brooklyn.  Then add the killing of the 12-year-old black male, Tamir Rice, who was waving a toy gun around in a park in Cleveland.  These are just a few of the black deaths that recently happened to hit the national news scene.  They have come across as an example of a kind of authorized police war against black American males.

USA Today has now analyzed the FBI’s “justifiable homicide” statistics and found that, of roughly 400 reported police killings, 96 involved a white police officer killing a black person.  That’s almost 25% of those so called, “justifiable homicides”.

D. Brian Burghart, the editor and publisher of the Reno News & Review recently determined with his study that: “You know who dies in the most population-dense areas? Black men.  You know who dies in the least population-dense areas? Mentally ill men. It’s not to say there aren’t dangerous and desperate criminals killed across the line. But African-Americans and the mentally ill people make up a huge percentage of the people killed by local police.”

The Obama administration has been trying to get those cities such as Ferguson, Missouri and Albuquerque, New Mexico, with high rates of police shootings, to submit to serious police department reforms. Unfortunately, no city, or groups of communities, can really get a handle on the problem until the true scope of the problem is known.  Finding out those deathly details does not look very good for happening in the near future.  The total number is also suspected to be much larger than anyone is suggesting.

As the Washington Post’s, Eugene Robinson, recently wrote, “The Michael Brown case presents issues that go beyond race. An unarmed teenager was shot to death. Whatever his color, that’s just not right.”

Mr. Robinson’s statement is correct. 

 

However, with few exceptions, most of those killed by the authorities have not been white or Asian males. 

 

But besides that, the overall number of US police department killings is totally unacceptable.

Copyright G.Ater  2014