The video is out. Finally. After long attempts to sweep it under the rug failed. This Sun-Times editorial provides good background. It’s a bad shooting. (Though honestly I was expecting even worse, like an unarmed rationally behaving victim.) The mayor (now, at least) and the police chief have said the officer is at fault. The officer who killed McDonald fits…
Tag: police-involved shooting
“The most disturbing thing I’ve seen”
Two (black) cops were criminally charged in the fatal shooting of a (white) six-year-old boy in Louisiana, who was in a car, I guess being chased. I haven’t seen the video, so what do I know? But Colonel Michael Edmonson, the Superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, said footage of the incident was, “the most disturbing thing I’ve seen.” Damn.…
Meanwhile, in Brazil
In New York City, police have killed 281 people over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, a friend just gave me this a fun tidbit, in Rio de Janeiro (which is smaller than NYC) over the past ten years police have killed 8,466 people! That’s crazy. That means that every day police kill 2.3 people in that city. Just think of…
Killed by police, Washington Post analysis
Washington Post reporters are doing what journalists are supposed to do. They’re looking at those killed by police (like the Guardian, but a bit more fairly). 815 have been shot dead by police this year as of right now (the Guardian, just FYI, pushes that number to 948. That’s a 15 increase based on people that really shouldn’t be counted…
“The Stop”
Ashley Cleek’s piece on car stops in Life of the Law. Nice piece. And I’m quoted in it.
Who’s Counting?
Chava Gourarie at Columbia Journalism Review with a great piece on data and police-involved killings.
“Was the Shooting of Tamir Rice ‘Reasonable’?”
Another good story by Leon Neyfakh in Slate. This one with some legal analysis on the two reports that judged the shooting of Tamir Rice in Cleveland “reasonable.” Here’s a link to the audio of the radio dispatch.
2015 NYPD firearms discharge report
From the NYPD firearms discharge report for 2014: In adversarial conflict, 58 NYPD officers fired 201 rounds in 35 incidents. In total, 104 NYPD officers fired 282 rounds shot in 79 incidents. 18 incidents involving animal attack. There were 4 suicides. In adversarial conflict: 41% of officers fired one round. No officer had to reload. 52% of those shootings were…
Data on police-involved killings of unarmed civilians
The creators of StreetCredrecently brought their work to my attention. They like data. So do I. They’re trying to flesh out the situations when police kill an unarmed person. Unarmed does not automatically mean a person isn’t a threat. It’s interesting that the majority of these cases are not officer initiated but involve police response to a call for service…
Bad shooting in Gardena, California
Usually when I get called from the media about a police-involved shooting I expect I’m going to have to explain how a reasonable police officer might perceive a potentially lethal threat. Not here. This is a bad shooting: The killing happened two years ago. The video was just released. The officers faced no legal consequences. The city paid $4.7 million.…