Black Americans killed
by police twice as likely to be unarmed as white people
Guardian
analysis finds 102 people killed by police so far this year were unarmed, and
that agencies are killing people at twice the rate calculated by US government
The
figures illustrate how disproportionately black Americans, who make up just 13%
of the country’s total population according to census data, are killed by
police. Composite: Guardian Design
Black
Americans are more than twice as likely to be unarmed when killed during
encounters with police as white people, according to a Guardian investigationwhich
found 102 of 464 people killed so far this year in incidents with law
enforcement officers were not carrying weapons.
An analysis
of public records, local news reports and Guardian reporting found that 32% of
black people killed by police in 2015 were unarmed, as were 25% of Hispanic and
Latino people, compared with 15% of white people killed.
The findings
emerged from a database filled by a five-month study of police fatalities in
the US, which calculated that local and state police and federal law
enforcement agencies are killing people at twice the rate calculated by the US government’s official public record of
police homicides. The database names five people whose names have
not been publicly released.
The
Guardian’s statistics include deaths after the police use of a Taser, deaths
caused by police vehicles and deaths following altercations in police custody,
as well as those killed when officers open fire. They reveal that 29% of those
killed by police, or 135 people, were black. Sixty-seven, or 14%, were
Hispanic/Latino, and 234, or 50%, were white. In total, 102 people who died
during encounters with law enforcement in 2015 have been unarmed.
The figures
illustrate how disproportionately black Americans, who make up just 13% of the country’s total
population according to census data, are killed by police. Of the 464 people counted
by the Guardian, an overwhelming majority – 95% – were male, with just 5%
female.
Steven
Hawkins, the executive director Amnesty International USA, described the racial
imbalance as “startling”. Hawkins said: “The disparity speaks to something that
needs to be examined, to get to the bottom of why you’re twice as likely to be
shot if you’re an unarmed black male.”
Police killings: families, Obama taskforce and more welcome 'essential'
public count
An updating
list of reaction from relatives, campaign groups, activists and authorities
many of whom argue that a national standard is a prerequisite for an informed
public discussion about the use of force by police
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Relatives of
unarmed people killed by police in high-profile incidents during the past year
– including Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tony Robinson and Walter Scott –
described the Guardian project as a breakthrough in the national debate over
the use of deadly force by law enforcement.
“Giving this
kind of data to the public is a big thing,” said Erica Garner, whose father’s
killing by police in New York City last year led to international protests.
“Other incidents like murders and robberies are counted, so why not
police-involved killings? With better records, we can look at what is happening
and what might need to change.”
The
initiative was also praised by a range of policing experts and by campaigners
who are urging government authorities to make the official recording of
fatalities mandatory for all 18,000 police departments and law enforcement
agencies operating in the US.
“It’s
troubling that we have no official data from the federal government,” said
Laurie Robinson, the co-chair of Barack Obama’s task force on 21st century
policing. “I think it’s very helpful, in light of that fact, to have this kind
of research undertaken.”
Beginning on
Monday, the Guardian is publishing The Counted, a comprehensive interactive
database monitoring all police killings in the US through 16 data points
including age, location, gender, ethnicity, whether the person killed was armed
and which policing agency was responsible.
About The Counted: why and how the Guardian is counting US police
killings
The US
government has no comprehensive record of the number of people killed by law
enforcement. So the Guardian has embarked on this special project
Read more
The Counted
logs the precise location of each fatal incident, providing what is the most
detailed map of police killings ever published. California, America’s most
populous state, has the highest total with 74 fatalities so far this year.
However, an
analysis of location data shows that Oklahoma, where 22 people have died
through encounters with law enforcement, is the state with the highest rate of
fatal incidents per person in 2015, at one fatality per 175,000 people over
five months.
Over the
weekend, Nehemiah Fischer, a 35-year-old pastor, was shot dead by an Oklahoma
state trooper after getting into a fight when told to evacuate his truck in
rising flood waters south of Tulsa. Police have said Fischer had a firearm but have not explained whether he was
armed during the confrontation.
The database,
which will combine Guardian reporting with verified crowdsourced information,
has logged 464 police killings for the first five months of 2015. The US
government’s record, which is run by the FBI, counted 461 “justifiable
homicides” by law enforcement in all of 2013, the latest year for which
official data is available.
The vast
majority of deaths recorded – 408 – were caused by gunshot. Of the 27 deaths
that occurred after a Taser was deployed by law enforcement, all but one
involved an unarmed person.
Photograph: Guardian
On Sunday,
Richard Davis, an unarmed black 50-year-old, died after being shocked with a
Taser by police in Rochester, New York. Davis was said by authorities to have
run from his truck towards officers with clenched fists after being told to put
his hands up following a crash. Relatives said he was a veteran of the US
marines.
The Guardian
has also identified 14 officer-involved deaths following altercations in
custody. The total includes Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old resident of Baltimore
whose death from a broken neck sustained in a police van led to protests,
rioting and the indictment of six city police officers.
Another 12
people died following collisions with law enforcement vehicles. The family of
Bernard Moore, who was 62, are calling for the criminal prosecution of an
officer who fatally struck Moore with his squad car in Atlanta, allegedly while
speeding without emergency lights or sirens on.
Photograph: The Guardian
By logging
each law enforcement agency involved in the 464 deaths, the Guardian can also
now report that the Los Angeles police department, the country’s third largest
local police department, has been involved in the highest number of deaths of
any local department. This year, 10 people have died in encounters with LAPD
officers, of which five were unarmed.
The Oklahoma
City police department and the Los Angeles sheriff’s office were both involved
in five deaths, two individuals in both of these jurisdictions being unarmed.
High-profile
cases in Los Angeles, like the death of unarmed Charly “Africa” Keunang, shot
dead by LAPD officers on 1 March in the city’s homeless district of Skid Row,
garnered national attention.
But cases
like those of Sergio Navas, an unarmed Hispanic man shot dead by LAPD officers
in the same month as Keunang, after police said he stole a vehicle and was
chased down, have had less media scrutiny. Navas’s family have launched an
excessive force lawsuit against the LAPD and accused them of a covering up the
circumstances of the 35-year-old’s death.
Photograph: The Guardian
The Guardian
has also monitored whether mental health issues were identified, either by
family members, friends or police following each fatal encounter. In total 26%
of people killed by police exhibited some sort of mental illness, with at least
29 cases identified where the person killed was suicidal.
For example,
Monique Deckard, a black woman with a long history of mental illness, was shot
and killed by police officers in Anaheim, California, after she was accused of
stabbing a woman at a laundromat and allegedly charging at officers. Her family
had called police just hours before the attack, warning that they could not get
in contact with her and that she might be trying to find a gun.
The average
age of a person killed by police in 2015 was 37, but The Counted identifies a
huge diversity in the ages of those killed.
The oldest,
87-year-old Louis Becker, was killed during a collision with a New York state
trooper patrol car in upstate New York. Eighty-two-year-old Richard “Buddy”
Weaver was killed by Oklahoma City police after he allegedly raised a machete
at an officer who opened fire; neighbors later described Weaver as having
schizophrenia.
The three
youngest people identified were all 16 years old. A’donte Washington, a black
American, was shot dead by Millbrook police officers in Arizona on 23 February
during an alleged burglary after the teenager was described as pointing a
weapon at arriving officers. His family have questioned the police narrative,
while the city mayor described the shooting as “110% justified”.
US police killings: where to send videos, tips and more
The Guardian
is counting people killed by police this year, with your help. Send us
information you want to share with the world – and we’ll use it in our
reporting
Read more
A week
earlier, on February 14, Jason Hendrix, a white 16 year old was shot dead in a
gunfight by Baltimore County police after the teenager murdered his mother,
father and sister in Corbin, Kentucky, and drove to Maryland, where he is
reported to have opened fire on an officer after a car chase. Six returned fire
and killed him.
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A month
later, on March 19, black 16-year-old Kendre Alston was shot dead by a deputy
of the Jacksonville sheriff’s office in Florida. Police claimed Alston fled
from a stolen car and brandished a weapon at the pursuing official who then
opened fire. Deneane Campbell, Alston’s mother, claimed in an interview two weeks
later she had not been given any further details by police.
Some
relatives of people killed by police said they had been unaware of the dearth
of publicly available information on police-involved fatalities until their
family became affected. Anthony Scott, whose brother Walter was shot dead in April by police officer Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina,
said the lack of public information “came as a surprise”.
“I was not
informed, I was not aware, I just had an idea these situations were happening
in the United States,” Scott told the Guardian. “The public need to know what
is happening and be made more informed. With them being more informed they
would be able to react differently, in a positive way, to make changes, to make
sure some of these things don’t happen again.”
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