Police killed more people in past year than at any time in past decade, database says

Police in the US have reportedly killed more people in the past year than at any time during the past decade, according to a database that tracks police violence.

Activist Samuel Sinyangwe of the organisation Mapping Police Violence tweeted on 2 October that “police killed at least 881 people through September 30, 2022”.

“Police killed more people over the past 9 months than at any other point in the past decade. There have only been 10 days this year [when] police did not kill someone,” he added.

On Tuesday afternoon, the number of people killed by police this year had risen to 889 people, according to the group’s site.

The organisation also stated that Black people made up 24 per cent of those killed by police this year, despite making up 13 per cent of the population.

Mapping Police Violence is an organisation that “publishes the most comprehensive and up-to-date data on police violence in America to support transformative change”. They provide “resources for communities and policymakers interested in changing policing outcomes nationwide,” the website states.

Compared to the same period in 2021, police killed 30 more people from the beginning of this year until 2 October, with Black people most likely to die while interacting with the police.

Between 2013 and 2022, police in Chicago killed Black people at a rate 25 times higher than white people per population. The rate in Minneapolis and Boston was 28 times higher.

While a third of all killings started with an alleged crime, Mapping Police Violence states that most of the killings start when police are performing traffic stops, mental health check-ins, looking into disturbances, or other non-violent offences and where no crime was alleged to have occurred.

A third of people who are killed by police are attempting to flee at the time of their deaths, either on foot, by car, or by other means. Mapping Police Violence says Black and Brown people are likelier to be killed by police as they flee.

According to the organisation, “there is no accountability” for the police killings, with 98.1 per cent of them between 2013 and 2022 having not led to officers facing any charges.

The data recorded by the group show that the deadliest month since 2013 was May 2020, when 121 people were killed by police. Most widely reported, George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police on 25 May 2020.

The month during that period with the least deaths was in February 2013, when 53 people were killed.

New Mexico had the highest rate of police killings per one million residents at 10.5, while Rhode Island had the fewest at 0.8 deaths per one million people.

Ohio State University Economics professor Trevor Logan tweeted that “this pace of police killings in 2022 is astonishing. Police are killing more than 3 people per day, close to 100 people per month”.

The Dean of the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston, Alan Dettlaff, tweeted that “while you’re being distracted with stories of ‘rising crime,’ the police are continuing to murder people. The media just stopped talking about this”.