On Tuesday, three officers involved in the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald were indicted on three felony counts: conspiracy, official misconduct, and obstruction of justice. None of the officers pulled the trigger that killed McDonald on October 20, 2014 in Chicago’s South Side. Instead, they are accused of intentionally shielding the man who is charged with McDonald’s murder, Officer Jason Van Dyke.

According to the indictment, Detective David March and patrol officers Joseph Walsh and Thomas Gaffney provided a misleading report after the shooting. Detailing the events that led Van Dyke to shoot and kill McDonald, the officers said the teenager wielded a knife and was aggressively approaching the officers, slashing his blade in their direction.

Three current or former Chicago police officers indicted in Laquan McDonald case https://t.co/fom5AeCmki pic.twitter.com/NKwFTBzbOu

— CNN (@CNN) June 27, 2017

But about a year after the shooting, in November 2015, the Chicago Police Department released dashcam footage that contradicted the officers’ report. In the video, McDonald appears to be holding a knife, but is clearly staggering away from the officers. Shots ring out and McDonald falls to the pavement, as Van Dyke continues to fire his weapon. In all, 16 shots were fired. The video, which sparked massive protests across Chicago, ultimately led to the dismissal of Police Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy.

“These defendants lied about what occurred during a police-involved shooting in order to prevent independent criminal investigators from learning the truth,” said Patricia Brown Holmes, the special prosecutor who announced the charges on Tuesday.

The indictment said that the three men were aware that a “public airing” of the shooting and the video “would inexorably lead to a thorough criminal investigation by an independent body and likely criminal charges.” The charges also said March, a detective with over three decades of experience, “failed to locate, identify, and preserve physical evidence” of the crime, “including video and photographic evidence.”

The three officers also allegedly conspired together to avoid interviewing three witnesses that would have conflicted with Van Dyke’s account of his encounter with McDonald. Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder in 2015; he pleaded not guilty, and there is no trial date set at this point. March, Walsh, and Gaffney are scheduled to be arraigned on July 10. If convicted, they could face over ten years in prison and tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

In the Obama Administration’s last months in office, officials conducted an investigation into the CPD. The findings were announced just days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The Justice Department found a pattern of racial discrimination within the CPD, and said the department “engages in a pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Chicago Officers Indicted on Three Felony Counts in Laquan McDonald Murder appeared first on Law Street.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law on Thursday that would fine state law enforcement agencies up to $1,000 a day for not reporting officer-involved shootings in a timely manner.

The law, which will officially be enacted in September, was created with the intention of strengthening a current Texas law–passed in 2015–that requires departments to report to the attorney general’s office any time an officer firing their gun results in injury or death.

Gathering data on police shootings has been an issue for the state, whether it’s been through misrepresentation or refusal to comply. A Texas Tribune investigation was only able to gather data on police shootings between 2010 and 2015 from 36 cities that had 100,000 or more residents, totaling less than half of the state’s population. While some precincts were more than willing to put the information on their website, others fought public information requests, gave heavily redacted records, or said they did not keep track of police shootings. Corpus Christi and Pasadena, for example, did not specifically track officer-involved shootings.

Even after the 2015 law was enacted, some departments decided to take their time in filing their reports and reported their data to the state months after the incident had actually occurred. The late responders typically only filed their reports after state publications pointed out that which departments had been slacking.

State Rep. Eric Johnson, the author of the new bill, said that this law will help curtail the inconsistent reporting and provide the state with the data it needs to analyze the issue of police shootings.

“I’m glad that he signed the bill, and I believe that we’re well on our way to leading the nation in getting to the bottom of what causes these fatal encounters between police and citizens, because we’re going to have the data,” Johnson, a Dallas Democrat, said Thursday to the Texas Tribune.

The new law gives departments a 30-day window to file a report after the shooting. Once that window has closed, the attorney general’s office can investigate and notify the department it has seven days to clear up any unreported shootings. After that, the state will be able to fine departments $1,000 a day. All of the money collected from these fines will be going to Texas’ Crime Victims’ Compensation Fund.

The bill did not contain everything that the authors originally wanted. State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, was unable to add a requirement for the attorney general’s office to build and maintain an online portal that would collect and analyze police shooting reports to the bill. The addition was struck down on the Senate floor.

Texas legislators might want to revisit that provision at some point. As of this article’s publication, 37 people have been shot and killed by Texas police officers this year, which is on pace to eventually match the total number police killed in the state last year.

Gabe Fernandez

Gabe is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a Peruvian-American Senior at the University of Maryland pursuing a double degree in Multiplatform Journalism and Marketing. In his free time, he can be found photographing concerts, running around the city, and supporting Manchester United. Contact Gabe at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel unwittingly prompted a public battle with President Donald Trump on Monday, when he criticized Trump for focusing on the crowd size at his inauguration. On Tuesday evening, coinciding with an “O’Reilly Factor” segment on violence in Chicago, Trump tweeted a veiled threat aimed at Emanuel. 

“If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24 percent from 2016), I will send in the Feds!” Trump tweeted, citing figures that aired on Bill O’Reilly’s show. Official statistics from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) put the numbers a bit lower, at 234 people shot, and 38 killed. In 2016, a department spokesman said, 227 were shot, with 33 deaths. The spokesman said the department’s figures do not factor in “justified” shootings (those in self-defense) or officer-involved shootings.

Emanuel’s verbal spat with Trump stemmed from a bit of criticism he lodged at the president on Monday: “You didn’t get elected to debate the crowd size at your inaugural,” the mayor said, referring to Trump’s insistence that his inauguration ceremony was the most-watched ever. “You got elected to make sure that people have a job, that the economy continues to grow, people have security as it relates to their kids’ education. It wasn’t about your crowd size. It was about their lives and their jobs.”

On Wednesday, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said his department was “more than willing” to work with the federal government to combat Chicago’s persistent violence. Chicago had a bloody 2016. The death toll was the highest in nearly two decades, at 762 people killed, largely the result of gang violence.

Days before U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch left office, her department released its findings that the CPD “engages in a pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.” The Justice Department also found a pattern of racial discrimination practiced by Chicago officers.

On Wednesday, a Chicago Democrat, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, came to Emanuel’s defense. “The president wants publicity and to be seen beating up on Democratic elected officials and appearing hostile to a big city like Chicago in the eyes of his suburban and rural voters,” he said.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Trump Threatens to “Send the Feds” to Chicago to Deal with “Horrible Carnage” appeared first on Law Street.

Brentley Vinson, the Charlotte police officer who shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott in September, will not face charges, a county district attorney said on Wednesday. “Officer Vinson acted lawfully when he shot Mr. Scott,” Mecklenburg County District Attorney Andrew Murray said in an hour-long press conference. He said the evidence points to Scott possessing a firearm during the incident–which officers at the scene said at the time, but some witnesses refuted–and that Vinson acted in self defense.

“A police officer or any other person is justified in using deadly force if he reasonably believed, and in fact believed, that he or another person was in imminent danger of great bodily injury or death,” Murray wrote in his report of the investigation. Fifteen total prosectors unanimously agreed to not press charges on Vinson.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, which spurred impassioned protests in Charlotte, officers, witnesses, and enraged protestors debated about whether Scott had a gun on him. Officers said he had a loaded .380 semiautomatic handgun, and a holster strapped to his ankle. In his report, Murray listed the evidence that supported that claim: Scott’s DNA was found on the grip of the handgun; the person who (illegally) sold Scott the gun admitted to doing so; and convenience store footage preceding the incident shows Scott with a bulge on his ankle.

BREAKING: Officer who shot and killed #KeithLamontScott acted lawfully, district attorney says https://t.co/ZShJiEFGR1 pic.twitter.com/9BC3zrk4el

— CNN (@CNN) November 30, 2016

On the afternoon of September 20, officers pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex in Charlotte’s University City neighborhood, searching for someone with an outstanding warrant. Scott was sitting in his car, holding a gun and a marijuana blunt, according to the officers’ accounts. He exited the car, repeatedly ignored demands to drop his gun, and Vinson opened fire. A video recorded by his wife Rakeyia did not clearly show Scott with a weapon.

Scott’s family was “gracious,” when they were briefed about the prosecutor’s decision, Murray said. In a statement, they said: “While we understand that many in the Charlotte area share our frustration and pain, we ask that everyone work together to fix the system that allowed this tragedy to happen in the first place.” They also addressed the sometimes violent protests that erupted following Scott’s death in their statement: “Responding to violence with violence is never an appropriate response.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post No Charges for Charlotte Officer Who Shot and Killed Keith Lamont Scott appeared first on Law Street.

Footage from a dashboard camera and a body camera on one of the police officers involved in the shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte last week have finally been released. It turns out the one officer who wore a camera didn’t turn it on until after Scott was already on the ground.

Two videos were released late Saturday after mounting pressure and some violent protests that left people wounded and one dead. The footage from the dashboard camera shows a plainclothes officer aiming his gun at a car. The officer in the car with the dash cam gets out and joins him. Then Scott is seen exiting his car and backing away, and the officer without a uniform fires four shots. Since the video is from inside the police car, there is no audio to prove what was said. But it’s clear that Scott did not aim any gun at the officers at that point.

The body camera footage is grainy and jumpy and shows an officer standing behind Scott’s car, as the officer wearing the camera comes up and knocks on the window with his baton. Scott is then seen getting out from the car but disappears from the video. Next time he’s in the picture, he’s on the ground. The sound on the camera is not turned on until this point, which is why it’s unclear what happened and who said what. It’s also impossible to see from that footage whether Scott had a gun or not. When the sound is turned on, the officers are heard yelling “handcuffs, handcuffs” and asking each other whether they are okay, while Scott is moaning and lying on the ground dying.

Body camera footage shows Keith Scott shooting https://t.co/W0NhU5sBn8 pic.twitter.com/t44YKbjFlK

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) September 25, 2016

Charlotte was the first major city in North Carolina to start using body cams for officers in 2015. The cameras are always on, but they don’t save the footage until the officer presses a button to activate it. That’s when the audio sets in, and it also automatically saves the last 30 seconds of video from before that.

According to protocol, all patrol officers should wear a camera and must activate it as soon as they anticipate any interactions with civilians. But the officers who first approached Scott were wearing plain clothes and therefore did not have any cameras. They claim they realized Scott had a gun, so they retreated to put on police vests and wait for a uniformed officer. That officer was wearing his camera, but he waited to activate it until after Scott was shot.

This news upset many.

Yet another example of why body cameras are not the way to end police shootings. Sometimes, cops don’t turn them on. https://t.co/Q1jNRKYYkU

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) September 26, 2016

But this might be the last footage you see from a police shooting in North Carolina. A new law goes into effect on October 1 that will prevent the public from obtaining footage from body or dashboard cameras. According to Governor Pat McCrory it’s about: “respecting the public, respecting the family, and also respecting the constitutional rights of the officer.”

Under the new law, police videos like the ones in Scott’s case would no longer be considered public record.

The day before the footage was released, Scott’s wife published her own video of what happened, in which the officers are heard yelling “drop the gun” to Scott inside his car. She repeatedly says, “he doesn’t have a gun,” and also points out that he has a traumatic brain injury and just took his medicine. In the video she begs the officers not to shoot her husband, right up until they shoot him.

Wife of #Charlotte police shooting victim #KeithScott films encounter https://t.co/kL9M8WjC4P

— YouTube Newswire (@ytnewswire) September 23, 2016

The attorney for the Scott family, Justin Bamberg, argued that the officer not activating his camera is both a violation of department policy and also meant there was little evidence to show what had actually happened. He said:

Information that we could have had is forever gone because of this officer’s failure to follow department policy and procedures. Those policies exist for a reason, and there is a reason the CMPD equips its officers with body cameras–because body cameras provide visual evidence so that when tragic things do happen we don’t have to question exactly what happened.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Officer Did Not Turn on Body Camera Until After Keith Scott Was Shot appeared first on Law Street.

Betty Shelby, the police officer who shot Terence Crutcher on a highway in Tulsa, Oklahoma last week, was formally charged with manslaughter. Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler announced on Thursday that he had charged officer Shelby with first-degree manslaughter, which would amount to a minimum of four years in prison if convicted.

In a brief statement about the charges, Kunzweiler said, “The tragic circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Crutcher are on the hearts and minds of many people in this community.” Shelby was booked at the local county jail early Friday morning before being released on a $50,000 bond. Crutcher’s family members said that they approved of the charges and hope that Shelby’s prosecution will lead to a conviction.

Crutcher’s twin sister, Tiffany, said after the announcement, “This is a small victory. The chain breaks here. We’re going to break the chains of police brutality.”

Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby will face first-degree manslaughter charges in death of Terence Crutcher: https://t.co/qgCni2r96U pic.twitter.com/cKXAxAqiw6

— Complex (@ComplexMag) September 22, 2016

Crutcher’s car broke down on the interstate last Friday and a woman called 911 reporting that a man was running away from the vehicle as if it was about to blow up. Betty Shelby, who was responding to another 911 call about domestic abuse, came across Crutcher and his car. She got out and started asking Crutcher what was wrong, but he reportedly ignored her questions and kept mumbling to himself. As the interaction unfolded, backup arrived at the scene and Crutcher was later shot and killed.

The court documents claim that Shelby shot Crutcher “unlawfully and unnecessarily.” The filing argues that she became emotionally involved and overreacted to the situation. Shelby’s attorney Scott Wood said that Crutcher was acting erratically, which led Shelby, who Wood said is a drug recognition expert, to believe he was on drugs. She claims to have feared for her life before she fired the shot, and said that Crutcher kept patting his pockets and she couldn’t tell if he had a gun. Crutcher was unarmed and there was no weapon in the car.

A video of the incident shows Crutcher with his hands raised in the air shortly before he was shot. Shelby apparently ordered him to go back to his car and another officer tasered him as he approached the driver-side door. Shelby then shot Crutcher shortly after he fell to the ground.

Police say that Crutcher was reaching into the window before he was shot, but the attorney for the Crutcher family, Benjamin Crump, later said, “The window was up, so how can he be reaching into the car if the window is up and there’s blood on the glass?”

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Tulsa Officer Charged With Manslaughter in Terence Crutcher’s Death appeared first on Law Street.

On Tuesday night violent protests erupted in Charlotte, North Carolina, over the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott earlier that day. The protests came the day after police in Oklahoma released video footage of the shooting of another man on Friday, Terrence Crutcher.

The protests started peacefully, close to where Scott, 43, was killed. They went on until late at night, with people chanting “Black Lives Matter.” In the early morning hours of Wednesday, demonstrators started blocking traffic on the interstate and even opened up backs of tractors and trucks to take out the cargo and set it on fire in the streets. Others broke into a local Walmart. Police used tear gas and flash grenades to interrupt the riots, during which at least 12 police officers and 11 civilians were injured.

#Charlotte #cmpd pic.twitter.com/LJVfhRcgUc

— Adam Rhew (@AdamRhew) September 21, 2016

On Tuesday afternoon police looking for another man with an outstanding warrant approached Scott, who was sitting in his car outside of an apartment complex. Police say Scott got out of the car carrying a gun, and then got back in. When they got closer he got out again, and according to the police statement, the officers felt their lives were in danger and felt compelled to shoot.

But according to Scott’s family, he was unarmed and disabled, and was reading a book in his car while waiting for the school bus to drop off his son.

Here’s the man’s sister. She says he did not have a gun. @CMPD says he did. @WBTV_News pic.twitter.com/JwHMixy9m7

— Sarah-Blake Morgan (@SarahBlakeWBTV) September 20, 2016

His brother said the cop that shot Scott was undercover and dressed in normal clothes. He was shot four times and pronounced dead at a local hospital.

The brother of the victim in the officer-involved shooting says that the cops were undercover. pic.twitter.com/PBrDwkjEdm #Charlotte

— Beatrice E. Peterson (@MissBeaE) September 21, 2016

The family claims Scott didn’t own a gun, but the police say they did recover a firearm at the scene. Police Chief Kerr Putney said that although the police officer who shot Scott was dressed in plainclothes, he also had on a police vest and there were uniformed police at the scene. But he couldn’t say for sure whether Scott aimed his weapon at anyone, nor did police specify what brand or model of gun they had found.

The man who was shot on Friday evening was Terrence Crutcher, 40. He was waiting for assistance next to his car that had broken down on a road in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when female police officer Betty Shelby, who responding to a domestic violence call, found him. When she asked what had happened, he didn’t answer, and according to her attorney, he kept ignoring her questions. When he reached toward his vehicle, she thought he was grabbing a weapon and shot him.

The video that police released on Monday show the man surrounded by several other officers before he falls to the ground. In another video from a police helicopter circling the scene, one officer is heard saying Crutcher is “looking like a bad dude,” and “looks like time for taser.”

“Looks like a Bad Dude” why don’t you Say his name instead #TerrenceCrutcher pic.twitter.com/USSL3TjBzE

— The HBCURoundTable (@HBCU_Roundtable) September 20, 2016

According to the Crutcher family’s lawyer, it is impossible that he reached inside the car for a gun, since the window was rolled up and blood stained on the outside.

Both officers involved in the shootings of Crutcher and Scott have been placed on paid administrative leave.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Protests in Charlotte Sparked by Shooting of Keith Lamont Scott appeared first on Law Street.

More than 50 organizations affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement have outlined a list of demands for the first time on Monday. According to the organization, the demands, which include an “end to the war against Black people,” come in response to “the sustained and increasingly visible violence against Black communities in the U.S. and globally.”

The agenda specifically outlines six key demands related to police and criminal justice reform, with at least 38 recommendations on how address them. The demands include:

• An end to the war against Black people.
• Reparations for past and continuing harms.
• Investments in the education, health, and safety of Black people, and divestment from exploitative forces including prisons, fossil fuels, police, surveillance, and exploitative corporations.
• Economic justice for all.
• A world where those most impacted in our communities control the laws, institutions, and policies that are meant to serve us.
• Independent Black political power and Black self-determination in all areas of society.

Michaela Brown, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Bloc, one of the group’s partner organizations, said in a statement to TIME, “We seek radical transformation, not reactionary reform.” Brown added,

As the 2016 election continues, this platform provides us with a way to intervene with an agenda that resists state and corporate power, an opportunity to implement policies that truly value the safety and humanity of black lives, and an overall means to hold elected leaders accountable.

Under the demand to “end the war against Black people,” the organization’s recommendations include: an end to capital punishment, the demilitarization of law enforcement, and an end to the use of past criminal history to determine eligibility for housing, education, licenses, voting, loans, employment, and other services and needs. The agenda states:

Until we achieve a world where cages are no longer used against our people we demand an immediate change in conditions and an end to public jails, detention centers, youth facilities and prisons as we know them. This includes the end of solitary confinement, the end of shackling of pregnant people, access to quality healthcare, and effective measures to address the needs of our youth, queer, gender nonconforming and trans families.

Under another demand for “community control,” the group recommends an end to the privatization of education, participatory budgeting at the local, state and federal level, and direct democratic community control of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, “ensuring that communities most harmed by destructive policing have the power to hire and fire officers, determine disciplinary action, control budgets and policies, and subpoena relevant agency information.”

The large policy overhaul comes after the conclusion of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and almost two years after white former police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri. It will be interesting to see if and how the presidential candidates address these demands over the course of the election.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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As high-profile police shootings continue to hold the nation’s attention, a new study on the extent of racial bias in police officers’ use of force is making some big waves. In fact, this research comes to a particularly surprising conclusion: the police are actually less likely to shoot black civilians. But there are some important details to work through before we jump to any conclusions.

The study, conducted by renowned Harvard economist Roland Fryer, did identify some significant bias in the way police officers use force. This is a bias that exists at nearly all levels–like putting hands on a civilian, pushing a person up against a wall, using handcuffs on someone without arresting them, and even using pepper spray or a baton–but when it comes to lethal force, the most severe of all, police may actually be slightly less likely to kill black civilians.

But before we jump to conclusions or even accept that conclusion on its face, it’s important to sort through a large number of methodological nuance to understand what we can take away from this research. Fair warning, if you came here looking for a clear-cut conclusion, you’ll have to read the rest of this article to get the full picture.

Some Background

First, it’s important to point out that Roland Fryer’s study involved a significant undertaking by a team of researchers. And Fryer himself certainly wasn’t expecting the final conclusion. “It is the most surprising result of my career,” Fryer told the New York Times. The research is also still a working paper, which means that it hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed and published in a formal journal. It was put out by the National Bureau of Economic Research for experts in the field to look at and discuss its findings prior to a more formal release.

The debate about police shootings is one that has notoriously had a lack of hard data to discuss. We simply don’t have good statistics on the number and characteristics of incidents when police officers used lethal force. Independent counts have started to fill this gap–of note are the Washington Post’s database of police shootings and the Guardian’s “The Counted” project–but there is little national data with the depth necessary to identify bias. With this research, Fryer and his team provide some important analysis to a discussion that has few statistics to draw from.

A look at the methods

So let’s take a closer look at the data and how it was used. To measure racial bias when it comes to all levels of force the researchers looked at statistics provided by several police departments, notably New York City’s “stop, question and frisk” program, as well as nationally representative survey data that measures interactions with the police. To look at the use of lethal force–officer-involved shootings–the researchers had to assemble their own dataset from 10 police departments in three states. The researchers managed to get a particularly interesting dataset from the Houston police department, which provided a large number of reports on interactions between police and civilians.

Of that Houston dataset, the researchers took a random sample of files with “arrests codes in which lethal force is more likely to be justified: attempted capital murder of a public safety officer, aggravated assault on a public safety officer, resisting arrest, evading arrest, and interfering in arrest.” However, this data was unique to the Houston police department. The other police departments could only give details for instances when lethal force was used, but we would need data about when officers decided not to use force in order to properly identify the effects of bias.

The conclusions and what they mean

First, it’s important to note that the researchers only look at actual interactions between officers and civilians. This means that the study does not engage with one important racial bias in policing–that officers are more likely to stop and interact with black civilians than white civilians.

That caveat aside, when it comes to the lethal use of force, here’s how Fryer summarizes his findings:

Using data from Houston, Texas–where we have both officer-involved shootings and a randomly chosen set of potential interactions with police where lethal force may have been justified–we find, in the raw data, that blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites.

The researchers used the raw data referenced in the quote and then controlled for a range of factors–civilian behavior, possession of a weapon, the situational context, and much more–but still found no presence of bias in the use of lethal force by the Houston police department.

Importantly, this is only based on the Houston data, so while we may be able to conclude that officer-involved shootings in Houston are not subject to racial bias, we cannot really take that to mean that the same holds true nationally or for any other police department. Even then, this conclusion rests on the researchers’ ability to control for several important variables like behavior and context.

It is also important to note that this data came from police officer summaries of their interactions with civilians. While we cannot cast doubt on an entire police department, there have been several cases where the story provided by police officers has been refuted with video evidence.

Police officers’ bias in nonlethal force

Looking beyond lethal force, Fryer and his team found persistent racial bias at all other levels of force. Using the New York City Police Department’s data on its stop and frisk program between 2003 and 2013, the researchers found a notable relationship between race and the use of force. After controlling for as many variables as possible, the researchers note that black civilians are 17 percent more likely to be subject to the use of force than white civilians. For Hispanics, the rate was 12 percent higher than for white people.

Interestingly, this pattern largely remained consistent at a range of different levels. The lowest level of force measured–officers laying their hands on a subject–occurred much more frequently than the highest–using pepper spray or a baton. But the rate at which minority civilians incur the use of force largely remained consistent at all levels short of lethal force. As Fryer puts it, “The use of high levels of force in these data are rare. Yet, it is consistently rarer for whites relative to blacks.” What’s particularly interesting about this is that the researchers managed to find bias in data collected and provided by the NYPD itself.

The researchers also looked at a nationally representative survey to identify the extent to which racial bias exists in these interactions. Using data from the Police-Public Contact Survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, they found even larger differences in the use of force by race. While the researchers note that the rate at which officers used force was considerably lower in the survey data–about 15 percent of white civilians experienced the use of force in the stop and frisk data while only 1 percent reported experiencing force in the survey data–a pattern of bias remains for different racial groups. They conclude:

Differences in quantitative magnitudes aside, the PPCS paints a similar portrait–large racial differences in police use of force that cannot be explained using a large and varied set of controls.

After looking over his research, Fryer argues that police may act according to perceived costs. He suggests that there may not be racial bias in the use of lethal force because doing so is particularly costly–there is often internal reviews and the decision to shoot someone can have profound life consequences for the police officer as well as the victim. However, the same costs may not exist when using nonlethal force. Fryer argues that if we wish to reduce racial bias for lower levels of force, we should increase the costs associated with using them. Put simply, if we want to reduce this bias, police need to feel that they will be held accountable for unnecessarily using force.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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It has been a long, bloody week in America. Following the killing of two black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier this week, protests sprung up across the country. In Dallas on Thursday night, a peaceful protest turned violent when shots rang out at about 8:45 pm. As a fuller picture of what happened develops over the coming days, read on for details on what we know, what we don’t know, and how Thursday’s tragic episode fits into a larger historical perspective.

What Happened

Five police officers were killed, and seven others were wounded. Two civilians were shot as well. As the Dallas police conduct their investigation, information surrounding the shooting is slowly trickling in. Reports indicate one of the shooters was killed in a parking garage in an overnight standoff with SWAT forces after negotiations failed. He has been identified as Micah Johnson, 25, and a resident of Dallas. The Dallas police chief told reporters on Friday that Johnson, during the standoff in the parking garage, said he was upset about recent events in Louisiana and Minnesota, and he “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

The police detonated an explosive device that was connected to a robot, enabling them to kill Johnson while preserving their own safety. He said he acted alone, not on behalf of any group. But it is unclear if he had any assistance from any of the other suspects at this time. He also told officers that there were explosive devices he planted in the area. Officers are conducting explosive sweeps of the Dallas area.

According to a statement by the Dallas Police Department, the gunfire was delivered from an “elevated position.” Aside from the suspect that was killed by the explosive device, police have three other suspects in custody. In the hours after the chaos on Thursday night, police mistakenly identified a man in a camouflage shirt as a suspect. After hearing he was wrongly suspected, Mark Hughes turned himself in to clear up any confusion before the situation escalated.

What We Don’t Know

Many pieces to the puzzle of what happened Thursday night in Dallas are still missing. Five officers have been killed as of Friday morning, but that figure could rise as the seven who were wounded undergo treatment. It is also unclear how many shooters were involved in the attack–aside from one man who was killed overnight in a standoff with a SWAT team–or if they were coordinated or premeditated. Follow Law Street’s Twitter account to keep up to date with the story as it develops.

A Tense Time for Police and Communities of Color

This attack comes during a period in which the relationship between the police and African American communities is particularly strained. On Tuesday, Alton Sterling was shot and killed at close range by police officers in the process of arresting him. The incident was captured on video and sparked protests nationwide. Then on Wednesday, a police officer in Minnesota shot and killed Philando Castile at a traffic stop. Diamond Reynolds, Castile’s girlfriend who was in the car with him, says that Castile told the officer he had a licensed firearm but was shot while he was reaching for his wallet. Reynolds started live-streaming the immediate aftermath of the shooting on Facebook, prompting even greater outrage.

The Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas on Thursday was a response to these deaths and a continuation of recent efforts to address police violence in minority communities. So far, all accounts suggest that the rally was peaceful before the shooting broke out.

The Dallas Police Department’s Twitter account chronicled the protests as it moved through the downtown area:

Men, women, boys & girls gathered @ Belo Garden Park for the demonstration re: recent police involved shootings. pic.twitter.com/gah2Q3tqG6

— Dallas Police Depart (@DallasPD) July 8, 2016

At a press conference after the shooting, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings mourned the loss of the officers and highlighted the police department’s recent efforts to improve relations with the community. He said, “This police department trained in de-escalation far before cities across America did it. We are one of the premier community policing cities in the country and this year we have the fewest police officer related shootings than any large city in America.” He also noted that so far there was no indication that the violence was related to the protesters.

The Deadliest Incident in Over a Decade

The shooting in Dallas marks the deadliest incident for police officers since the attacks on September 11, 2001. According to preliminary statistics released by the FBI, there were 42 felonious officer deaths in 2015. Last night’s incident alone amounts to more than 10 percent of last year’s total.

The Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks police officer deaths throughout the year, recorded 21 deaths from gunfire in 2016 prior to the killings in Dallas. Over the past 10 years, the number of felonious police officer deaths has generally trended downward.

Available evidence does not suggest that violence against the police has increased in recent years as police officers face heightened scrutiny. While the number of felonious deaths tends to fluctuate from year to year, the best way to measure violence against the police is with the FBI’s assaults in the line of duty statistics. The FBI plans to release data for the 2015 calendar year later this fall.

Read More: What We Know About Officer Deaths in the Line of Duty

Read More: Law Street Media’s Police in America 2016 coverage

Kevin Rizzo also contributed to this article.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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In the context of many deaths at the hands of police officers, there has been increased pressure to prosecute officers who are involved in civilian shootings. We’re now seeing the effects of that pressure, as prosecutions of officers who were involved in the shooting of a civilian have reached their highest number in a decade.

So far in 2015, 12 officers have been charged with either murder or manslaughter resulting from police shootings. That’s significantly higher than the average from 2005-2014, which was five prosecutions a year. It also doesn’t include the six police officers who are being prosecuted for the death of Freddie Gray, because that death did not stem from a shooting, or any other deaths not resulting from police shootings.

While this kind of data isn’t compiled nationwide, a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, Philip Stinson, curated it as part of a project he worked on with the Department of Justice. The project is called “Police Integrity Lost.” This project is one example of the ways in which the DOJ is trying to improve its knowledge of police-related killings, and the prosecutions that follow–or the lack thereof.

The prosecutions related to deaths this year also still make up only a tiny fraction of police-related killings. According to the Washington Post, there have been 796 fatal police shootings this year in the United States. Killed by Police, a watchdog organization reports 979 civilians have been killed to date at police hands–those stats aren’t just limited to shootings like the Washington Post ones are.

Moreover, just because more officers are being prosecuted doesn’t mean they’ll be convicted. Stinson’s numbers show that out of 47 officers charged in fatal shootings over the last 10 years, only 11 have been convicted.

Despite the fact that it seems like more police officers will be held accountable for actions that are deemed inappropriate this year, Stinson cautions against reading too much into this year’s numbers, pointing out they might be indicative of a trend sparked by recent public outcry over police brutality, but they might also just be an anomaly. Regardless, ensuring more accountability and understanding of the circumstances surrounding police shootings is a good thing.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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In a groundbreaking article released on Sunday, the Washington Post reported the findings of a five-month study showing that from January through May 2015, at least 385 people were shot and killed by on-duty police officers in the U.S. The rate of killings, more than two per day, is also more than twice the rate reported by the FBI in the last decade. In addition to the possibility of a spike in police killings, the Post points to the lack of accuracy in past reporting for the disparity. The article also mentions that the FBI itself is aware that its numbers are incomplete, particularly because these statistics are voluntarily submitted by police departments.

Other studies, including a project by the Guardian called The Counted, also reveal the incredible rate of uncounted police shootings. In a period of public outcry over police brutality, it is no coincidence that this issue is finally being addressed. By not requiring accurate statistics to be maintained, the government is only reinforcing public fears of a lack of police accountability. Understanding the extent of this problem is the first step toward being able to properly discuss and analyze it.

The Post study also found some troubling patterns in these shootings. Nearly a quarter of the victims were identified by police or family members as mentally ill. Among the cases identified by the Post, 16 percent of the victims were either unarmed or were carrying toy weapons. Both the the Post and the Guardian investigations highlight the disproportionate killings of blacks and Hispanics, particularly in shootings with unarmed victims. Police treatment of mentally ill suspects and minorities have become a widespread issue on which these studies begin to provide insight.

Although these reports sparked some public outrage, it is important to remember the big picture. More than 80 percent of those killed by police were armed with potentially lethal objects, which likely makes police action justified in many situations.

Police shootings are a complex and nuanced issue. Comparisons between the United States and other nations are not incredibly informative given the vast differences in weapon ownership, crime, and various other characteristics. Furthermore, the demonization of police officers to which some citizens resort, is neither reasonable nor helpful in dealing with this issue. Nevertheless, limiting police shootings is certainly a laudable goal, and gathering accurate data is the best place to start.

Let us not forget the harmful consequences that officer-involved shootings can have on police departments and individual officers. Police officers face the damage–particularly emotional damage–that can be inflicted when they are compelled to use deadly force. Moreover, the divide that such events creates between law enforcement and their communities can be detrimental to their ability to function. Unnecessary police shootings are a losing situation for all sides and must be addressed by law enforcement.

One issue that relates directly to these shootings is police officer training. This issue was addressed from a unique perspective in an article on Police One by Roy Bedard, a close quarters and field tactics specialist who trains police, corrections officers, and military professionals. He cites his own rookie officer training and the training that most new officers receive on handgun use. Officers are trained to fire for the center of mass in order to “shoot to stop,” yet Bedard comments on how “shoot to stop” and “shoot to kill” become synonymous in practice.  With this training, it is no surprise that rough encounters with police have resulted in so many deaths.

It would be foolish to blame police shootings solely on training and decisions made by police officers. In high-intensity situations with civilian lives on the line, as well as their own, police officers must quickly determine the best course of action for all involved. Sometimes this means shooting suspects. Sometimes these shootings save lives and that must not be forgotten. Nevertheless, it is important for police departments to train their officers to use deadly force as sparingly as possible. Many of the cases cited by the Washington Post, as well as several recent high-profile police shootings, point to officers using unnecessary force, which is troubling.

On Tuesday, following growing publicity of these reports, two senators announced their plan to introduce legislation that would require states to report all police-related deaths to the Justice Department. This bill, proposed by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) would require all details of these cases to be reported, including age, race, sex, and the situation surrounding the shooting. With more accurate information, law enforcement will be able to understand the true scope of police shootings and take any necessary steps to reduce them.

Maurin Mwombela

Maurin Mwombela is a member of the University of Pennsylvania class of 2017 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer 2015. He now blogs for Law Street, focusing on politics. Contact Maurin at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Number of Americans Killed By Police is Much Higher Than You Think appeared first on Law Street.

On August 11, 2014 Dillon Taylor was shot dead by Officer Bron Cruz. Cruz claimed that Taylor had a weapon and that he felt threatened by the situation because he was “100 percent convinced” it would end up in a gunfight. But no weapon was ever found on Taylor and only the first minute of the body cam footage on Cruz was released at the time of the court prosecution. Prosecutors in Utah declared the killing of Taylor justified in October 2014. But now the entire eight minute video of the shooting has been released. The video pretty convincingly demonstrates Taylor’s innocence, and continues to raise questions about the force used by police officers in the United States.

In the video, Cruz yells “Get your hands up, now!” Originally, it was reported that Taylor’s response was “No, fool” before turning around to face Cruz. Cruz said he believed that Taylor was holding a gun because when he turned around he briefly lifted his shirt, a movement that often indicates a person is reaching for a gun, and that he was going to attack Cruz. As a result of this information, the court ruled Cruz’s actions as justified. Another factor that allowed the judge to clear Cruz of any charges was that he was responding to a report of a man brandishing a gun in the area. When Cruz came across Taylor and the two men with him, he believed that they were the men that the report was referring to.

Contrarily, the full video that has now been released ten months later shows Taylor wearing headphones, explaining why he did not respond to Cruz’s command to put up his hands. The remainder of the graphic video shows Cruz bending over Taylor’s body and placing him in handcuffs instead of calling for medical attention. Cruz also does not attempt to slow the bleeding of Taylor’s wounds.

Taylor’s death falls into the larger pattern of police brutality that particularly became a national conversation last fall and has continued to be a controversial issue ever since. In 2015 alone, there have been 472 people killed by the police. While many of these victims were armed and many officers probably felt threatened, the number of deaths at police hands is directly contributing to the environment of heightened anxiety and fear.

This problem is going to keep coming back again and again. While body cameras are one proposed solution and numerous counties, cities, and states have implemented them into their police departments, that one solution is not enough. The entire footage from Cruz’s body camera should have been released at the time he was being prosecuted. Instead, only the first minute of the video was used as evidence during the court process.

Police brutality is not an issue that is going to disappear, and it shouldn’t disappear if there isn’t any reform. Police officers should not be trained solely to kill and police departments should not be so militarized. These steps towards reformation will reduce the anxiety and fear that permeates so many communities.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article stated the date of Dillon’s death as August 11, 2015; Taylor’s death occurred on August 11, 2014.

Sarina Neote

Sarina Neote is a member of the American University Class of 2017. Contact Sarina at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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After the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and several other high profile deaths at the hands of the police, people may ask whether an increasing trend is starting to emerge. Although it is nearly impossible to say for sure, most evidence suggests that police-involved shootings are not really increasing. Instead, these cases have started to garner much more attention among the media and the public.

The deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Gardner in New York, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Walter Scott in South Carolina, and now Freddie Gray in Baltimore are among a long list of recent deaths that have garnered a substantial amount of public discussion. There are several different explanations for this, notably the availability of video for these incidents and the growing sensitivity to police misconduct among the American public.

In a recent article, CNN interviewed executives at black newspapers who have been covering police shootings of black men for a long time. Tracey Williams Dillard, a publisher of the Minnesota Spokesman-Record told CNN, “It not only feels like there’s more coverage, there is more coverage. … It’s not a perception, it’s definitely real.”

Criminal justice advocates have long decried police officers’ disproportionate use of force against black men, but until recently such instances rarely received national attention. The growing availability of video recordings of police encounters has helped promote the importance of this issue in the public’s consciousness. This is particularly true in the case of Walter Scott, where in the absence of video evidence, media coverage could have been taken in a dramatically different direction. Instead of self defense as officer Slager and the attorney general stated, a video that came out after the fact revealed the murder of a defenseless man attempting to run away from a police officer.

One snapshot of the amount of public attention paid to these incidents can be found in Google search trends. The chart below illustrates the usage of the search term “police shootings” over time. While that is not a definitive example of the public’s interest, it does indicate that since last August police shootings have received more attention than usual.

What does the data say?

It’s clear that police misconduct and the use of force has become a hot button issue in the media and among the public, but do we really know police shootings haven’t increased? Unfortunately, there is no way to know for sure. Typically to answer questions about law enforcement and crime we rely on the wide range of available criminal justice data sources; however, there is a glaring lack of information when it comes to officer-involved deaths.

The FBI collects and publishes a wide range of crime and criminal justice statistics in its annual Crime in the United States publication. While these statistics are far from perfect, they are an extremely important measure of crime in America. Unfortunately, the FBI does not have an overall count of people who are killed by police officers. The only available data details the number of justifiable homicides, which involves “the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.” This count does not include unlawful killings by police officers. For example, Michael Slager, the officer who shot Walter Scott, now faces murder charges. If he is convicted, Scott’s death would not be considered a justifiable homicide and as a result would not be counted in the FBI’s statistics.

A Wall Street Journal review of the Supplementary Homicide Report from the FBI found that the voluntary nature of submitting data has created significant holes, concluding that there are “hundreds of homicides by law-enforcement agencies between 2007 and 2012 that aren’t included in records kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” A recent Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report also cast doubt on the accuracy of various homicide measures. The BJS review found that the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report captured only 46 percent of police killings and the BJS’s Arrest Related Death Program captured only 49 percent. Even after combining these two measures, an estimated 28 percent of police homicides were not counted in 2011.

Congress passed a law last year that will require all law enforcement agencies to track the death of any person in police custody, which includes deaths that occur while being arrested. The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 is a significant step forward because it requires annual submissions of reports to the Justice Department detailing the name, race, gender, ethnicity, and age of the deceased. The report will also require the attorney general to report these findings to Congress; however, we may have to wait some time to see these statistics as the first report will come “not later than two years after the date of the enactment of this Act.”

FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Eric Holder recently called for better data on police officer-involved deaths. This issue is also going to be an important topic in the next CJIS Advisory Policy Board Meeting this summer, where changes to the FBI’s crime-reporting procedures are discussed. But sadly it took several high profile incidents to get the government to count these incidents accurately, and it will take some time before improved statistics are available.

So no, police officer-involved deaths are probably not on the rise; instead media coverage and public attention have increased dramatically. Some may question what caused this to become a national issue, but the more appropriate question seems to be: why wasn’t it an issue already?

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The entire nation is still reeling from the announcement on Monday night that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson will not be indicted in the August 9, 2014 shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. Now this has never been a simple case. Since Brown was shot, there have been protests, contentious police response to the protests, and national scrutiny. There have been conflicting statements from eyewitnesses, different forensic accounts, and I think it’s safe to say we’ll never be 100 percent sure what went down between Brown and Wilson.

People were mad when Wilson was not indicted, and understandably so. Of course, being indicted does not necessarily mean that Wilson did anything wrong. It means that the grand jury thought there was enough evidence for a jury of Wilson’s peers to decide whether or not he was guilty. They were not there to decide guilt or innocence–that’s what a jury trial itself is for. But the Ferguson grand jury did not have that evidence, so it did not make that decision.

A lot of people blamed the grand jury for not indicting Wilson, but I don’t–the jurors could only work with what was given to them. In fact, I think it’s more important to look at who gave them the evidence they would need, or lack thereof. Part of the idea of the grand jury is that it’s a testing ground for a prosecutor, but there’s also a lot of prosecutorial discretion. The prosecutor gets to present his case–what he would show in court to try to convict the defendant.

Now what prosecutor Robert McCulloch did sounded good to the untrained ear. He basically gave the grand jury all the evidence. All the conflicting reports, confusing facts, and messy evidence that has marked this case from the beginning. And he didn’t much appear to advocate for the indictment of Wilson. In fact, he seemed to emphasize the evidence that showed that Wilson was acting in self defense.

One legal analyst and trial lawyer, Lisa Bloom, argues that McCulloch basically used kid gloves with Wilson through a takedown of his presentation to the grand jury. You can read the entire thing here, and believe me, it’s a good read. But here are a couple of the most damning points she makes:

McCulloch seemed flummoxed by the novelty of conflicting evidence. In 28 years I have never had a case WITHOUT conflicting evidence.

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 25, 2014

Maybe we should take up a collection to teach the Ferguson prosecutors how to cross examine an adverse witness. Step 1: ask tough questions

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 25, 2014

An attorney who does not aggressively cross-examine the target of an investigation is an attorney who does not want to get to the truth.

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) November 25, 2014

Bloom is basically arguing that McCulloch didn’t try very hard to provide a compelling case to indict Wilson, for whatever reason. And she’s not the only one. The National Bar Association made the following statement:

The National Bar Association is questioning how the Grand Jury, considering the evidence before them, could reach the conclusion that Darren Wilson should not be indicted and tried for the shooting death of Michael Brown. National Bar Association President Pamela J. Meanes expresses her sincere disappointment with the outcome of the Grand Jury’s decision but has made it abundantly clear that the National Bar Association stands firm and will be calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to pursue federal charges against officer Darren Wilson. “We will not rest until Michael Brown and his family has justice” states Pamela Meanes, President of the National Bar Association.

Cops rarely get prosecuted for shooting civilians, and part of that is because of the way that the law is written. Police officers are usually given the benefit of the doubt, and understandably so–a police officer wouldn’t be able to do his or her job if they weren’t able to protect themselves. But when and if there’s an incident where the officer may have acted illegally, they should be held accountable. I don’t know what happened in Ferguson. I have my ideas and my opinions, but at the end of the day I simply do not know. But I can’t imagine that a trial in which it all gets sorted out could have been a bad thing. It was up to the prosecutor to make his case, and he didn’t. That’s why there’s no trial.

What happened in Ferguson on that August day is not an isolated incident. It’s difficult to find actual numbers, but we know that since August 9, 2014 14 other teenagers–or children even younger–have been shot by police. Between 1999 and 2011, African Americans have comprised 26 percent of those shot by police, despite the fact that only 13.2 percent of our population is black. Black male teens are 21 times more likely than their white counterparts to be killed by cops. Some of those shootings may be legally justified, but I can’t imagine that every single one is.

This is a conversation that our legal system needs to have.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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