Underreported: Fatal Police-Involved Shootings
In class, we have learned about plenty of cases relating to police violence but haven't really looked too much at it from a broader perspective. More specifically I chose to research into police use of deadly force. The first thing that stood out to me was the fact that Congress actually instructed the Attorney General in 1994 to compile and publish annual statistics on police use of excessive force, however, this was never carried out, and the FBI has also not collected any data on this either. Because of this, there is actually no real way to track how many occurrences there have been. Since there is such a lack of tracking from the actual government there have been separate outside organisations that have started creating systems in an attempt to track this. For example, there is the National Violent Death Reporting System which is a more complete database to track police homicides than either the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) or the Centers for Disease Control's National Vital Statistics System (NVSS). This is because both the SHR and NVSS under-report the number of police killings.
Looking more into the previous act that was passed in 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, you can actually see the reason for its failure can be attributed to the lack of provision for any reinforcement. Another reason is that in part due to the lack of participation from state and local agencies, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stopped keeping count in March 2014.
Two only two national systems I could find that actually collect data that include homicides committed by police officers in the line of duty were The National Center for Health Statistics maintains the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) and the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR). The NVSS aggregates data from locally filed death certificates. State laws require that death certificates be filed with local registrars, but the certificates do not actually document whether the killing was legally justified or whether a law enforcement officer was involved. The UCR relies on state and local law enforcement agencies that voluntarily submit crime reports. During the years 1976-1998 they found that both national systems under-report justifiable homicides by police officers, but for different reasons. It was also found that from 2007-2012, more than 550 homicides by the country's 105 largest law enforcement agencies were missing from FBI records.
Looking more into the previous act that was passed in 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, you can actually see the reason for its failure can be attributed to the lack of provision for any reinforcement. Another reason is that in part due to the lack of participation from state and local agencies, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stopped keeping count in March 2014.Two only two national systems I could find that actually collect data that include homicides committed by police officers in the line of duty were The National Center for Health Statistics maintains the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) and the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR). The NVSS aggregates data from locally filed death certificates. State laws require that death certificates be filed with local registrars, but the certificates do not actually document whether the killing was legally justified or whether a law enforcement officer was involved. The UCR relies on state and local law enforcement agencies that voluntarily submit crime reports. During the years 1976-1998 they found that both national systems under-report justifiable homicides by police officers, but for different reasons. It was also found that from 2007-2012, more than 550 homicides by the country's 105 largest law enforcement agencies were missing from FBI records.
I agree with your stance on police involved shootings in which many shootings are not investigated throughly, and possibly swept under the rug. Yet, I believe that with many movements and an increasing understanding between police and minorities, the rates of deadly shootings should decrease.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Belen! I find it really interesting yet horrifying that the government has barely conducted any research on an issue that affects millions every year. The fact that there has been a mandate for over 20 years for the Attorney General to gather and publish these statistics, yet the government has actually done it brings into question how high of a priority the curbing of police brutality actually is. It also reminds me of the Dickey Amendment, a law that was passed in the late 90s after the NRA lobbied for it that bans the CDC from conducting gun violence research.
ReplyDeleteIt is really disturbing that so many police-involved shootings go unreported and that there is clearly insufficient research being permitted regarding the issue. I think the fact that people in positions of power in the government are able to essentially turn a blind eye to major problems like the deadly police-involved shootings that occur shows how important it is to have diversity among the people who hold positions of power, on many levels. Many demographics within the population of the United States often go underrepresented in the groups that ultimately retain the authority to decide whether to take action regarding certain issues or to ignore them, even possibly attempting to conceal them and act like they do not exist. Perhaps an increase in the diversity of those in power, meaning more people who come from different backgrounds and have experienced a wider variety of issues, would enable more attention and action to be brought to certain issues like police brutality that are often not prioritized, despite their impacts.
ReplyDelete