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posted by cmn32480 on Monday December 14 2015, @10:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the official-body-count dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @06:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @06:24PM (#276232)

    Responding to the least important part of the story with a dismissive, good job. Also, you can not answer it correctly since he could have been killed then eaten.

    The REAL story is the FBI increasing their effort to track police killings and provide more detail about what happened. I see this as a good thing.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 14 2015, @07:03PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 14 2015, @07:03PM (#276255) Journal

    Well, I *hope* it's a good thing. The FBI itself has a record that's far from spotless, and are well known as abusers of power.

    OTOH, most of the evidence I know of happened under a prior director. It's *possible* that they've cleaned up. Unfortunately, in this case evidence is hard to come by, as they are skilled in hiding illegal activity...possibly more skilled in hiding it than in discovering it.

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    • (Score: 3, Touché) by wonkey_monkey on Monday December 14 2015, @09:32PM

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Monday December 14 2015, @09:32PM (#276340) Homepage

      It's *possible* that they've cleaned up.

      Well, it was run by a man called Hoover.

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