Members of a police anti-terrorism team exercise on Thursday, March 13, 2003.
(AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
Mint Press News
Though
Americans commonly believe law enforcement’s role in society is to
protect them and ensure peace and stability within the community, the
sad reality is that police departments are often more focused on enforcing laws,
making arrests and issuing citations.
As a result of this as well as an
increase in militarized policing techniques, Americans are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist, estimates a Washington’s Blog report based on official statistical data.
Though the U.S. government does not have a database
collecting information about the total number of police involved
shootings each year, it’s estimated that between 500 and 1,000 Americans
are killed
by police officers each year. Since 9/11, about 5,000 Americans have
been killed by U.S. police officers, which is almost equivalent to the
number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed in the line of duty in
Iraq.
Because individual police departments are not required to
submit information regarding the use of deadly force by its officers,
some bloggers have taken it upon themselves to aggregate that data.
Wikipedia also has a list of “justifiable homicides” in the U.S., which was created by documenting publicized deaths.
Mike Prysner, one of the local directors of the Los Angeles
chapter for ANSWER — an advocacy group that asks the public to Act Now
to Stop War and End Racism — told Mint Press News earlier this year that the “epidemic” of police harassment and violence is a nationwide issue.
He said groups like ANSWER are trying to hold officers
accountable for abuse of power. “[Police brutality] has been an issue
for a very long time,” Prysner said, explaining that in May, 13 people
were killed in Southern California by police.
As Mint Press News previously reported, each year there are thousands of claims of police misconduct. According to the CATO Institute’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project, in 2010 there were 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct involving 6,613 sworn officers and 6,826 alleged victims.
Most of those allegations of police brutality involved
officers who punched or hit victims with batons, but about one-quarter
of the reported cases involved firearms or stun guns.
Racist policing
A big element in the police killings, Prysner says, is
racism. “A big majority of those killed are Latinos and Black people,”
while the police officers are mostly White, he said. “It’s a badge of
honor to shoot gang members so [the police] go out and shoot people who
look like gang members,” Prysner argued, giving the example of
34-year-old Rigoberto Arceo, who was killed by police on May 11.
According to a report
from the Los Angeles Times, Arceo, who was a biomedical technician at
St. Francis Medical Center, was shot and killed after getting out of his
sister’s van. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department says Arceo
“advanced on the deputy and attempted to take the deputy’s gun.”
However, Arceo’s sister and 53-year-old Armando Garcia — who was
barbecuing in his yard when the incident happened — say that Arceo had
his hands above his head the entire time.
Prysner is not alone in his assertion that race is a major factor in officer-related violence. This past May, a study
from the the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, an anti-racist activist
organization, found that police officers, security guards or
self-appointed vigilantes killed at least 313 Black people in 2012 —
meaning one Black person was killed in the U.S. by law enforcement
roughly every 28 hours.
Prysner said the relationship between police departments
and community members needs to change and that when police shoot an
unarmed person with their arms in the air over their head, the officer
should be punished.
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