The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement published a report this month that details 120 killings of Black people by police or security guards and people who appointed themselves as law enforcers. All of the killings occurred in the first six months of 2012. Unfortunately, the report has yet to receive the attention that it deserves.
You can link to the pdf document here: Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of Black People
Many of these killings get little media attention and when they do the emphasis is often on the alleged criminal activity or troubled background of the person who was killed. The MXGM report views these killings as a United States human rights crisis and asks us to look at this issue in a different way:
Regardless of how these encounters begin, whether they involve activity that
violates the laws of the state or the laws of basic human decency, no one should be
sentenced to death without a trial.
The report found that 55 (or 46%) had no weapon at all at the time they were executed. And a further 43 (or 36%) were alleged by police to have weapons (including a cane, toy gun and bb gun) but the allegation was disputed by witnesses or later investigation.
One of the saddest facts in the report is how young so many of the people were when they were killed.
The problem is national. These 120 killings occurred in 24 states and the District of Columbia.
Given the number of killings and the scope of the problem, a reasonable person might expect that law enforcement agencies would be taking aggressive action to stop or at least greatly reduce the number of these deaths. In fact the state of affairs is that no government agency is even effectively collecting comprehensive data. The Wikipedia entry titled "List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States" puts it like this
Through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the US Congress mandated the Attorney General to collect data on the use of excessive force by police and to publish an annual report from the data. Two national systems collect data which include homicides committed by law enforcement officers in the line of duty... A study of the years 1976 to 1998 found that both national systems underreport justifiable homicides by police officers ... The authors concluded that "reliable estimates of the number of justifiable homicides committed by police officers in the United States do not exist."
A study of killings by police from 1999 to 2002 in the Central Florida region found that the national databases included only one-fourth of the number of persons killed by police as reported in the local news media.
Wikipedia has its own list of killings by law enforcement officers in 2012. Their records list
74 people of all races who were killed by police in the first six months of 2012. For the same time period, the MXGM report
lists 120 Black people who were killed. Thirteen of the 120 cases in the MXGM report involve security guards or self-appointed law enforcers. The MXGM report includes killings by off-duty law enforcement officers.
Tragically and incredibly, Wikipedia already lists 52 killings by law enforcement officers for July of 2012.
Again, this is the link to the MXGM Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People, January 1 to June 30, 2012.