I just want to point you to two headlines in the Guardian on New Year’s Eve and hope you find the time on this New Year’s Day to read the articles and review the tables and graphics.
Why is there such paucity of reporting on this ongoing tragedy in the US?
Young black men killed by US police at highest rate in year of 1,134 deaths
Final total of people killed by US police officers in 2015 shows rate of death for young black men was five times higher than white men of the same age [...]
Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year.
Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age. [...]
Followed by the editorial: The Guardian view on killings by US police: why we must keep counting
At the beginning of 2015, the Guardian began a grim task – to record the death of every person killed by American police officers – for a simple reason: astonishingly, the United States government publishes no such record.
Even as protests and calls for systemic policing reforms continued after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the US Justice Department’s best data scientists could not provide a figure for how frequent officer-involved deaths had become. The government scientists had been starved of funding. [...]
In spite of the tragic topic, I’m glad to see that someone takes the issue seriously. Too bad that the source is across the Atlantic.