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A burglary suspect fleeing police dogs and a helicopter in Florida wades into a dark lake and disappears. Three weeks later his remains are found inside an alligator.
Was he killed by police?
It is an extreme example of the difficulty faced with increasing frequency by data scientists working on a new US government count of deaths in interactions with police – a count that appears likely to soar beyond all previous attempts, now that the issue has reached the highest levels of both protest and power.
As esoteric as the task may seem, the objective is deadly serious: to measure the true dimensions of an epidemic of lethal violence committed by police across the country on often unarmed civilians. A majority of the victims, such as Chicago teenager Laquan McDonald, die in police gunfire. Others, such as the New York father Eric Garner, may die in a banned chokehold or, like the Baltimore 25-year-old Freddie Gray whose death is currently being prosecuted, from injuries in a police vehicle.
At the start of 2015, the Guardian launched The Counted, a public-service project tallying and shedding light on such cases, which has reached a tally of 1,068 so far. Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed plans for a similar counting effort, after grossly misrepresenting the problem in eight previous years with annual figures averaging 423.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday December 14 2015, @02:47PM
How up to date are the statistics? Do they have this one yet? Cop shoots guy crawling out of wrecked car. [reason.com] Of course, the guy is still alive, for the moment, but at best he will be completely paralyzed. The cop is, of course, on paid administrative leave; the chief of police sees no reason to file any charges.
Police in the US seem to have a serious competence problem; we don't hear about nearly this many incidents from anywhere else. In this particular case, a guy has totally wrecked his car, killing his wife, and he is crawling out of the wreckage through a window. So the cop on the scene draws his gun and shoots him? WTF?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by IndigoFreak on Tuesday December 15 2015, @05:26AM
I watched the video. It looks like the cop fired twice as the man was getting out. After he reports it hes looking on the ground all around, almost as if he was looking for the shell casings. He never checked the woman on the pavement for pulse(maybe she was clearly dead?) or maybe he was too concerned about finding the evidence. The police report says he fired only once, and if that is what happened accidental discharge becomes easier to believe. But I see two separate muzzle blasts.