Many will not be surprised by the information discovered in a new police, research study on the Los Angeles police department. It was discovered the LAPD averaged one kill per week over the past 14 years. As suspected, most of these kills are young men of color.
This is a rare peek into the world, actions and data of any police force. The reason being, most of the police departments in this country do not record this type of information and definitely don’t share that data with the general public or research studies.
The report, titled “Don’t Shoot to Kill,” examines homicide data from the Los Angeles County coroner’s department and incorporates details from numerous media reports on specific incidents. Between Jan. 1, 2000 and August 31, 2014, the report found, law enforcement officers in Los Angeles County used lethal force resulting in the deaths of at least 589 people. That’s almost one death a week, for nearly 14 years.
“If the killing of community residents is one measure of police-community relations,” the report reads, “then law enforcement’s fear, distrust and/or aggressive treatment of people –- especially youth and people of color –- have not improved, and may have increased.”
This information would not surprise many people in the black community, but as you can imagine many others are shocked by this information. The data in the report is unsettling and verifies what the black community has been saying for quite some time now. Young black men are being attacked.
The report found that of the 314 people killed between 2007 and 2014, 97 percent were male, a combined 82 percent were black or Latino and 52 percent were under age 30.
Source: Huffington Post
Many wonder what the data would look like if the rest of the country’s police data were kept and analyzed, as the information shared here gives credit to the widely supported notion that young black and brown men are hunted by the police in this country.
What are your thoughts on this data and findings of the LAPD killing an average of one person per week?
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