"More than half of US police killings are mislabelled or not reported, study finds"

[ObsidianJones]

More than half of US police killings are mislabelled or not reported, study finds

Review of 40 years of data shows many fatal police encounters are misclassified, most often when the victim is Black or Hispanic

www.theguardian.com

More than half of all police-involved killings in the US go unreported with the majority of victims being Black, according to a new study published in the Lancet, a peer reviewed journal.

Research at the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that in the US between 1980 and 2018, more than 55% of deaths, over 17,000 in total, from police violence were either misclassified or went unreported.



The study also discovered that Black Americans are more likely than any other group to die from police violence and are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans.


“Recent high-profile police killings of Black people have drawn worldwide attention to this urgent public health crisis, but the magnitude of this problem can’t be fully understood without reliable data,” said Fablina Sharara, a researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine and co-lead author of the study.

To fully understand the underreporting of police-involved killings, researchers compared data from the US National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), a government database for tracking the US population, with non-governmental, open-source databases that track police brutality including the Guardian’s two-year investigation into police violence The Counted. Open-source databases aggregate information from news reports and public record requests, capturing a wider range of fatal police-involved incidents.

“Open-sourced data is a more reliable and comprehensive resource to help inform policies that can prevent police violence and save lives,” said Sharara.

In total, the NVSS database misclassified nearly 60% of all fatal police encounters involving Black Americans. NVSS also missed approximately 50% of all police-involved deaths of Hispanic people, 56% of all police-involved deaths of non-Hispanic white people, and 33% of deaths involving non-Hispanic people across other races.

“Inaccurately reporting or misclassifying these deaths further obscures the larger issue of systemic racism that is embedded in many US institutions, including law enforcement,” Sharara said.

The paper found that men die from police violence at higher rates than women, with 30,600 police-involved deaths recorded among men and 1,420 among women between 1980 and 2019.

Researchers also noted the large conflict of interests inherent in tracking police-involved deaths. Coroners are often embedded within police departments and can be disincentivized from determining that deaths are caused by police violence.

“The same government responsible for this violence is also responsible for reporting on it,” said Sharara.

First and foremost, with certain conservatives members of this forum, I've had a long running argument over the perception of police and the perception of blacks. I was given the argument that Police are just responding to a crisis in the black community, and the stats back that. I often said that we can't trust self reported stats because it's in their best interest to say the best possible thing.

This is the final time I want that argument brought up. This proves my point. And every stat forward must be met with skepticism that must be proven.

To be cheeky, I would suggest that those same people treat the police's stats the same way they would treat national health organizations' facts about certain viruses...

With that out of the way, no, I'm not surprised. No, I'm not shocked. And no, I'm not shocked by my lack of shock. This is literally the reality for almost every black and latino in this country.

This is also why I find "Back the Blue" so damn offensive. This isn't in one district. This is a Nation-wide Phenomenon. And instead of holding the police accountable for their actions, it's a politically better soundbite to just wave a black, white, and blue flag in front of people who have probably felt the victimization of the police's actions.

To drive the point home just a little bit harder, 17,000 is a population bigger than most towns and villages in the United States. So yeah, Back the Blue. They just disappeared a larger than average town population, and people are lining up to thank them for it.

Cue the defense or ignoring this thread.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Just as a reminder for everyone, a Venn diagram depicting the "Work Forces"/"Burn Crosses" correlation:

 

[tstorm823]

For anyone interested in the study that prompted this article: You can read it here

Make of that what you will.

 

[Gordon_4]

And we’re off to the races.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

They just disappeared a larger than average town population, and people are lining up to thank them for it.

But... but I need the police to be enforcers to terrorize black people, because I can't stop being terrified of them!

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I'm hardly an anti-government type, but the sheer fact that agents of the state aren't and have never been required to tell the state when they kill citizens of the state should be a really big fucking tell.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Should "excited delirium" be brought up to compliment these datas I wonder...

How “excited delirium” is misused to justify police brutality

Joshua Budhu et al write that 'excited delirium' is an imprecise, subjectively defined medical term that often winds up being a convenient scapegoat cause of death after a violent confrontation with law enforcement, and becomes a justification for police aggression that is unwarranted.

www.brookings.edu

 

[Eacaraxe]

And we’re off to the races.

I had good personal friends who were shot at, gassed, and severely beaten by a domestic terror organization let off the leash in Louisville, during the Breonna Taylor protests. One or two of them ended up on the terror watchlist from the mere act of protesting, something the details of which I won't be sharing publicly. I could smell the tear gas where I lived -- no small feat considering I live on the other side of the Ohio, miles away, upwind.

Suffice to say that's something I under no circumstance will forget.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I had good personal friends who were shot at, gassed, and severely beaten by a domestic terror organization let off the leash in Louisville, during the Breonna Taylor protests. One or two of them ended up on the terror watchlist from the mere act of protesting, something the details of which I won't be sharing publicly.

Something something land of the free something Constitutional rights something.

 

[Kae]

Yet more evidence that police institutions need to be abolished.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

This shit happens because of police unions and qualified immunity. Get rid of both and cops will suddenly be accountable for their actions. If every time a cop illegally killed someone that cop went bankrupt from civil suits and legal fees I bet there would be a hell of a lot fewer officer involved shootings.

 

[Cicada 5]

I had good personal friends who were shot at, gassed, and severely beaten by a domestic terror organization let off the leash in Louisville, during the Breonna Taylor protests. One or two of them ended up on the terror watchlist from the mere act of protesting, something the details of which I won't be sharing publicly. I could smell the tear gas where I lived -- no small feat considering I live on the other side of the Ohio, miles away, upwind.

Suffice to say that's something I under no circumstance will forget.

I'm sorry to hear what happened to your friends.

 

[Eacaraxe]

This shit happens because of police unions and qualified immunity. Get rid of both and cops will suddenly be accountable for their actions. If every time a cop illegally killed someone that cop went bankrupt from civil suits and legal fees I bet there would be a hell of a lot fewer officer involved shootings.

Honestly, fuck making cops themselves civilly liable for civil rights violations, assaults, and murder. Codify it into law that, committing a criminal act while on duty is automatically considered an aggravating circumstance with mandatory maximum sentencing. And, no automatic protective custody for violent, criminal, cops.

Take legal fees for criminal cops' defenses, and settlement payments, out of police pension funds.

 

[BrawlMan]

Take legal fees for criminal cops' defenses, and settlement payments, out of police pension funds.

Funny enough, I remember someone telling me a few years ago that eventually, the cops in general are going to lose their pensions in the next 5 to 10 years. I find that very surprising and sad. So all that loyalty in the world and they're still getting screwed over in some way or capacity.

 

[Trunkage]

On a side note, did anyone see the Ana Kasperian v Ben Shapiro debate. Specifically when they were discussing systematic racism. Shapiro had some very interesting comments about why there are more African American in prison. I haven't found any clips yet...

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

On a side note, did anyone see the Ana Kasperian v Ben Shapiro debate. Specifically when they were discussing systematic racism. Shapiro had some very interesting comments about why there are more African American in prison. I haven't found any clips yet...

Here's one of the many reasons: For more than twenty years, Federal law punished possession of crack cocaine a hundred times more harshly than possession of powder cocaine. No actual difference between them besides the different forms- but powder cocaine is associated with rich white people, while crack cocaine is associated with poor black people.

 

[ObsidianJones]

Back the Blue no matter what, huh?

 

[AnxietyProne]

Something something land of the free something Constitutional rights something.

Only applies to the right wing, remember?

I gotta admit, I do feel sympathy for cops for having to put up with THIS sort of shit...

 

[ObsidianJones]

I'm severely glad this doesn't have the chance to be labelled a homicide, but it still evenly shows the tactics of Reality Bending that Police try to implement and still get away with it mostly.

Honestly, a lot of the days I walk out and wonder if I'm going to be the next George Floyd event, or Ahmaud Arbery (Fun fact, their accused killers want their confederate license plate stricken from evidence because they are afraid it would prejudice the jury against them... not like what the flag stands for would prejudice the minds of those who wave it against blacks...).

I don't get to fight back, I don't get to plead my case, I don't even get to have an attitude or anything can be perceived as such. I get to just hope I make it out alive. And there's far too many of my fellow members of this forum who know that I'm a good person that are perfectly fine with that reality I must live with. That is exactly why I'm against most forms of conservativism. I wouldn't wish this life on anyone.

 

[AnxietyProne]

That is exactly why I'm against most forms of conservativism. I wouldn't wish this life on anyone.

While my situation isn't nearly as severe as yours, I get it.