There is no accurate data about police homicides in the US, with only about 5 per cent of the 17,000 police departments in the country voluntarily reporting such data to the US Justice Department on a regular basis. These reports show that at least 12,000 people died at the hands of police between 1980 and 2012: the actual number is almost certainly far higher. An analysis of 1,217 police homicides between 2010 and 2012 by the ‘journalism in the public interest’ group ProPublica reveals that black males, many of them children, were twenty-one times more likely to be killed by the police than their white counterparts. See Deadly Force, in Black and White: a ProPublica analysis of killings by police shows outsize risk for young black males, by GabrielsonRyanJonesRyann GrochowskiSagaraEric (10October2015).
2.
A notable exception was the indictment in early 2015 of police officer Peter Liang for killing Akai Gurley in the stairwell of his housing complex. Another sign that protest activity is having an impact occurred in April 2015, when murder charges were immediately brought against Michael Slager, a South Carolina police officer, after a video surfaced showing him shooting Walter Scott eight times in the back from a distance and then appearing to plant his Taser beside the dead body. Scott had been stopped because his car had a broken tail light. The unarmed 50-year-old fled from the officer because he reportedly feared being arrested for not paying child support.
3.
Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, by the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (4March2015).
