I saw a white man with a gun. I heard a policeman saying, "Place the weapon down on the ground, ple

Here's What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men

In the week since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, initial autopsy findings, police reports, and eyewitness accounts have begun to provide some insights into the circumstances of his death. But plenty of questions remain unanswered, not the least of them: Where is Officer Darren Wilson, and what's likely to happen to him?

Wilson, who was put on administrative leave after killing Brown, reportedly left home with his family a few days before his name was made public. A fundraising campaign launched on August 17 has already raised more than $10,000 to cover the financial needs of Wilson's family, "including legal fees." (The campaign has since increased its goal to $100,000.)

It remains to be seen whether Wilson will face criminal charges, but a limited review of similar killings by police suggests that the officers more often than not walk away without an indictment, and are very rarely convicted. Delores Jones-Brown, a law professor and director of the Center on Race, Crime, and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, looked at 21 publicized cases from 1994 through 2009 in which a police officer killed an unarmed black person. Of those, only seven cases resulted in an indictment—for criminally negligent homicide, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, or violation of civil rights—and only three officers were found guilty.

Let's take a closer look at five specific cases in which an unarmed black man was killed by officers while allegedly fleeing or resisting in some fashion.

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In human behavior, denialism is exhibited by individuals choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid dealing with an uncomfortable truth.[1] Author Paul O'Shea remarks, "[It] is the refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality. It is an essentially irrational action that withholds validation of a historical experience or event".[2]
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Individuals or groups who reject propositions on which a scientific or scholarly consensus exists can engage in denialism when they use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none.[5] Rick Stoff quoted Chris Hoofnagle—a senior staff attorney at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic and a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the UC Berkeley School of Law—as follows:

Then there are those who engage in denialist tactics because they are protecting some "overvalued idea" which is critical to their identity. Since legitimate dialogue is not a valid option for those who are interested in protecting bigoted or unreasonable ideas from scientific facts, their only recourse is to use these types of rhetorical tactics.[23]
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WASHINGTON — Nearly two times a week in the United States, a white police officer killed a black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012, according to the most recent accounts of justifiable homicide reported to the FBI.

On average, there were 96 such incidents among at least 400 police killings each year that were reported to the FBI by local police. The numbers appear to show that the shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., last Saturday was not an isolated event in American policing.

The reports show that 18% of the blacks killed during those seven years were under age 21, compared to 8.7% of whites. The victim in Ferguson was 18-year-old Michael Brown. Police have yet to identify the officer who shot him; witnesses have said the officer was white.

I understand from psychology that black-or-white thinking is a characteristic of an adolescent stage of emotional development that impairs reasoning. I'm not against SWAT teams themselves, I'm against using them to establish a de facto police state in which citizens' constitutioinal rights are ignored. Look at the numbers I posted above.

New ACLU report

SWAT tactics are disproportionately used on people of color.

Just under 80 percent were to serve a search warrant

In over half those raids, the police failed to find any sort of weapon, the presence of which was cited as the reason for the violent tactics.

The geographic diversity of these tragedies suggest that the problem is not centralized to one area of the country, but rather a widespread issue of concern. In 2007, a joint effort by ColorLines and the Chicago Reporter examined police shootings in the 10 largest cities in the U.S., and in every city, African Americans comprised a disproportionately large percentage of those killed.

The cities with the greatest racial disparity in these shootings were New York, San Diego, and Las Vegas — in each of these cities, the percentage of black people killed was at least twice that of their percentage of the city’s population. This means that if these statistics remained constant in 2010, when the percentage of black people in New York City was 25 percent, a whopping 50 percent of those killed in police shootings would have been of African American descent.

the number of people murdered by police

murdered by a cop

Americans are murdered by police every year

This is our discussion in a nutshell:

You: "I have data".

Me: "What is your data?"

You: "Just stuff on the Internet and what I saw on television. I haven't experienced it myself, but my emotions feel real, so it must be real."

Me: "So, your data is based on sources... on the internet, which is a place notorious for the illusion of knowledge to be spread globally?"

You: "No, it's true because the data says so!"

Me: "And how does the data say so?"

You: "Well, the numbers say X, Y and Z, so I'm just assuming how I interpret the numbers is the same X, Y and Z."

Me: "So you're telling me that all of this exists outside of the internet and television, despite my argument that nobody on the news is talking about police brutality; children at school know nobody who has suffered from police brutality; it's always shown via the media, which is notorious for its lies, hyperbole, bias and hypocrisy, therefore even after all of this has been stated, you assume that "data", that you call data, is at all remotely sensible to the situation you claim, while acknowledging the reality we live in does not match said claims?"

You: "Data, therefore militant violence".

Me: "I could pull a graph about anything, racism, sexism, religions, ANYTHING, and support a cause based entirely on misrepresented data, so what then is left of your data?"

You: "But muh data!"

Example of a black man having his constitutional rights forcefully violated:

Let's take a closer look at five specific cases in which an unarmed black man was killed by officers while allegedly fleeing or resisting in some fashion.

Murdered? WHAT TYPE OF MURDER

Justifiable I would guess...if you are going to use "DATA" lets get specific here why dont we. Or wouldnt that help your position?

Cherry picking data that supports one's underlying contention can be problematic.

I did a Google search of "number of innocent people killed by police" and... The alternative is to believe that in addition to the 400 to 500 "justifiable" murders by police, there are another 500 which the DOJ believes are "unjustified." How would USA Today miss the fact that the FBI has records of 900 police killings a year, of which more are unjustified than justified? The answer is they wouldn't .

...The reporter wishes to suggest that it is because of racism in police departments, and it may be, but considering that there are numerous respected sources that indicate that African-Americans are also over represented in the committing of crimes (and by at least 10%), the suggestion that a disproportionate number of blacks are being killed by police because of racism, requires a belief that a disproportionate number of blacks are being arrested and convicted for crimes because of racism.

So the fact that blacks are over represented in the number of police killings and the number of crimes committed is of concern and should be seriously regarded, but to chalk it up strictly to racism is a big mistake. First of all it's clearly not due entirely to racism. There is almost never a single cause of any sociological dynamic. Secondly, acknowledging that racism is a cause is fine, but how does it really help to address the problem? There is no magic answer to racism in America, no way to enforce a demand that anyone and everyone who harbors racist thoughts cease and desist immediately. It is a problem that has overtime faded in intensity and will continue to do so, and like a lot of shifts in public thinking it has passed the tipping point of change and the process is moving much more rapidly now than ever before. The election of a black president did not signal the end of racism in this country but it was a significant sign that virulent racism is a way of thinking by a small and continuously shrinking minority. The change has been affected, in large part, to the attention given to the problem and so whether or not it continues to have a positive effect, the people most concerned with the problem are going to continue the technique. Whether or not this technique has or can reach a point of diminishing returns where it might actually exacerbate the problem is the topic of another discussion.

In any case, the solution for the problem addressed by USA Today cannot simply be to cry racism. Other steps need to be taken and many of them by the black community at large.

Of course I've moved away from the topic at hand, but to return to it I would point out that within the article you posted is a link to another article, the subject of which was the irrational fear of terrorism. The author of that article was using the police killings statistics to point out that, statistically, you have as much chance of being killed by a cop as you do by a terrorist. This is to say not very much.

While some of the 400 police killings per year probably are "unjustified," it would be ridiculous to assume they all are, but even if we do, the number is statistically insignificant. Clearly there shouldn't even be one unjustified killing by police, but that is an impossible goal. There will always be some, but based on these numbers alone, it doesn't appear to be the terrible problem some are suggesting.

Indeed. Thing is, when I google anything related to the topic, I get innundated with articles and stats like the ones I've been posting, and not much of anything by experts to the contrary. The data points seem to be clustering around the negative.

Autopsy Report says All Shots were in the Back of Man Gunned Down for “Attacking” Police
“Those stupid cops thought they had to murder over a toy. This is my baby. This is my family. And they ruined my family.”
Darrien Hunt, 22, was gunned down by Utah’s Saratoga Springs Police on Wednesday for allegedly lunging at police officers with a sword.

Problem is, the sword was a toy, witnesses accounts entirely contradict the official story, and a new independent autopsy conducted at the request of the family has shown that all bullets entered him from behind.

“This is consistent with statements made by witnesses on the scene, who report that Darrien was shot to death while running away from police. It would appear difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile these facts with a story that Darrien was lunging toward the officers when he was shot.” Randall Edwards, an attorney for the family of Darrien Hunt stated in a press release Saturday evening.
The young man was outside a convenience store with his souvenir sword in a holder on his back when police were called over a “suspicious person”.

“When the officers made contact with Mr. Hunt, he brandished the sword and lunged toward the officers with the sword, at which time Mr. Hunt was shot. There is currently no indication that race played any role in the confrontation between Mr. Hunt and the police officers.” Utah County Chief Deputy Attorney Tim Taylor stated in his release earlier on Saturday, AP reported.
Kind of hard to lunge at someone with your back to them, isn’t it?

Hunt was bi-racial with a white mother and a black father, and his mother is adamant that race played a role in her sons death.

“I’m in Saratoga Springs, cause it’s a safe little community and they killed him. They killed my son because he’s black. No white boy with a little sword would they shoot while he’s running away,” an emotional Susan Hunt told the Deseret News on Friday.
In a since removed Facebook post by the department, reported on by the LA Times, the author wrote:

“Everyone should remember that the news outlets have ratings they need to gain. They don’t report facts. They use innuendo, opinion and rumor and then report it as fact, the same thing happens here on FB and other social media. The real facts are being determined by an independent investigation, and not in a rushed or haphazard manner. … There is no coverup and there is no corruption.”
Autopsy reports provide us with facts. One fact is that Hunt was shot, repeatedly, in the back. The police statement reported he was lunging at the officers when he was shot. Who are the ones not reporting facts, again?

Hunt described her son as a boy in a man’s body who loved everybody and was deeply concerned about travesties in other parts of the world, particularly Africa, the Deseret News also reported.