Twenty-Three People Killed by American Police in the Span of One Week

[noiretextatique]

At least twenty-three people were killed by officers from various United States police departments in the past week. That means about three people died in the custody or at the hands of police every day from September 18-24.
The frequency in which police use force, especially lethal force, would seem to deserve quite a bit of attention, however, it is rarely highlighted by news media. For the most part, it goes ignored.

Only when there was a crisis in Ferguson after a white police officer killed an unarmed black teenager did media examine how often people are killed by police in the US.

The “Killed by Police” Facebook page keeps track of deaths as they occur and, from May 1, 2013, to August 24, 1,450 people have been killed. When calculated, about three people were killed each day.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/09/25/twenty-three-people-killed-by-american-police-in-the-span-of-one-week

i am sure some of these folks were criminals, i am sure some were dangerous...but some of these killings are questionable.

[drray23]

1. so in a year

They kill off the equivalent of my little country town (1230 people). One rural town a year eradicated by the peace officers..

[noiretextatique]

2. yep

as i mentioned, some of these folks were allegedly brandishing weapons or fired shots, but there is one story that really caught my eye. it's the one about the 14yo african-american boy in the abandoned house. according to his brother, someone knocked at the door, they boy opened the door, and a man shot him. the man was a cop. and...i am also suspicious about the african-american woman who supposedly hung herself in a jail cell. that story is eerily familiar.
i went to high school with Ronnie Settles...he was a friend.

Ron Settles (June 12, 1959 – June 2, 1981) was a California State University, Long Beach & Banning High School[citation needed] football player who was arrested by the Signal Hill Police Department in 1981. The morning after his arrest, he was found severely beaten and hanging in his jail cell. A furor erupted afterwards over the nature of his death, as the police said the death was a suicide. No one was prosecuted for Settles' death,[1] but the city of Signal Hill did pay a large settlement to the family.[2]

The case had long-term impacts on the reputation of Signal Hill, although a new police chief took steps to reform the police department.[3] The case was an early high-profile case handled by attorney Johnnie Cochran, who represented the family;[4] one of the policemen implicated in the incident was also represented by another noted civil rights attorney, Stephen Yagman.[2][5]

Settles' death was one of several highly controversial deaths of arrestees in the 1970s and 1980s that changed the way police departments deal with prisoners. Many police departments now videotape jail areas, and any time a police officer or correction officer touches a prisoner in a restraining way, a report is required to be written. These measures are intended to decrease the chances of police brutality in prison cells.[citation needed]

Settles' story was told by Dr. Michael Baden on HBO's series Autopsy.[6] Charles Burnett's 1995 film The Glass Shield was based, in part, on the Settles case.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Settles

[seveneyes]

8. In ONE week, not all weeks

I'm not a cop apologist, only a factoligist.

[drray23]

9. they are on a roll

I wonder if this is a typical week or not. I looked and czn not find definitive references on what the number is per year. Some articles say at least 400 a year by local police, some others say the number is not tracked.

[seveneyes]

10. A better number would be those who did not need to be stopped

Removing the valid force cases would be a start to some meaningful numbers regarding innocents harmed.

[ncjustice80]

19. *None* of those cases were valid.

They have tazers, batons, tear gas, armored trucks, body armor, shields, rubber bullets. Every single case could have been resolved without the police murdering people.

[tblue37]

21. Right, the number is *not* tracked, so the total provided by those rare entities that do try to

come up with a total is probably significantly lower than the actual total, just as actual rape numbers are almost certainly significantly higher than the number of rapes that get reported.

The total of cop killings that I keep seeing is about 400 per year. Figure that number is very much lower than the true number, for various well-known reasons. I am guessing that the real number is probably over 1000, and quite possibly over 1000 by quite a lot.

[noiretextatique]

12. the estimate from the article is @1450 per year

i believe that's the number the poster was referring too.

[daleanime]

26. Please feel free.....

to call yourself anything you want to.

[seveneyes]

29. An ex future leader of the free world

but mostly honest with myself and others.

[Cali_Democrat]

3. Americans are afraid of ISIS?

Americans should be afraid of their own cops.

[noiretextatique]

4. so true

so very sadly true.

[bigwillq]

5. This.

[RKP5637]

6. Yes! This is quite true! n/t

[Live and Learn]

7. +1 nt

[hatrack]

13. BIN-go . . .

The odds of getting killed by ISIS are on the order of being hit by a meteorite.

The odds of getting killed by a cop, though still small, are way, WAY bigger than that.

[whereisjustice]

14. we are fighting our enemy in all the wrong places

[CaptainTruth]

16. I think McCain & Graham are calling for airstrikes.

And I shouldn't need this but I'll put it here ...

[uponit7771]

17. Yeap

[tblue37]

22. Right. But the ugly truth is that for African-Americans especially, and for other minorities to a

lesser degree, this situation is not really new. The only really new aspects to the situation are (1) the fact that cops are now brutalizing and killing the kinds of people they used to leave alone (middle-class whites, even if they are women, children, old people, or the handicapped), and (2) almost everyone has a readily available video camera now--and most people are willing to use their cameras to catch the police in action when they are abusing or killing people.

The accumulation of so much video evidence makes it harder for whites to keep claiming that cops are not abusing and murdering black citizens, and it also forces white people (except for those so intransigent or so blinded by race hatred that they cannot even accept the evidence of their own eyes) to realize that they are not as safe from such abuse as they have always believed themselves to be.

[noiretextatique]

11. kick

[whereisjustice]

15. just some patriotic folks shooting some folks, no biggie, need to move forward, blah, blah, blah

[Blue_In_AK]

18. There was one here in Wasilla a couple weeks ago, just outside this time window.

http://www.adn.com/article/20140918/wasilla-police-identify-officer-who-shot-23-year-old-man

[noiretextatique]

20. i see the police are always exonerated

that has to stop. the violent and trigger-happy cops need to charged and prosecuted. the feds had to in and prosecute cops during the civil rights movement because the local authorities would not. it seems we need a renewed movement.

[tblue37]

23. And the millions of dollars in settlements need to start coming out of the

pockets of the cops themselves and of the departments that harbor these kinds of cops. As long as they have no need to fear consequences, they have no reason to stop what they are doing.

[noiretextatique]

25. +10000

let them pay for their brutality.

[libodem]

24. I believe it may be

Considered better to leave the victim dead than pay the medical bills or face a lawsuit for damages.

Seems to be a lot of emptying the service revolver into the victim. More like a policy than pure rage. And pure fear or rage seems like mental state of these officers. Are they all on 'roids these days?

They need a mandatory drug test after they kill.

[cantbeserious]

27. American LE Is Out Of Control

eom

[drray23]

28. several things need to be done to reverse this

First is training. The us versus them mentality is drilled into them in the police academy. They are told to be assertive (meaning bark orders and dont listen to what the people are saying ) in order to take control. Mind you this goes for any situation often
resulting in escalation rather than peaceful resolve.
Secondly, instead of being trained by the military (that was recently reported on du ) they should look at what the british police does to defuse situations and get people in custody without killing them.

Thirdly, any officer caught in abusing citizens should be fired and prosecuted.
Firing should also be automatic if the city had to settle and pay millions because of a rogue cop.

Most of us would be fired if we made our company lose millions due to negligence on the job.

Finally even in the rare cases an officer was justified in killing somebody they should be reassigned to desk duty. There is no telling what killing somebody however justified can do to you long term and how it would affect the officer subsequently put in a tense situation.

[noiretextatique]

30. Most of us would be fired if we made our company lose millions due to negligence on the job

which is why we need community review boards. police review boards too often rubber-stamp even the most egregious behavior as justified. the police cannot be trusted to police themselves. thanks for your excellent post.

[woo me with science]

31. kick