(courtesy the guardian.com)

The FBI doesn’t keep a record of homicides by law enforcement officers. In the wake of the Ferguson riots and the subsequent uproar over policing practices in minority communities, theguardian.com has stepped into the breach with their database of “people killed by police in the US.” It’s presented to the world with the following caveat . . .

The database [combines] Guardian reporting with verified crowdsourced information to build a more comprehensive record of such fatalities. The Counted is the most thorough public accounting for deadly use of force in the US, but it will operate as an imperfect work in progress – and will be updated by Guardian reporters and interactive journalists as frequently and as promptly as possible.

Meanwhile, it’s clear that police shoot and kill more white people than black people. Of course, America is home to more white people than black people. So . . . what? Do white lives matter as much as black lives? There. I said it. Your turn.

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75 COMMENTS

  2. Based on the math, one white life is worth 3/5 of a black life when talking about police killings.

  3. It would be interesting to see it further broken down by specific geographical areas and the circumstances involved.

  4. Average vs. stupid people. Police shoot non compliant stupid people. There I said it.

    • Are you forgetting the numerous cases where they SWAT raid the wrong address and gun down frightened homeowner who thinks it is a robbery or home invasion? How about where they trespass on private property at night without clearly announcing themselves, then gun down the homeowner the moment they see he is armed?

      I am by no means a cop hater, but your statement was patently untrue.

      There were over 80,000 SWAT raids in the US last year. They are sending SWAT teams out for things that many times were once handled with a single unit and a knock on the door. This is the problem with the militarization of domestic Law Enforcement. Once a small town department has these tools, they are not going to NOT use them.

      • What’s inappropriate about sending the Department of Education SWAT team after unarmed college students who default on their loans?

        (Yes, that actually happens.)

        • SWAT teams are also badly needed for people who have overdue library books or grow organic carrots in their back yard (both also true incidents, among many suchlike).

          Note also, the chronological growth of spec ops forces in our military over the past forty years, with the most acceleration occurring in the last ten. A bunch of these guys get out and then join various LE organizations and agencies; split-second lethal response to any and all perceived threats. Arrogance. Hostility. Everyone else is The Enemy. (not to detract from what good most of them do or the sacrifices they’ve made and still make when they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing).

  5. Globally speaking, whites are a minority. Therefore, American police are racists.

  6. “Do white lives matter as much as black lives?”

    Depends upon whether you’re racist, or not.

    There, I said it.

    Actually, someone should ask Obama’s Race Czar, though I suspect the only color *he’s* truly concerned about is green.

  7. Raw numbers need to be weighed against the % of each ethnicity in the group. Caucasians account for somewhere between 64 and 72% of the population (depending on how Hispanics are counted), and blacks are around 12%. So saying “police kill more white people than black people” is just as misleading as most of the crap the anti-gunners spew.

    Come on Robert, you can do better than this.

      • Yeah, ’cause they mo’ white folks to kill. Robert made that plain in the opening para.

        Obviously the elephant in the room is that there are FAR more violent incidents involving black people, almost always young males, than any other group in the country. To ignore this is to whistle past the graveyard and keep focusing on rainbows and unicorns, which is what the lefties and the media have been doing for decades.

        You can argue about the reasons for this, but yo, that’s the basic fact. It’s more dangerous for cops, black, white, Hispanic or Asian, to enter and deal with inner city neighborhoods, and the white majority in the country has been OK with that, also for decades. Soon the chit will be spreading out to the ‘burbs, though, and we’ll see how that goes over.

        • Considering the average firearms skill level of your average inner city denizen carrying his Tec-9/Sigma/Hi-Point compared to a suburban white guy with a couple of ARs/glocks/sigs/SW and the funds to go to the range and learn to use them I’m going to guess not well for the afore mentioned denizens.

          • Oh, I agree, but judging from their past performance, the regime’s cops and military won’t just stand by while the citizens out here defend themselves, like they do when the inner-city denizens are rioting and killing people. They’ll probably try to disarm us, in fact, and THEN they’ll stand by and watch. Or if we DO manage to defend ourselves successfully, they’ll arrest us and haul us into court, like they do in the U.K.

    • Base rates always matter. However, I don’t think you have the most relevant one. Those numbers DO match up pretty well with the number of violent crimes committed by members of the respective races. Do bad stuff, you are more likely to get shot by the police. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8

      • They match the number of arrests and convictions, which is not the same thing (studies have shown that blacks are more likely to be arrested for doing the same thing, and once arrested, are much more likely to be convicted, than whites).

    • Considering that these reports almost always carry the undertone of racial bias, should a responsible calculation include both the number of people of a certain race killed by the police and the number of people of the race whom the police encounter?

      Reporting raw numbers only is irresponsible journalism. It’s a numerator without a denominator.

    • The point is that if you listen to the media outrage, there is only a mention of the absolute number of Blacks killed (not the more accurate per capita numbers you allude should be considered). So if only the total number of Blacks outrages the media and activists, why doesn’t an even higher total of Whites matter?

  8. Well, Id say all lives matter, full stop. However, your life begins to matter significantly less when you become a predator and start trying to prey on others. Congress Critters, Im lookin at you…

    Check out the “How does the Guardian define ‘armed’ and ‘unarmed’?” section if you got time for a laugh.

    Id be curious to see a little more breakdown of these numbers with some sort of national heat map or some infographics, very interested to see how they will try and manipulate this to work for the agenda.

  11. People only matter to the left and the media if they’re able to be used for an agenda. Once black people stop being useful as victims, if ever, the left will cast them aside in favor of their new victim class.

    The black community as a whole is a tragedy, a group that is 95 percent wholly supportive of the people who keep them impoverished, victimized, and enslaved.

    • Exactly.

      Also, this Guardian site actually provides a service, if people would use it. The media are now only making national cases out of police killings when a black person gets killed, so understandably, the LIVs think ONLY blacks are getting killed and that it’s open season on black males. This misperception is being abused by race baiters, and as always, the primary victims of the race baiters are blacks. It’s done for monetary and political purposes, and It’s evil.

  12. I don’t really engage in that race stuff, as it relates to the Cop shooting thing. I think it is a diversion and is used by race hucksters and the Media to make money and drive ratings. I also have no idea what it is to grow up as a black person in the inner city, and as I understand it, the real issue affecting African Americans is much larger than a stupid slogan. I don’t feel the media meme making all black people victims is helping either. to some extent that ends up self-fulfilling. That’s not what MLK preached. But the issue goes much deeper and is not going to be resolved with the current irresponsible, media-driven, 3rd grader-mentality-level slogans and catch phrases. If you ask my Criminal Justice friend, he would say that we need to look at why we are creating felons out of people for stupid things, that essentially takes them out of the ‘game’ and put them into the ‘system’. I just don’t think we are capable of having a mature discussion about the current condition right now or how we could reasonable and responsibly address the issue(s) and that’s sad. Everyone has their own agenda. Everyone wants it to be a one-sentence solution. As we all know, it’s not.

    • Well said.

      Now that anyone who wants to bring up facts is smeared as a racist, it certainly is impossible to have that discussion. It’s a way to shut down free speech. .

    • Urma, I think we need to look at what Portugal has done with decriminalizing drugs as a template for changes in our country. Your friend’s point is well taken that we may well be helping to turn potentially productive. law abiding citizens into criminals by throwing them in jail or prison when they may be candidates for more “progressive” treatment. I hate to use that word “progressive” but could not think of anything more appropriate. OTOH there are people that need to be removed from society. But our jails and prisons seem to be so full of those that don’t that there is not enough room for the hardened criminals. So they tend to get out on plea bargains. The criminalization of drugs and drug use also contributes to corruption, gang violence and organized criminal activity such as we see in Mexico and many parts of the U.S.. There must be a better way.

    • “We” are capable of having a mature discussion. The left is not capable of being mature about anything. The reason we’re in this predicament as a nation is because “we” have allowed the left to spout their stupidity, enact their tyranny, and spread their lies without consequence.

      • If you think the problem lies solely with the left, you are sadly mistaken. The problem is government, period.

        • Yes but one side favors the rapid expansion of government.

          (the other side favors expansion of government)

        • ” I think we need to look at what Portugal has done with decriminalizing drugs as a template for changes in our country”

          Because a bunch of legal junkies, is just what this country needs. Maybe obamacare has an app for that.

        • @Renegade–You forget that there is more than just two groups, and the third group wants representatives that actually represent the will of the people consenting to be governed through Constitutional Law, not fiat law.

          Why do think that most with statist beliefs want the state to have a monopoly on use of force and the control of arms? 11 million concealed carriers, who happen to have consented to having a right become a privilege would be a major insurgency, widely dispersed through a nation, which would be a threat to the state if those armed Americans withdrew their consent.

        • Better to have some legal “junkies” being treated than hundreds of thousands of people locked up, an army of out-of-control police barging down doors on the flimsiest of reasons, and the bloviations of holier-than-thou drug warriors preaching their garbage even as babies are being burned with flashbangs.

  13. For these statistics to be useful at all the deaths need to be broken down into sub-categories. How many people were attacking others when they were killed ? How many were gang members ? How many were committing crimes ? Were those crimes violent or property crimes ? Was a civilian or a police officer being threatened ? Where were these people killed, inner cities, suburbs, etc. ? And so on. Otherwise this table really has little value or meaning.

  14. We should compare it to the number of riots in the city of Baltimore respective to race.

  15. Ok, I was curious so I did the breakdown of these 489 deaths by expected death toll per race, to compare to the actuals (listed in infographic, assuming those are accurate)
    Expected number of deaths out of 489:
    white: 312
    black: 60
    Hispanic: 80
    other/unknown (I’m including mixed race here): 10
    Asian: 23
    Native American: 4

    So, if we’re to assume that there are no other factors at play (such as, say socio-economic position, leading to higher rates of crime) white (non-Hispanic) people are being killed at only 78% of the rate they ‘should’. Black (non-Hispanic) people are being killed at 230% the rate they ‘should’. Hispanics are being killed at 90% of the rate they ‘should’. The poor, benighted, other/unknowns are being killed at a rate of 220% of what they ‘should’. Asians are being killed at a mere 43% of what they ‘should’. And exactly the ‘right’ amount of Native Americans are being killed.

    Seems like, if we’re assuming that racism is the only factor involved here, then racist Americans strongly favor Asians, and lightly favor whites and Hispanics. They are neutral towards Native Americans and absolutely hate blacks and “other/unknowns.” Not exactly your typical view of racism in America, is it? Which points to the answer I hinted at earlier; socio-economic situation – poor, uneducated people have a greater probability to get themselves involved in activities that garner the attention of police, and not just individually, but collectively for their entire community. Some sub-cultures in the US tend to embrace, glorify, or otherwise promote long-term behaviors that tend to lead the average of the community towards greater or lesser education and/or wealth. Asians are a very obvious example of this; nearly all Asian cultures (and therefore nearly all American Asian sub-cultures) are fervently supportive of education; in many cases incredibly so. Individuals vary (a lot), but the overall drive is towards greater education, at the expense of just about everything. The result; the average for Asians in the US is a higher level of education and greater affluence, thus, less deadly encounters with police.

  16. They left out, at a minimum, “biracial” and “white Hispanic.”

    My great-grandfather was Portuguese, so I’m at least as Hispanic as any Native American (1/16) is native-american.

    Or maybe I’m just a first-generation American. And a native one at that. Or just Mericun.

    • biracial is part of “other”, “white Hispanic” is part of Hispanic; the white they are showing is white, non-Hispanic, just as the black is black, non-Hispanic, and the Asian is Asian, non-Hispanic.

      As for having Portuguese ancestry making you Hispanic; not really… since Hispanic, by definition, means ancestry from a Spanish speaking country. Usually it is restricted to mean from a Spanish speaking American (North or South) country. Either way, though, Portuguese != Spanish, so you can just be a white person, like the rest of us Euro-mutts.

      • You missed the sarc.

        So if I were biracial, could I still be black, like our president?

        Congratulations on missing the entire point. Now put away the phrenology book like a good little whatever-you-are.

  17. Let me start off by saying that everyone has the right to live (minus criminals on death row, I guess). Based on your stat chart, there are 489 deaths by police in 2015. 138 Black, 243 White. Yes, in pure numbers, more White people were killed by police. However, if you look up a rough estimate of racial breakdown in the US, you can see that the population is roughly 62.6% White and 13.2% Black. Now if you look at the proportion of deaths per specific race, that’s 138/489 Black deaths and 243/489 White deaths, which are 28.22% and 49.7% of the total, respectively. Compare that to the total population, and you can see that based on there are many more Black deaths by percentage than there should be based on the fraction of Black people in the US, while there are less White deaths by percentage than there should be based on the fraction of White people in the US. (I say “should be” in the sense of the pure math, so don’t over analyze my wording, please.)

    If what I’m saying isn’t clear, it looks like a few others have commented on a similar note.

    • I think you should probably look wider than just black and white (race), though; that leaves the debate in the realm of “racist or not racist,” but looking at the whole picture leaves one with a much greater impression that it is not really about racism, at least not directly.

  18. How about a male vs female breakdown? How about age groups?

    It’s generally youngish males that do stupid and/or criminal sh*t and get killed by the police. The rate is certainly higher among young black males vs young white males, but age and gender are still more important.

    • Well, at least for getting sent to prison it is far better to be female than male… much more so than any given racial divide. They get sent to prison less and receive lesser punishments for the equivalent crime. That gender gap is narrowing, just like the gender pay gap, though.

  19. Nick is ‘Mr.Statistics’, RF.

    How about asking him to break those numbers down and comment?

  20. Who cares about the race? Police gleefully murder people regardless of their skin color.

  21. Do what lives matter? Sure, as long as they’re women or wealthy or LGBT.

    I like women, rich people and LGBT, but c’mon. This is bvllshit.

  22. I don’t really need this broken down by area, race, or any other category. I’m shocked just at seeing 489 so far this year! That means by the end of the year, the police will have likely killed 1000 people. Who knows how many more will be seriously injured? When I realize that there were about 1000 killed last year, and another 1000 the year before that, and yet another 1000 to be killed next year, it makes me very sad. I realize that many of these are probably justified righteous shootings. But I can’t help but wonder how many are “street justice”, or outright murder or just plain screw ups?

  23. White people / white person shot. People tend to ask questions like:

    1. Was the white person breaking the law?
    2. Was the white person resisting arrest?
    3. Was the white person using or about to use deadly force?
    4. Did the white person have a criminal record?
    5. What did the white person look like in his most recent mug shot?

    Black people / black person shot. People tend to ask questions like:

    1. What did the black person look like when they were 12? How about as a fetus?
    2. What does Al Sharpton think?
    3. What does Jesse Jackson think?
    4. What does mom think?
    5. Did Obama say the black person looks like a relative?
    6. Will Holder open a civil rights investigation?
    7. Was the police officer or taxpayer doing the shooting white?
    8. If the police officer or taxpayer wasn’t white, can I invent a new word, like “white Hispanic” so I can make them white?
    9. How does this make me feel?
    10. Is there a way I can look at a tiny portion of the facts, whiling ignoring others, that makes this whole thing look like a racist incident?
    11. Do I need a new big-screen TV? Sneakers? Groceries? Nothing says social justice like stealing sh!t.
    12. Do I need to destroy things and or set things on fire? Nothing says social justice like causing destruction and injury to unrelated persons and / or their property.

    Of course there are certainly exceptions to these “rules.” A very wise man once said to judge a man by the content of his heart and not the color of his skin. That is what mature adults do, regardless of skin color. I judge the police use of force conduct based upon sound professional judgement, the totality of the circumstances, and against my own personal experience and training.

    The ugly facts are that many black people are often more racist than white people. As a white cop, I’ll pull a black female suspect directly in front of my police cruiser video camera. She’ll get a couple of free punches. Then I’ll take her into custody using whatever force is appropriate. And I’ll pray that the media isn’t racist enough to edit the video to make me look like a psycho before showing it to the masses. If needed, I’ll violate policy and release that un-edited video via LiveLeak, YouTube, or possibly even TTAG. Then let the chips fall where they may. If my department backs me, then everything should be fine. In theory. If not, well, there are thousands of opportunistic lawyers in the LA / OC area.

        • As a very old-skool LE guy, my advice, worthless though it might be, is to try to ID and somehow hook up with like-minded officers while you still can, and other than that, it could be time to think about getting out entirely. I would not care to be in your shoes these days. Best wishes, though.

        • Yeah, quit your job and spend your life doing something more useful than dispensing violence for the ruling class. You outsource your morality to the altar of the law, which is so corrupted to its very core such that most of the lawyers and judges who play the game don’t even pretend it has anything to do with justice.

  24. So the 17% of the population is suffering almost 30% of the police killings, while 63% of the population is suffering almost 50% of the police killings. WHO THE HELL CARES! Why are Police killing so many PEOPLE is the only question that matters. The rest is socioeconomic happenstance. Are we really just going to get hung up on who is and isn’t getting there fair share of State-inflicted death?

  26. Everyones life matters-as I tell my bi-racial sons “always be polite to a guy with a gun-especially a cop”. I did un-like Tactical Sh#t today because of their many cop-supporting comments about the cop pulling his gun on the Texas teens-as if the po-leece can do no wrong. Not that the kids weren’t STUPID-but damn that cop is a loose (hand)cannon…

    • The cop was out of control, and after he tripped and fell his ego got hurt. Honestly though he was correct in pulling his gun, he just didn’t have the dexterity to perform the task swiftly enough when the misunderstood youths were squaring up on the officer. The attempted thugs changed their minds when he moved for the gun and he was only able to get it out after they were fleeing from the force equalizer.

      A cop allowed himself to be surrounded by a feral pack of the most violent segment of our society and equalized the disparity in force in the moment he was threatened. Any armed citizen would have been correct in that situation.

      If your kids don’t act like hoodrat thugs they shouldn’t worry about catching a slug. Lead poisoning by association is something that is avoided by good judgement on the kids part as a result of good parenting.

  27. I don’t really give a rats a** what those number are (as far as race make-up) but let’s see the numbers off those who ran from the cops and thus escalated whatever situation they were in to the number of those who got shot while being polite, or at least cooperative, to those who just deserved to be ventilated.

    And no, the act of running away doesn’t necessarily need the use of any weapons but the police must catch those who run. Hell, if running or driving away meant the police had to let you go if you weren’t involved in a violent act, I would never get another ticket for anything. I’d just flee.

    Almost all of the recent shootings involved someone fleeing or resisting arrest. Not all but most.

    With nearly a million law enforcement personnel and over 13 million arrests made per year, if 100 of these deaths are not warranted shootings, besides being 100 too many, ….well lets just say that if there were only 100 firearm related homicides per year in this big ol’ country of ours, almost all of the readers of this site would be saying that 100 isn’t too bad.

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