Investigation: Police Shootings
washingtonpost.com
Investigation: Police Shootings
1–10 of 221 posts
Re: Investigation: Police Shootings
#2Some notes:
* The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted":
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0...
The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how dangerous tasers are.
The Guardian also gives the state breakdowns weighted by their population, making it easier to spot problem states. But WaPo makes it much easier to see which states have more shootings of unarmed people.
* 79% of the people killed in this database were reported to have "deadly weapons" (not including cars).
* 64% of the people killed in this database were shot and killed while attacking someone with a deadly weapon.
You'd really like to have a more detailed breakdown on "deadly weapon"; specifically, you want to know which of the people shot had firearms, versus knives.
Nobody was fatally shot by a police officer in Rhode Island? That's surprising.
Re: Investigation: Police Shootings
#3Worth reading through these. A lot of people with mental illness shot just for holding guns or knives or "driving toward police."
Recently, an au pair we know (from Germany), had a gun pulled on her because she reached into her purse to get her ID when she was pulled over. The fact that Maryland's finest are totally mental and she could get killed for doing that never occurred to her.
Re: Investigation: Police Shootings
#4Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how d…
And additional data going back to 2013:
Re: Investigation: Police Shootings
#5I find this discrepancy very interesting, only ~4% of the people shot and killed by police were female. Police departments are male dominate and maybe this factors into the difference[0]
Male - 952
Female - 41
Why such a discrepancy? I don't think males are 23x more dangerous than females.
Re: Investigation: Police Shootings
#6Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how d…
Can we find out if e.g. Laquan McDonald is included in the "64%"? If not, I'd expect he was before the video came out. This is why I hesitate to consider "mitigating circumstances". Public safety officers should be judged by their effect on public safety, not by how well they cover their own asses.
Re: Investigation: Police Shootings
#7I find this discrepancy very interesting, only ~4% of the people shot and killed by police were female. Police departments are male dominate and maybe this factors into the difference[0] Male - 952 Female - 41 Why such a discrepancy? I don't think males are 23x more dangerous than females. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_law_enforcement
1. Men do commit a lot more crime than women. We don't know exactly why that is, but probably some combination of biology and society.
2. There is a lot of bias towards seeing men as more dangerous. Some is legitimate - men are physically larger, on average - while some is just pure bias. The bias might be partially justified due to men actually committing more crime, but it's hard to say how much. Regardless, if you encounter the police in a potentially violent situation, it's clearly much better to be a woman than a man.
Re: Investigation: Police Shootings
#8Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how d…
93 victims were unarmed, 33 were armed with a toy, and 27 unknown.
That is a lot more than Americans killed by terrorists in US.
Re: Investigation: Police Shootings
#9I find this discrepancy very interesting, only ~4% of the people shot and killed by police were female. Police departments are male dominate and maybe this factors into the difference[0] Male - 952 Female - 41 Why such a discrepancy? I don't think males are 23x more dangerous than females. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_law_enforcement
See Table 5: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf. Men are offenders in 92% of gun homicides, 93% of homicides committed in conjunction with another felony, 95% of drug-related homicides, and 98% of gang-related homicides.
Re: Investigation: Police Shootings
#10Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how d…
93 victims were unarmed, 33 were armed with a toy, and 27 unknown. That is a lot more than Americans killed by terrorists in US.
For me, this highlights how overblown the terrorist problem is.