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Across the nation, 173 officers died in the line of duty, up 13 percent from 153 the year before, according to numbers as of Wednesday compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
WE like to think we live in the information age, when daily or even second-by-second statistics on such fare as stock prices and the annual number of homicides are at our fingertips. For all the careful accounting, however, there are two figures Americans don't have: the precise number of people killed by the police, and the number of times police use excessive force.
Despite widespread public interest and a provision in the 1994 Crime Control Act requiring the Attorney General to collect the data and publish an annual report on them, statistics on police shootings and use of nondeadly force continue to be piecemeal products of spotty collection, and are dependent on the cooperation of local police departments. No comprehensive accounting for all of the nation's 17,000 police department exists.
The International Chiefs of Police, a police organization, tried in the 1980's to collect such information, but "the figures were very embarrassing to a lot of police departments," said James Fyfe, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University who is a former New York City police lieutenant. The results, he said, varied wildly. New Orleans had 10 times as many shootings per 100 officers as Newark. Long Beach had twice as many as neighboring Los Angeles, which in turn had three times more than New York.
Some cities did not provide data at all, Professor Fyfe said, but the results, such as they were, showed that "the rates of deadly force are all over the lot," meaning that some cities appear to be much better and some much worse at managing their police forces.
Originally posted by My.mind.is.mine
I know of 2 in the last couple of months here in Atlanta.
Both 19, both unarmed, both fathers, both running, both shot in the back...
Story on Rio police clearing slums
Activists allege favela residents receive worse treatment from the Rio police, who killed one person for every 23 they arrested in 2008 – compared with one for every 37,000 in the US, according to Human Rights Watch. .
From January 2010 through December 2010 the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project recorded 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct that involved 6,613 sworn law enforcement officers and 6,826 alleged victims. 4,861 – Unique reports of police misconduct tracked 6,613 - Number of sworn law enforcement officers involved (354 were agency leaders such as chiefs or sheriffs) 6,826 - Number of alleged victims involved 247 – Number of fatalities associated with tracked reports $346,512,800 – Estimated amount spent on misconduct-related civil judgments and settlements excluding sealed settlements, court costs, and attorney fees.
Phoenix AZ police have been implicated in video for participating in the death of a man in jail despite their apparent attempts to distance themselves from the incident by claiming the altercation that cost the man’s life happened after they transferred custody over to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Dept. This was alleged by a police lieutenant from a different agency who is running for Maricopa County Sheriff in an op-ed he wrote after reviewing the video, shown above. In that video an officer alleged to be a Phoenix PD cop puts the victim in a choke hold without any apparent threat from that victim, at least not any physically visible threat.
Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Story on Rio police clearing slums
Activists allege favela residents receive worse treatment from the Rio police, who killed one person for every 23 they arrested in 2008 – compared with one for every 37,000 in the US, according to Human Rights Watch. .
Apprently somone keeps track. It's always interesting to see the stats. I knew Rio had issues but I almost choked on that ratio. Wow.... Talk about a real bad place to protest or do much of anything for a cop to notice. The U.S. seems downright warm and fuzzy compared to some places. How scary is that?
That link seems a little odd about loading. The story is also center column, about mid-range on Drudge at the moment and that links straight in with no problems. Sorry if they are odd about links.
edit on 28-12-2011 by Wrabbit2000 because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by InfoKartel
reply to post by Wrabbit2000
Are you intentionally trying to steer attention away from what this topic is about?
Are you seriously comparing the situation in the favelas to the US?
I've been calling for attention to this since the US war mongers like to point out how other countries are so bad they need invading. Thanks OP.
Prison-policy experts expect inmate populations in 10 states to have increased by 25% or more between 2006 and 2011, according to a report by the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts.
Private prisons housed 7.4% of the country's 1.59 million incarcerated adults in federal and state prisons as of the middle of 2007, up from 1.57 million in 2006, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a crime-data-gathering arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Corrections Corp., the largest private-prison operator in the U.S., with 64 facilities, has built two prisons this year and expanded nine facilities, and it plans to finish two more in 2009. The Nashville, Tenn., company put 1,680 new prison beds into service in its third quarter, helping boost net income 14% to $37.9 million. "There is going to be a larger opportunity for us in the future," said Damon Hininger, Corrections Corp.'s president and chief operations officer, in a recent interview.
Deaths in police custody since 1998: 333; officers convicted: none
IPCC study finds failure in care of vulnerable prisoners – and says juries are unwilling to convict police officers
www.msnbc.msn.com...
Study: 2,002 died in police custody over 3 years
— More than 2,000 criminal suspects died in police custody over a three-year period, half of them killed by officers as they scuffled or attempted to flee, the government said Thursday.
The study by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics is the first nationwide compilation of the reasons behind arrest-related deaths in the wake of high-profile police assaults or killings involving Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo in New York in the late 1990s.
The review found 55 percent of the 2,002 arrest-related deaths from 2003 through 2005 were due to homicide by state and local law enforcement officers. Alcohol and drug intoxication caused 13 percent of the deaths, followed by suicides at 12 percent, accidental injury at 7 percent and illness or natural causes at 6 percent. The causes for the deaths of the remaining 7 percent were unknown.
The highly populated states of California, Texas and Florida led the pack for both police killings and overall arrest-related deaths. Georgia, Maryland and Montana were not included in the study because they did not submit data.
Investigator: These are unusual cases
The study finds that 77 percent of those who died in custody were men between the ages of 18 and 44. Approximately 44 percent were white; 32 percent black; and 20 percent Hispanic.
“Keep in mind we have 2,000 deaths out of almost 40 million arrests over three years, so that tells you by their nature they are very unusual cases,” said Christopher J. Mumola, who wrote the study
Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux
My apologies if the source I linked to after following that link via Drudge turns out to have quoted non-existent data in a specific database like that. Err.... It seemed to have been valid enough and wouldn't strike me as being made up..particularly in the context I'd found it in. Oh well... my bad if that is what happened.
Police May Scrap Entrance Exam: Report
This story says that the average I.Q. for a cop is 104, if that is accurate it means there are thousands of police with I.Q.’s in the 80-100 range. Is it any surprise then that incidents of police brutality and abuses upon citizens (as well as the Constitution) are now so frequent?
Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took an exam to join the New London police, in Connecticut, in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125.
But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.
There recently appeared a chart that indicated an average intelligence quote per state that claims the states with people of lower average IQ chose Bush. The states with higher average IQs leaned toward Kerry. It claimed that the average IQ in America is 98, far lower than I realized.