U.S. Police Have Shot Dead 385 People In Five Months: REPORT
WASHINGTON, May 30 (Reuters) - U.S. police have shot and killed 385
people during the first five months of this year, a rate of more than
two a day, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.
The death
rate is more than twice that tallied by the federal government over the
past decade, a count that officials concede is incomplete, the newspaper
said.
The analysis is based on data the Post is compiling on
every fatal shooting by police in 2015, as well as of every officer
killed by gunfire in the line of duty.
"We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we
don't begin to accurately track this information," said Jim Bueermann,
president of the Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated
to improving law enforcement.
The Post analysis comes as a national debate is raging over the police use of deadly force, especially against minorities.
Federal
Bureau of Investigation records over the past decade show about 400
fatal police shootings a year, or an average of 1.1 deaths a day.
Reporting of shootings by police agencies is voluntary.
But the
Post's analysis indicates the daily death toll for 2015 is close to 2.6
as of Friday. At that pace, police will have shot and killed nearly
1,000 people by the end of the year, the paper said.
The Post's
analysis showed that about half the victims were white, half minority.
Among unarmed victims, two-thirds were black or Hispanic.
Based on
census numbers for the areas where the killings took place, blacks were
killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities.
The
victims ranged in age from 16 to 83. More than 80 percent were armed
with potentially lethal objects, mostly guns. Ninety-two victims were
identified as mentally ill.
Police are authorized to use deadly
force when they fear for their lives or the lives of others. Three of
the 385 fatal shootings have resulted in an officer being charged with a
crime.
Current and former police chiefs and other criminal
justice officials told the Post police must begin to accept
responsibility for the killings. They said that many deaths could be
blamed on poor policing.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
