Nearly 1000 People Were Killed by Cops in the United States in 2015
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Global Research
January 05, 2016
Capitalist state repression intensifies amid rising anti-racist demonstrations
Law-enforcement brutal and lethal force is continuing inside the United States.
During 2015, two corporate media estimates, one in the U.S., the Washington Post, and the Guardian, based in Britain, say that approximately 975 people died at the hands of the cops throughout the country.
In the Washington Post on December 26, it reported that the newspaper was seeking to study the number and character of police killings of civilians which they point out is not efficiently and scientifically done by the Justice Department, the highest law-enforcement institution within the government. The Post suggested that the number of nearly 1000 was twice as high as figures supplied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Although it appeared as if the Post study was attempting to minimize the racial nature of police violence in light of the mass demonstrations and urban rebellions which have swept the country during the last year-and-a-half, saying that “the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many U.S. communities — most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men — represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings. Meanwhile, The Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: they were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt.” (Dec. 26)
These are essentially the same arguments and rationales utilized by law-enforcement entities, grand juries, district attorneys’ offices, the courts and quite often the corporate media outlets, which rely on these state structures for explanations involving the use of deadly force.
Nonetheless, in this same Post article is says also that 40 percent of unarmed men killed by the cops are African American, although they only constitute six percent of the overall population in the U.S.
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