Study Says Official Count Of Police Killings Is More Than 50% Lower Than The Actual Number

from the but-the-real-numbers-make-us-look-even-worse! dept

In 2019, the FBI claimed to be compiling the first-ever database of police use of force, including killings of citizens by officers. It was, of course, not the first-ever database of police killings. Multiple databases have been created (some abandoned) prior to this self-congratulatory announcement to track killings by police officers.

What this database would have, however, is information on use of force, which most private databases didn't track. Whether or not it actually does contain this info is difficult to assess, since the FBI's effort does not compile these reports in any easily-accessible manner, nor does it provide readable breakdowns of the data -- something it does for other things, like crimes against police officers.

It also does not have the participation of every law enforcement agency in the nation, which prevents the FBI from collecting all relevant information. It's also voluntary, so even participating agencies are free to withhold incident reports, keeping their own official use-of-force/killing numbers lower than what they actually may be.

The problem with underreporting traces back decades, though. The official count of police killings has always been lower than data compiled by non-government databases, which rely almost solely on open-source information like news reports. It would seem the numbers reported by the FBI would be higher, since it theoretically has access to more info, but the FBI's count has repeatedly been lower than outside reporting.

A recent study published by The Lancet says the official numbers are wrong. And they're off by a lot. Utilizing outside databases compiled by private citizens/entities and data obtained from the USA National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), the researchers have reached the conclusion that law enforcement self-reporting has resulted in undercounting the number of killings by officers by thousands over the past four decades.

We found that more than half of all deaths due to police violence that we estimated in the USA from 1980 to 2018 were unreported in the NVSS. Compounding this, we found substantial differences in the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence over time and by racial and ethnic groups within the USA.

According to this study [PDF], the NVSS did not report 55% of deaths attributable to police violence, resulting in an undercount of ~17,000 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers. There are a lot of contributing factors, not the least of which is law enforcement's hesitancy to report or provide data on their own possible wrongdoing.

But there are other contributors. Misclassification of deaths often starts in the coroner's office. Some coroners and forensic examiners work hand-in-hand with local law enforcement, resulting in pressure to define cause of death as something unrelated to force applied by officers. One way to fix this ongoing contributor to underreporting is to protect coroners and examiners from other government agencies.

Coroners and forensic medical experts also propose that to avoid incorrect assignment of cause of death due to pressure from the police, politicians, or the deceased family members, forensic pathologists should work independently from law enforcement. Additionally, forensic pathologists often must investigate and testify in cases of police violence. To ensure that pathologists are free from pressures that could influence these cases, pathologists should be awarded whistleblower protections under the law.

The study also notes there is one proven way to reduce killings by police officers. It involves changing policies and laws.

Evidence suggests that there have been some successful reforms to reduce police violence from 1970 to 1985; 50 cities with populations larger than 250 000 residents halved their fatal police violence from 353 to 172 per year, primarily through banning shooting of non-violent fleeing suspects.

The things that don't work are the surface-level reform efforts cops actually agree to.

However, more recent reform efforts to prevent police violence in the USA, including body cameras, implicit bias training, de-escalation, and diversifying police forces, have all failed to further meaningfully reduce police violence rates.

To meaningfully reduce incidents of police violence, you first have to confront the problem. Bad data that downplays the number of violent acts committed by police officers allows agencies to pretend the problem isn't as bad as critics say it is. It also allows them to minimize their contribution to these deaths by relying on cause of death reports that skew towards law enforcement's narrative, rather than independent conclusions by medical experts. Bogus stats are a luxury we can't afford in this nation, not if we ever hope to return America to a place where the police serve the public, rather than behaving like warlords overseeing a never ending conflict.

Filed Under: fbi, police, police brutality, police killings, tracking

NYPD, Health Department Decide Public Shouldn't Know How Many New Yorkers Are Killed By Cops Every Year

from the undercounting-to-better-serve-the-only-public-that-matters:-police-officers dept

The NYPD has never been the most honest -- or the most transparent -- law enforcement agency. It enjoys the secrecy it has. And it really enjoys the secrecy it grants itself. And it seems to enjoy hiding as much as it can from the public at all times.

Trying to live up to its self-imposed reputation as "New York's Finest" must be exhausting. So much bad news to bury so often. The city has asked for stats from the department but it's not getting honest answers. New York's cops kill far fewer people per capita than almost any other major city in the United States. But they kill far more people than the NYPD is willing to admit, even when directed to share this data with the city's Health Department.

[Former health commissioner] Dr. [Mary] Bassett’s team identified 105 people killed by the police or police activity during the period from 2010 to 2015, more than double the 46 the agency had publicly reported for those years. Of the unreported deaths, 13 were bystanders hit by police bullets or pedestrians killed from vehicle accidents during police activity.

Dr. Bassett passed this information on to Mayor Bill de Blasio shortly after protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer began taking off across the country. There was more bad news appended to the email sent to the Mayor. Not only were there more killings than the NYPD reported, but the numbers seemed to show biased responses by officers.

The team also found deep racial disparities in the deaths. For example, six black New Yorkers and five Hispanic residents who died as a result of encounters with the police during this period were unarmed; no unarmed whites were killed.

Unfortunately, the full report -- containing the official under-counting noted by Dr. Bassett -- was buried by incoming Police Commissioner Demot Shea, who decided this collaboration wasn't worth continuing. Neither does the current head of the Health Department, Oxiris Barbot, who has yet to publish Bassett's findings.

It doesn't look as though the Mayor will be much help in bringing this information to the public or ensuring the NYPD does a better job counting deaths related to police interactions. The NYPD has apparently decided certain people aren't worthy of the "officer-involved killing" label. This includes people who were killed by vehicles while being chased into traffic by officers and others whose paperwork was incomplete when their bodies arrived at the medical examiner.

While Mayor de Blasio promised to rein in the NYPD after several years of being catered to by Mayor Blue Lives Matter himself, Mike Bloomberg, he has done little to curtail the worst aspects of the department after officers and union officials very publicly expressed their displeasure at his supposed lack of support. It appears de Blasio needs the support of cops more than he needs the support of the public.

Going forward, things aren't going to improve. The NYPD will decide how many deaths its officers are involved in and only officially approved numbers will be released. No outside assistance will be accepted and no impartial reflection of the true cost of aggressive policing will make its way into the public's hands.

Filed Under: health department, new york, nypd, police brutality, police killings, transparency

After No-Knock Raid Goes Horribly Wrong, Police Union Boss Steps Up To Threaten PD's Critics

from the garbage-in,-garbage-out-apparently dept

Four Houston police officers were shot -- allegedly by now-dead suspects -- while serving a no-knock warrant on a Houston residence. The no-knock warrant was supposed to make everything safer for the officers, giving them a chance to get a jump on the suspects and prevent the destruction of evidence/officers. But as anyone other than cops seems to comprehend, startling people in their own homes with explosives and kicked-in doors tends to make everything more dangerous for everyone.

Operating on a tip that from someone claiming to have purchased heroin from the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, the Houston PD SWAT team secured a no-knock warrant and kicked in the door roughly five hours later. No heroin was found. Some guns and an apparently small amount of cocaine and marijuana were recovered. According to cops, the 59-year-old Tuttle opened fire on officers and his wife tried to take a shotgun from a downed officer, resulting in her being killed as well. The married couple are now dead, having amassed a combined 21 years of marriage and a single criminal charge -- a misdemeanor bad check charge -- between them before this raid ended their lives.

The cops have vouched for the reliability of their confidential informant despite there being a huge discrepancy between what the CI told them and what was actually found in the house.

According to the affidavit, the informant said he bought the powder from the middle-aged man, who called it “boy,” a street name for heroin. The informant also said that the man carried a gun, and that there was more of the brown powder at the house, “packaged in a large quantity of plastic baggies.” The author of the affidavit wrote that the informant had “proven to be credible and reliable on many prior occasions” and he asked a municipal court judge “to enter the suspected place and premises without first knocking and announcing the presence and purpose of the officers executing the warrant.”

The dead couple cannot provide a narrative, so the one we're stuck with comes from the Houston PD.

“Once the officers breached the door and the gunfire began from the suspects, one of the suspects actually retreated momentarily to the back of the room and then that suspect came back and again engaged the officers in gunfire,” Acevedo said at a Monday evening news conference.

Maybe some footage survived the shootout...

[Chief Acevedo] said none of the officers was wearing a body camera.

It's not that the Houston PD doesn't have cameras. It's just that officers wear them when they want to and activate them only when they want to. It appears no one in the department has stepped up to hold officers accountable for failing to follow policy. So, only one story survives this shooting: the PD's account.

There might have been a second version covering some of the raid, but the PD took care of that as well.

[K]HOU, the CBS affiliate in Houston, reports that the house had no security cameras, although "a house next door to the Tuttles' home does have surveillance video," and "police took that footage for evidence."

As is to be expected, this deadly raid has led to criticism of the police department and its tactics. It started with a CI tip about an illegal substance that wasn't found during the search and ended with four cops wounded and two people with no criminal history shot dead in the home they had lived in for twenty years.

The criticism is well-earned. But the head of the city's police union believes the police have done no wrong -- not in this case and possibly not ever.

Houston Police Department Union president Joe Gamaldi went a step further, calling out people who criticize the police. “We are sick and tired of having targets on our back,” Gamaldi said at a press conference on Monday night outside of the hospital where the injured officers were being treated. (All four survived their injuries.) “We are sick and tired of having dirtbags trying to take our lives when all we’re trying to do is protect this community and protect our families. Enough is enough. If you’re the ones out there spreading the rhetoric that police officers are the enemy, well just know we’ve all got your number now. We’re going to be keeping track on all of y’all, and we’re going to make sure to hold you accountable every time you stir the pot on our police officers.”

This statement says a lot about the mindset of law enforcement. Officers appear to believe that because they do a job few people want to, they shouldn't be criticized for how they do it.

But the statement says something much more worrying about how police officers and their representation respond to criticism. Gamaldi's statement suggests the Houston PD will be keeping tabs on its critics. He's basically saying the government agency employing the people he represents is willing to retaliate against protected speech. That's not something the Houston PD can do (at least not legally) and it's something it shouldn't do, even if some officers feel they might be able to get away with it. If the PD is willing to violate the Constitution when it's publicly criticized, it's probably willing to do it during its more private ventures. Ultimately, this statement says more about the PD than its critics, and what it does say is pretty ugly.

Filed Under: dennis tuttle, houston, houston pd, houston police, joe gamaldi, no knock, no knock raid, police, police killings, rhogena nicholas, swat, warrants