Year |
Total |
Total
firearms |
Handguns |
Rifles |
Shotguns |
Firearms,
type not
stated |
Knives or
cutting
instruments |
Other
dangerous
weapons |
Personal
weapons |
2015 |
457 |
456 |
316 |
40 |
7 |
93 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
2016 |
440 |
432 |
313 |
51 |
5 |
63 |
2 |
5 |
1 |
2017 |
444 |
436 |
284 |
57 |
2 |
93 |
3 |
4 |
1 |
2018 |
435 |
431 |
292 |
56 |
4 |
79 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
2019 |
340 |
334 |
248 |
32 |
2 |
52 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
- 1 The killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.
- NOTE: The Uniform Crime Reporting Technical Refresh enables updating of prior years' crime data; therefore, data presented in this table may not match previously published data.
400 cases per year. They only include 400 cases per year. They’re supposed to be telling us how many people are killed in general, but they can’t be bothered to accurately tell us how many people they kill?
They don’t record cases of unjustifiable homicide at all. They don’t even try to document how many times police use force in an unnecessary manner. This is a violation of Federal Law, and it’s been going on for 30 years.
In 2015, the WaPo started looking at public reports of police shootings and they started finding about 900 cases per year. That same year the Guardian created their The Counted project and they located about 1,100 cases per year.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics was inspired by these results and that year they started going beyond what was being reported to them by the FBI and instead used the open source methods employed by the WaPo and Guardian, then they went one step further. They did a survey of the non-reporting departments to help sample just what was still missing in the data and they found that, in reality, the number of people killed during arrests and in police custody was actually 1,900 per year.
Between June 1, 2015, and March 31, 2016, media reviews identified 1,348 potential arrest-related deaths. During this period, the number of deaths consistently ranged from 87 to 156 arrest-related deaths per month, with an
average of 135 deaths per month. To confirm and collect more information about the 379 deaths identified through open sources from June to August 2015, BJS conducted a survey of law enforcement agencies and ME/C offices.
The survey findings identified 425 arrest-related deaths during this 3-month period—12% more than the number of deaths identified through the open source review. Extrapolated to a full calendar year, an estimated 1,900 arrest-related deaths occurred in 2015. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of the deaths that occurred from June to August 2015 were homicides, about a fifth (18%) were suicides, and a tenth (11%) were accidents.
This is the same report mentioned by Mapping Police Violence above, the difference is that the BJS didn’t just include arrest-related deaths, they also include deaths in police custody which happen while the suspect is being held in jail or prison. (Like Sandra Bland who should never have been arrested) That added another 600 deaths to the total.
The numbers from the BJS survey indicate that the estimate from the Lancet, of nearly 2,200 deaths per year, is not that far off.
And 64% of those deaths are homicides. From the WaPo and Guardian data we can state that about 15% of the time, the killed suspect was not armed.
Look, almost no one begrudges the police for having the unpleasant power and duty to protect life by something taking life. Sometimes there is no other choice and you have to make the ultimate decision. This is why we issue police guns, batons, pepper spray and body armor. It’s what we expect them to do for the greater good.
But when the suspect is unarmed? When the suspect is already in jail? When the suspect is moving away rather than attacking, when the suspect isn’t presenting any threat at all or already has their hands in the air in surrender?
Is killing them justified? Ever?
Then there’s the racial dimension to all this, as MPV documents black suspects are killed at a rate that is 2.9x the rate for white suspects.
This disparity is even worse when you contrast the rate of death for Native Hawaiians compared to Asians — which is 11 to 1.
But as the Guardian documents, when you look at the killings of young people when they are either black or white — it’s nearly as bad.
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.
Paired with official government mortality data, this new finding indicates that about one in every 65 deaths of a young African American man in the US is a killing by police.
“This epidemic is disproportionately affecting black people,” said Brittany Packnett, an activist and member of the White House taskforce on policing. “We are wasting so many promising young lives by continuing to allow this to happen.”
This is not to say that police don’t ever kill white people, they do. Technically they kill more of them, it’s just fewer in proportion to their part of the overall population.
All of this is exactly what has made this a priority and did fuel the Black Lives Matter movement, but what have been the results?
There was the George Floyd Bill which was intended to introduce several measures:
The bill enhances existing enforcement mechanisms to remedy violations by law enforcement. Among other things, it does the following:
- lowers the criminal intent standard—from willful to knowing or reckless—to convict a law enforcement officer for misconduct in a federal prosecution,
- limits qualified immunity as a defense to liability in a private civil action against a law enforcement officer, and
- grants administrative subpoena power to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in pattern-or-practice investigations.
It establishes a framework to prevent and remedy racial profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels. It also limits the unnecessary use of force and restricts the use of no-knock warrants, chokeholds, and carotid holds.
The bill creates a national registry—the National Police Misconduct Registry—to compile data on complaints and records of police misconduct. It also establishes new reporting requirements, including on the use of force, officer misconduct, and routine policing practices (e.g., stops and searches).
Finally, it directs DOJ to create uniform accreditation standards for law enforcement agencies and requires law enforcement officers to complete training on racial profiling, implicit bias, and the duty to intervene when another officer uses excessive force.
These are good measures, but I don’t think they’re strong enough. I think what we need is to go one step further and codify Tennesse V Garner into Federal Law.
A Tennessee statute provides that, if, after a police officer has given notice of an intent to arrest a criminal suspect, the suspect flees or forcibly resists, "the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest." Acting under the authority of this statute, a Memphis police officer shot and killed appellee-respondent Garner's son as, after being told to halt, the son fled over a fence at night in the backyard of a house he was suspected of burglarizing. The officer used deadly force despite being "reasonably sure" the suspect was unarmed and thinking that he was 17 or 18 years old, and of slight build. The father subsequently brought an action in Federal District Court, seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for asserted violations of his son's constitutional rights. The District Court held that the statute and the officer's actions were constitutional. The Court of Appeals reversed.
Held: The Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against, as in this case, an apparently unarmed, nondangerous fleeing suspect; such force may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others. Pp. 7-22.
We need to set a national standard and federal law that says the willful and deliberate killing of an unarmed, non-aggressive or fleeing suspect who does not present a danger to the officer or others — is a crime. Simply put it’s unjustifiable homicide. It’s murder. If your struggling with a suspect, and they aren’t attempting to use deadly force with you — you don’t get to use deadly for against them.
If you do, you go to jail. Losing a fight is not an excuse to murder someone. Take your L and everyone goes home alive.
Nothing short of that is going to deter these people, because even after Michael Brown — who was unarmed — even after Philando Castille — who was unarmed at the time but had a gun permit — even after Adam Toledo who had dropped his weapon and clearly had his hands in the air, even after Walter Scott and Patrick Lyoya and George Floyd, even after all this, these police killings are still happening. It’s getting worse. It needs to be stopped.
Unfortunately, even though the Floyd bill did pass the House in 2021, it did not pass in the Senate.
And there is very little likelihood that the new GOP House will take it up again, even if it may now have a slightly better chance in the Senate with 51 Democratic votes.
There really isn’t much chance that the people who praise Ashlii Babbit as a “hero” are going to do much about this issue. Not when her mother is getting herself arrested by blocking the street in DC on the anniversary of January 6th.
Micki Witthoeft, the mother of the late Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt, was arrested in Washington D.C. on the second anniversary of the deadly riots at the United States Capitol building.
According to a press release issued by the United States Capitol Police, Witthoeft was among a group of protesters at the Capitol grounds that did not have a permit to demonstrate there.
During their demonstration, the protesters stood in the street despite instructions from the Capitol police to remain on the sidewalk.
The police said that Witthoeft was given multiple warnings to get out of the road but she "refused to leave, turned around with her hands behind her back, and asked to be arrested.
The 58-year-old Witthoeft was subsequently taken into custody on charges of refusal to obey a police order and blocking and obstructing roadways.
Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot on January 6th, 2021 by Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd after she tried crawling through a shattered window adjacent to a door that police had barricaded to prevent rioters from reaching members of Congress.
Unlike their response to Black LIves Matter, the right-wing has made the death of Babbit into a cause celebre.
Public discussion, however, is ongoing, and in that sphere the shooting of Ashli Babbitt has become particularly polemical. The controversy itself is familiar—policing and police homicides have been under a renewed spotlight since the summer of 2014, and especially the summer of 2020—but the public response to this particular shooting has played out in a unique way. Many pundits and commentators on the right have bucked their general tendency toward police apologetics by celebrating Babbitt, who entered the Capitol wearing a Trump flag as a cape. For example, Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson has framed the question of Babbitt’s death as whether “anonymous federal agents [are] now allowed to kill unarmed women who protest the regime,” even parroting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s criticism of the death as an “assassination.” On the left, reliable police critics have been largely silent, their statements essentially limited to the (accurate) observation that Babbitt was among a group of insurrectionists who illegally and violently breached the Capitol building and was shot while pushing through a barricaded door while lawmakers were being evacuated. As CNN summarized, “To [some] on the left, she’s a domestic terrorist who got what she deserved.” To a significant and obvious extent, the partisan divide in perceptions of Babbitt’s death reflects the current ideological division in the country.
But then again, reconsidering the Babbit case, it might not be impossible to move this issue forward.
The people who claim to be “pro-police” and to “back the blue” have been calling for Officer Byrd to be drawn and quartered. They ignore the fact that Babbit was in the literal act of committing a crime simply by being inside the Capitol without authorization. They act like she was a single lone individual when in fact, she certainly wasn’t, she was the first wave in an ongoing terrorist attack that ultimately killed 7 other people and injured 140 officers.
They ignore that she had crossed a set of fences that said “Area Closed”, had broken into a locked building — wouldn’t a criminal trespasser climbing through a broken window into your home, be subject to lethal force? — let alone climbed around the furniture of a barricaded door, going against the orders of Officer Byrd to “STOP.” Why didn’t she comply? And also, there were members of Congress at the end of the hall, and behind just one more door who were all at risk.
Sure, she herself was unarmed, but did she present a deadly threat?
You bet she did, largely because she wasn’t alone, she was the tip of the spear, the first edge of a raging terrorist mob that was coming after Congress. She had to be stopped. Anyone who jumped through that window had to be stopped or it would have been an endless flow of people. And it would have been a bloodbath for Congress.
If this had been an attack by Al Qaeda or ISIS would this even be an issue? As a rabid Qanon believer doesn't she deserve just about exactly the same treatment as a foreign terrorist? Why, again, didn't she just “comply” with the Officer?
Lastly, It would be fair to assume, considering the level of violence already taking place, that she was also violent and potentially deadly. Rioters were smashing windows and beating police, several were beaten unconscious, Byrd had very good reason to consider *anyone* in that crowd to be dangerous. Capitol Police had the authority to shoot anyone and everyone who illegally entered the Capitol grounds. And that definitely applied to Babbit as she was also entering the House chambers. Again, illegally.
But let’s put all that to the side for a moment.
Let’s just take it as a “win” that the right-wing has finally admitted that it’s wrong for police to kill an unarmed person who isn’t presenting a direct threat. I think there’s an opportunity here, we can work with this. Perhaps we can use the white privilege of presumed innocence afforded to Babbit — but not to Floyd, Brown, Trayvon or Taylor — to our advantage.
Admitting that it’s still amazing to me that people can ignore the threat she and the crowd behind her — who brought a fucking gallows? — presented, let’s just contrast and compare. They can somehow find that Patrick Lyoya was a “deadly threat” when he was shot in the back of the head while struggling with an officer who had stopped him for a minor traffic infraction. He didn’t do anything to hurt that officer, he was just trying to get away. It’s annoying, but that’s not a deadly threat.
They maintain that Adam Toledo was somehow a threat when he had his hands in the air. That George Floyd was somehow a threat when he was face down on the concrete and already handcuffed. That Philando Castille was somehow a threat simply because he mentioned that he had a concealed carry permit. That Oscar Grant was somehow a threat while he was face down and handcuffed. That Walter Scott was somehow a threat because he was running away. That Laquan McDonald was somehow a threat as he was walking away from officers. That Rayshard Brooks was somehow a threat and was killed — shot in the back — also while he was running away. How can the shooting of Breonna Taylor be right when she was in her own home doing nothing wrong, standing in her hallway with her pajamas on?
We quite seriously need to straighten out the concept of who is and isn't a threat, and how we need law enforcement to handle them. A guy without a weapon is not a real threat to a person with pepper spray, a baton, a taser and a gun. Going for the gun first should not be an option. Ever. Shooting someone in the back while they’re trying to flee is not a “good shoot.” It’s murder.
We need to renew our efforts and use logic.
If you think that the shooting of Ashlii Babbit — never mind that she was charging forward — was wrong because she was “unarmed”, then how can the killings of Toledo, Taylor, Floyd, Brooks, Castille, Brown, Lyoya and Scott be “right” when they were all also “unarmed” and most of them were running away, were handcuffed already or had their hands up? If you think Officer Byrd should be “prosecuted” how can you not believe that all these others officers should have been prosecuted as well? [In point of fact, only two of them have been.] If you want to look at it from this basis — and just ignore the context Babbit was in as well as the 2,000 other rioters at her back — then we actually have something we can move forward on.
Don't shoot unarmed people. Period. And no, a cell phone (Stephon Clark) or wallet (Amadou Diallo) in their hand doesn’t count. That’s simply not good enough and never should have been. Even if they do have a gun or a gun permit (Phillando Castille), or a toy gun (Tamir Rice, John Crawford III) or a knife (Jacob Blake, Laquan McDonald), they frankly have a 2nd Amendment Right to possess that weapon, just having it isn't enough, they have to be brandishing it in a threatening way, moving in a way to use it as an attack.
They have to be an actual threat.
Is that an idea that we can all finally accept as legitimate? Is that now a standard we can adopt?
Some people say that these are only “isolated cases.” That this doesn’t “happen that often.” Well, frankly, once is too many damn times. Is anyone counting the number of Ashlii Babbit's there have been, or are they just saying — that’s enough? Do they seem satisfied to wait until they have another example? And another? Doesn’t look like it.
If it’s wrong for police to kill an unarmed white woman even while she’s literally in the act of committing a Federal crime and is leading a viciously violent mob, then it’s also wrong for police to kill an unarmed black or brown man, or woman [or boy] when he’s not committing a violent crime just like 69% of the people who were killed in 2022. [Why exactly are 69% of the people killed even when not in the process of committing a violent crime, isn't that supposed to be the whole point of arming the police? Shouldn’t they be de-escalating non-violent situations, not exacerbating them?]
How can you not want to change this system and change these laws when this shit happens almost 2,000 times per year? When almost 200 of those times, the person killed by police is unarmed? When almost 70% of the time, they haven’t committed *any* violent crime? When most of the time, they aren’t any kind of deadly threat? Maybe things should be different.
Maybe there’s room to have some common cause here. Maybe they should take the George Floyd bill and rename it the Ashlii Babbit bill — add Garner — then see what happens. Let really see if they mean it when they claim “All Lives Matter.” Do they really?
Perhaps it’s time to require that police are not allowed to kill an unarmed suspect who isn’t presenting a deadly threat. Period.
Tennesee V Garner should be Federal law. People should not be killed when no lives are at risk.