Doing some research, I found some interesting articles that discuss and analyze data compiled regarding the topic of police violence rates. I stumbled across a site called policeviolencereport.org that essentially tracks and compiles reports of police violence. The information on the site is compiled from media reports, obituaries, public records, and databases like Fatal Encounters or the Washington Post. I decided to take a look at the violence rates for last year, 2017.
1,147 people were killed by police in 2017--and the site has a compiled graphic with each death labeled. 92% of these were shootings, and other forms of physical violence accounted for the rest. Officers were charged with a crime in only 13 of these cases, 1% of all killings by police. 9 of these 13 cases had video evidence. Most of these videos were captured by police body and dash cameras. Most unarmed people killed by police were people of color. Black people were more likely to be killed by police, more likely to be unarmed and less likely to be threatening someone when killed.
As we saw during our discussions about the beating of Rodney King by the police in 1991, American society, even after the L.A. Riots, still has a problem with police brutality. Police officers are still using inappropriate amounts of force to deal with situations, especially against people of color, and are still disproportionately using violent or lethal force against black people. It is interesting to see, as time has gone on, in relation to how the video of Rodney King's beating was what gained so much publicity for the event, and what sparked legal action, that video footage of police brutality is still being used to actually be able to attempt to charge police officers for misconduct--or at the very least is being used to gain publicity for the issue. Much in comparison to the manner in which Rodney King's case was handled in 1990's, police officers are still receiving very little to no consequences for use of excessive force or for killing people. Considering these infographics are from last year, this is concerning and shows that maybe not as much has changed in our current "post-racial" America as we would like to believe.
As a side note, it is notable that the top city listed as having some of the most preventable deaths due to police violence, is Los Angeles, CA--still in 2017.
-Caitlin Marshall
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