American Society for Professor Hopkins

University of Maryland

Introduction

In the last few years high profile cases involving mostly African-Americans and White police have drew long-standing problems with the American Police and Judicial System. In the United states a young black male is five times more likely to be killed by police office that a young white male. They constitute only 2% of the US population. Yet, in 2015, African Americans men aged 15 to 34 accounted for over 15% of the 1134 people killed by security forces. According to data from the British newspaper , a young black man had last year nine times more likely than any other American to be killed by the security forces, and five times more than any other American from same age. About a quarter of African Americans killed in 2015 were not armed, against 17% of whites.

This study also reveals:

89% of victims were killed by bullets;

that five victims had shot a policeman before being killed;

the youngest of those killed was 6 years old, the oldest 87 years;

it is California that the police killed, in proportion to population, the more people.

Excessive use of police force

The Guardian began tracking the deaths in early 2015, after finding that the federal authorities had no comprehensive database of victims of police, regularly accused of excessive use of their weapons. The case of Michael Brown, a black teenager, disarmed and shot six times by a white police officer in Ferguson (Missouri) is not isolated. Similar scandals have occurred over the past twenty years. The most iconic are those of Amadou Diallo in 1999 and Sean Bell in 2006. In 2012, Trayvon Martin was shot by a police auxiliary. Last month, Eric Garner died following an asset by strangulation technique. US police kill an average of at least 400 people a year (four times that of executions). An analysis of 2012 data suggests that blacks are more often victims of police killings, and more often the victims when circumstances do not appear to justify the use of lethal force . US police kill more than European policies: the English and Japanese police have killed anyone last year, and the German police killed 8 people (data are not public in France). The increased availability of weapons from American citizens makes it more dangerous police work, and the "rules of engagement" (rule of the gun usage) are less strict than in Europe. From a legal point of view (or situational), each police homicide is a separate incident, specific, with a contingent events leading web mostly for light sentences or acquittals. From a structural point of view, the police killings are not unfortunate coincidences. David Jacobs and Robert O'Brien analyzed the fatal incidents in 170 US cities between 1980 and 1986; they show that income inequality between blacks and whites is a good predictor of police homicides [ 1 ]. There is a statistical link between racial inequality and police killings.