Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Government Won’t Track Police Killings, So This 24-Year-Old Took the Lead
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/04/16/mapping-police-violence-fills-database-blanks-left-government?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2015-04-16There is no comprehensive national database of police killings. As a data scientist and activist, Sinyangwe wondered how advocates and policy makers could engage in any sort of meaningful conversation without those basic facts. On top of professional curiosity, Browns death hit home for Sinyangwe, who kicked around soccer balls growing up in the Florida neighborhood where Trayvon Martin was killed by gunfire.
As a young black man, I felt unsafe, Sinyangwe told TakePart. This was happening everywherenot just in Ferguson. Yet we didnt really have the data to show how widespread this issue was, and how black people in particular are being targeted by police violence.
Sinyangwe turned to the numbers that did exist. As a policy analyst at PolicyLink in Oakland, California, a research institute that works to advance economic and social justice, he is no stranger to data sets. He started with deaths tracked by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI but found that they significantly undercounted the victims, excluded location, and didnt always include race. He overlaid the two data sets and then turned to crowdsourced databases created by journalists and advocates who were disturbed by the lack of data collected by the government, such as Fatal Encounters and Killed by Police. While existing sites offered a richer variety of information than government sources, they didnt encompass as many incidents as Sinyangwe hoped to track, and some of the sites werent coded by race.
So he and fellow activists DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, whom he met on Twitter, took on the task of sifting through the combined records to recheck and code every entry. After a few months, Mapping Police Violence was born. The project covers 90 percent of the universe of police killings according to the best research available out there, Sinyangwe said, including whether or not the victim was armed or unarmed. Last year, the project found, 304 black people were killed by the police; 101 of them were unarmed.
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
4 replies, 734 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (18)
ReplyReply to this post
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
The Government Won’t Track Police Killings, So This 24-Year-Old Took the Lead (Original Post)
eridani
Apr 2015
OP
Suich
(10,642 posts)1. Excellent! It's about time!
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)3. If the government truly cared
There would be little need for someone to assemble such data, it would be common knowledge supplied to newspapers, daily.
The government also tells us nukes are safe.
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)4. Lack of data that you would realistically expect to
be available shows care that it not be there.