US police shootings: How many die each year? .. FEWER than '80s ..
18 July 2016
Getty Images
On Sunday morning, three police officers were shot dead in Baton Rouge. This attack came just 10 days after five police officers were killed in Dallas. Both events were revenge attacks for the killing of young black men by police.
The bloodshed has shocked the US, leading President Barack Obama to call for calm. But how many police officers are killed in the US in a normal year? And how many people are killed by police?
Police killed
"There's a widespread perception in the American public, and particularly within law enforcement, that officers are more threatened, more endangered, more often assaulted, and more often killed than they have been historically," says Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of Southern Carolina and former policeman.
"I think it's a very strong perception. People truly believe it. But factually, looking at the numbers, it's not accurate," he says.
FBI data on police officers "feloniously killed" - killed as a result of a criminal act - indicates that the numbers have been falling, he says.
Looking at the 10 years from 2006 to 2015 the annual average number of police deaths was 49.6, Stoughton says, which he notes is "down significantly from the high".
[...]
Killed by police
Official data on the number of people killed by the police turns out to be remarkably unreliable.
"We can't have an informed discussion, because we don't have data," FBI Director James Comey said in the House of Representatives in October.
So police shootings are way down over Obama's watch yet we see this type of conservative revisionist bullshit that has to be continuously be exposed as false .. this kind of rubbish
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.