Social Project: Police Brutality

How many black people are killed by police nationally?

The numbers for people killed by the police range from 965 to 1,152, but out of the 965 people killed by police by December 4, 2015, according the the Washington Post, the majority of victims were white, (49%) and  African Americans made up 30%. However, 90 of those victims were unarmed making up less that 4%, and 40% of those people were African-American males. 3 in 5 of the fatal shootings victims were African American or Hispanic and exhibited less dangerous bahavior than white individuals who attacked police with a weapon.

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Out of the 1,152 people killed by the police according to the Huffington Post, the 60 largest police departments were responsible for 25% of the officer involved shooting deaths. 41% of those killed were African Americans, who make up only 20% of those area's populations. 14 of these departments killed only black people compared to the 5 that killed only white. The Campaign Zero movement's goal is to lower the number of police involved fatal shootings.

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How many black people are shot in St. Louis area by police?

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An analysis by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shows that in the five years ending in 2010, St. Louis officers fired up to three times more often, per reported violent crime, than those protecting other, similar-sized populations. The rate was 1.6 times higher than that of St. Louis County officers and St. Louis easily topped all smaller cities in shots fired per violent crime. Officers in the city fired 1.85 times more than in the city ranked highest in that study, Denver, and on a straight per capita basis St. Louis officers fired up to eight times more often than others.

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What about Black on Black Crime?

Statistics show that about 92% of murders with African American victims have killers of the same race, but that is not very surprising. 81.5% of murders with white people as victims have white killers, it’s a fact most murder victims are killed by someone known to the victim, and people tend to gravitate towards violence within their own race. Even murders committed by strangers to the victim tend to be intraracial because race groups tend to gravitate towards their same neighborhood. Only 13% of murders are interracial.

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Recent studies in December, 2015 also show there is no correlation between black on black crime, or any other kind of crime within a community, and police shootings.“The police often say that the police are where the crime is as a way to suggest that the reason that they are more violent in certain communities is because they have to be because the communities are more violent,” DeRay Mckesson, a member of Campaign Zero’s planning team and one of the most prominent voices in the Black Lives Matter movement, told The Huffington Post. “We wanted to see how the data matched to that suggestion, and what we saw is that it doesn’t.”“It just reminds us that the police are choosing to be violent in communities,” he added.  

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“This myth that people have created that community violence is the cause of police violence is absolutely false,” said Brittany Packnett, another member of Campaign Zero’s planning team, who also sat on Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s (D) Ferguson Commission. “This is an issue of policy, of accountability and of culture inside of departments.”

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What are some solutions?

• Peaceful protests

• Voting for more restrictive police legislation

• Required dash and body cams for officers/monitor police (not a requirement in most places)

• Forming organizations that address these and other related issues. 

• Having more officers evaluated psychologically

• Urging better police training

• Building coalitions

• Use open record laws

• Educate the public