The number of people killed by law enforcement officers in the US is on the rise.
TRUE – Following the latest killings of unarmed African- American citizens, the most emblematic being Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the topic of citizens killed by the police in the US is once again at the forefront of political debate.
According to the latest partial data from the FBI, from 2009 to 2013, the number of homicides committed annually by on-duty law enforcement officers increased consistently from 414 to 461 with the sole exception of 2010 when they dropped to 397. Many experts say, however, that these estimates are too conservative and that the more realistic number of victims is approximately 1,100 per year — or three a day.
One of the most noted hubs of analysis and aggregation of information on officerinvolved homicides is the website Fatal Encounters (founded by Brian Burghart, editor of the weekly Reno News and Review), which is building a public database, by state, of all the citizens killed by the police. From 2013 to the early months of 2015, the greatest number of such killings occurred in California (323), followed by Florida (188), Texas (165) and, in fourth place, Arizona (93), which has a decidedly smaller population than the other three states.
The job of a police officer is increasingly more dangerous in the US
FALSE – According to the latest available data from the FBI, 27 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2013, the lowest number in the last 50 years. Considering the percentage ratio of slain officers to officers in active service, 2013 was most likely the safest year of the past century. The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has been on the decline since the mid-1990s, parallel to the registered drop in the most serious felonies over the same period.
The use of special police forces has spiked even for common felonies
TRUE – The Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) units of the US police force — originally established for high-risk situations such as kidnappings, shootings and hostage rescue — were used on approximately 3,000 occasions in 1980. Today, they are deployed around 50,000 times a year. That estimate comes from a study by professor Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University that reveals that in 2007 over 80% of police departments in cities with a population between 25,000 and 50,000 had SWAT teams, compared to just 20% in the mid-1980s. The use of special forces has spiked despite the drop in violent crimes. In his book Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko, a reporter for theWashington Post, argues that American police officers too often resemble soldiers and are deployed inappropriately in low-risk operations.
There is a race gap in America between the police and the population
TRUE – There are hundreds of police departments in the US in which the percentage of white officers is more than 30 points higher than the communities in which they work. According to the most recent available data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in 2007 minorities comprised approximately one-fourth of all police forces. Working from the BJS data, The New York Times recently published a list of the metropolitan areas with the greatest difference in percentage points between white officers and white residents which included Baltimore, Charleston, St. Louis, Cleveland, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Boston, Houston, San Francisco and Washington D.C.
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