What you don't know about police shootings in America.
Black lives matter. This is the battle-cry heard throughout the country, most recently at the riots in Charlotte, NC. I'm sure we remember the Ferguson, MO incident, in August of 2014, when riots broke out after an officer of the law shot and killed Michael Brown.
These were unnecessary killings by police officers, and they were uncalled for and wrong. Plain and simple. And I am not disputing for one second that black lives matter, because they certainly do. I'm simply adding to it that there is a whole nation of other races-Hispanic/Latino, Asian, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and, yes, white people that live in the same country, with the same law enforcement problems, and they are dying at the hands of the men in blue, too.
The difference?
These cases aren't making national headlines. In fact, they are getting overlooked altogether, allowing the media to run wild with stories of "racial discrimination" by law officials, when the real problem is the use of lethal force by police officers toward civilians, and the intentional lack of media involvement with similar cases.
While the riots in Ferguson raged on, far away in Salt Lake City, UT on August 11 (just 2 days after Michael Brown's tragic death) 20-year old Dillon Taylor, along with his brother and cousin, walked out of a convenience store and faced the same fate as Brown. Wearing headphones, listening to music, minding his own business, and not breaking a single law, he fails to stop walking when an officer (who is behind him) orders him to stop.
Video footage from Officer Cruz’s body cam released of the incident (seen below) shows that Taylor is walking with his hands holding his sagging pants, unaware that Officer Cruz is speaking to him. Three seconds later, the officer fires shots, shooting Taylor. Already near death, the officer asks for Taylor's hands, and handcuffs him, while his brother and cousin are heard screaming in the background.
After rolling Taylor over and realizing that he was, in fact, unarmed, he continues rolling him over, still handcuffed and bleeding, obviously in need of medical attention. Taylor looks as though he is dead as the officer tries to get him to talk, and still hasn't removed the handcuffs a little over two minutes after shooting him. Another two minutes later, approximately four minutes after the shot, Officer Cruz is rummaging through the victim's pockets, and not making any attempt to provide first aid of any kind. In fact, no first aid is administered until about six and a half minutes after the shot is fired, when paramedics finally arrive on scene, at approximately 7:00 into the footage.
Keep in mind that this happened only two days after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, yet this case was not making national headlines.
In fact, other than a brief statement in the news, it was barely covered. It certainly did not get the attention that the Michael Brown case was receiving. Why, you ask? Probably because Dillon Taylor was white & Hispanic, and had very light skin. Reporting his shooting amidst the chaos in Ferguson would have rattled the idea that all police shootings were racial issues, and taken the focus away from race.
You would think that would be a welcomed effect, but, obviously, it wasn't.
And still isn't.
This is just one example of many other cases that involved fatal shootings by police officers that did not see the attention that the killings of black Americans have received.
Why aren't ALL of these stories getting attention? And why are we not recognizing the problem is with police, in general, shooting civilians?
It's even more concerning when you find out about civil rights activist groups, like Project Islamic Hope, the National Action Network and the L.A. Urban Policy Roundtable who have recently been called together by Project Islamic Hope founder Najee Ali to protest a recent shooting in Castaic, CA of an unarmed homeless man.
These activists, who are mostly black, are calling on state Attorney General Kamala Harris to being an investigation of the shooting. The victim was 51 year old Michael Bowers, a white man.
Obviously, the media has failed to actively report on this particular protest.
With this incident reported to journalists with sites such as countercurrentnews.com on September 24, 2016, it leaves readers wondering why the media chose to overlook what would seem to be an extremely important story of activists acting in the manner that we should be acting, by responding to a tragedy regardless of the race of the victim.
Najee Ali is quoted as saying "“We can’t only be advocates when black people are killed by police unjustly,” (LA WEEKLY).
By the media focusing the attention of viewers on the race of the victims of police shootings, particularly black Americans, it keeps the public's attention away from the bigger issue at hand. Trained and sworn police officers are murdering civilians at a staggering rate in this country. Citizens of all races, many of whom were unarmed. Officers of the law are starting to receive military grade weapons and vehicles.
At the rate officers use the "I feared for my life" excuse in these fatal shootings, doesn't it seem disturbing to arm them with even more powerful weapons? And how often are these officers in fear for their lives shooting at suspects who are running away?
Even worse, there continues to be no accountability for the officers involved.
There should be a standard guideline for punishment in these shootings that states that any officer of the law who shoots a suspect in the back side of his body, who does not possess a firearm that has been fired during the pursuit, will automatically be considered at fault by the precinct, and placed on unpaid leave, and arrested. I'm not saying they are automatically guilty in the court of law, just considered initially at fault by the employer. It seems unjust to receive administrative leave when a body cam shows a suspect shot in the back, and the officer sitting by his body more concerned about checking his pockets than administering any assistance.
Last year, the total number of deaths of civilians at the hands of law enforcement was over 1,000.
Just in the past 9 months making up this year, 793 civilians were shot and killed by police officers, according to The Guardian. That is a staggering number. Depending on where you actually get the statistics, though, that number can be as high as the report from Killed By Police, at 844 for the year. The end results for last year are the same, with The Guardian’s database of police killings giving a grand total for the year of 1,134 and Killed By Police a striking 1,199.
If these numbers seem high to you, that is probably because they are.
In comparison to other countries, our police force is responsible for more deaths in days than they are in year. In the last 24 years, England and Wales have only had 54 deaths from police officers who were forced to open fire on a suspect. The United States had 59 in the first 24 days of the year 2015. Iceland has had only one fatal shooting in the entire 71 years of the nation’s existence.
Yes, there is a population difference.
Especially comparing Iceland to the United States. Iceland has a small population of only 323,764 occupants, while the U.S. has 316.1 million, and England and Wales have 56.9 million. For a more fair comparison, the country of Canada has 35.2 million people, and the State of California has 38.8 million. In Canada, police fatally shoot about 25 people a year, while California had 72 fatal shootings just last year! To make it a little more relatable, I will post the number of people fatally shot by police per million in the areas mentioned, so that you can better see if there are actually more deaths per million people, which gives a more fair comparison, especially since the population is so much higher in the US than it is anywhere else.
~Canada : 0.71 per million/per year
~Australia : 4.06 per million/from 1992 to 2011 (19 years) about 4 fatal shots each year (0.216 per million/est for 1 year)
~Germany : 0.19 per million/ in just 2 years 2010 & 2011 (0.093 per million for 1 year)
~United States : 3.79 per million/in just 1 year (2015)
~Finland : 1.1 per million/since 2013 (almost 3 years) (for only 1 year, estimated at 0.370 per million)
The US far surpasses other countries in the number of fatalities that occur at the hands of the police-the law enforcement officials who are trained, and appointed to protect us.
There is obviously an issue with these officials. Either it is in the hiring process, the training process, or in the overall lack of repercussions for officers who pull the trigger, ending a life.
What we need to be concerned about is the why a life had to be taken.
There needs to be discipline issued for inappropriate behaviors and wrongdoings, and jail sentences when laws are broken, even stiffer jail sentences than civilians who are not taught to know every law in the book, nor do they get to attend special training to prepare them for how to handle a potentially dangerous situation. Police need to be held accountable for their actions.
Period.
The violence from police toward civilians needs to be taken seriously, and something needs to be done.