A majority of the youngest people killed by police between 2005 and 2012 were Black males, according to statistics reported to the FBI.
“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,” USA Today reported.
The article said of the 17,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies, roughly 750 are contributors to the database that tracks police shootings that result in the death of civilians.
“The killings are self-reported by law enforcement, and not all police departments participate, so the database undercounts the actual number of deaths,” USA Today said.
The investigative report found that there is no audit of the numbers sent to the FBI, and “the statistics on ‘justifiable’ homicides have conflicted with independent measures of fatalities at the hands of police.”
It was noted that the recent shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was Black, “was not an isolated event in American policing.”
According to Geoff Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina who studies police use of deadly force, the limited FBI database underscores a “gaping hole” in the nation’s understanding of the frequency in which police take the lives of Americans.
“There is no national database for this type of information, and that is so crazy,” said Alpert. “We’ve been trying for years, but nobody wanted to fund it and the (police) departments didn’t want it. They were concerned with their image and liability.”
Alpert said he has researched hundreds of police department records and seldom found that someone will admit, “Oh, gosh, we used excessive force.” He said, “In 98.9 percent of the cases, they are stamped as justified and sent along.”
The USA Today report on the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Report (2005-2012) detailing police shooting victims by age reveals:
Black males make up 56 percent of those killed under 20, compared to 41 percent Whites.
Black males make up 42 percent of those killed aged 20 to 29, compared to 54 percent White.
Black males make up 32 percent of those killed aged 30 to 39, compared to 65 percent White.
Black males make up 25 percent of those killed aged 40 to 49, compared to 71 percent White.
Black males make up 22 percent of those killed aged 50 to 59, compared to 76 percent Whites.
Black males make up 16 percent of those killed over age 60, compared to 81 percent White.
According to research, these “numbers are likely undercounted due to missing records.”
Christal Kennerson, whose nephew was shot and killed by an Albuquerque police officer in 2012, told USA Today, “I’ll be the first one to say that they put their life on the line every day, but they’re killing innocent people and kids.”
–By Kevin D. Sawyer
