Police Shootings / Possible Abuse Threads [merged]
Police in the US use force on at least 300,000 people each year, injuring an estimated 100,000 of them, according to a groundbreaking data analysis on law enforcement encounters.
Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group that
tracks killings by US police, launched a new database,
policedata.org, on Wednesday cataloging non-fatal incidents of police use of force, including stun guns, chemical sprays, K9 dog attacks, neck restraints, beanbags and baton strikes.
The database features incidents from 2017 through 2022, compiled from public records requests in every state. The findings, the group says, suggest that despite widespread protests against police brutality following the murder of
George Floyd in 2020, overall use of force has remained steady since then – and in many jurisdictions, has increased.
The data builds on past
reports that found US police kill roughly 1,200 people each year, or three people a day, a death toll that has
crept up every year and
dramatically exceeds rates in comparable nations.
The nonfatal force statistics and accompanying
report illustrate how the killings are just a small fraction of broader police violence and injuries caused by law enforcement.
In the absence of a national tracking system for use of force, Mapping Police Violence said it obtained data on use-of-force incidents from more than 2,800 agencies, covering nearly 60% of the population, and got six full years of data from 634 of those departments.
The organization calculated average rates of force by population to get its national estimates.
The data is considered an undercount as it only covers incidents disclosed by officers and agencies, and many states have laws restricting access to police files.
Here are some key findings:
Thousands of people are hit with stun guns and chemical sprays
Of the agencies that disclosed data for 2022, representing roughly half of the country, Mapping Police Violence found there were 1.2 uses of force reported for every 1,000 residents.
The most common use of force was stun guns, which are considered “less-lethal” but can also have
deadly consequences; the organization tracked more than 20,000 stun gun deployments.…..
Many people subject to police force are unarmed
Thirty-one agencies disclosed whether people were armed when they faced police force. On average, 83% of people subjected to force across those jurisdictions were unarmed, the agencies reported.…….
The racial disparities are stark
Black people were subject to overall police use of force at a rate 3.2 times greater than white people in 2022, according to the report. That disparity is more severe than lethal force trends; Black people were killed by police at 2.6 times the rate of white people in 2022.….
Half of the agencies reported increases in force since 2020
Half of the agencies reported increases in overall force in the two-year period following Floyd’s murder, the report said. Fewer than one in six agencies reported significant reductions in use of force.
Those estimates come from 727 agencies that disclosed at least five years of data, comparing 2018-2019 rates to 2021-2022 rates.……
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...violence-data-analysis?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other