Title: Another (Much Higher) Count Of Homicides By Police | FiveThirtyEight
Headings: Another (Much Higher) Count Of Homicides By Police
Another (Much Higher) Count Of Homicides By Police
Content: This count does include a few cases of off-duty officers using deadly force while acting in a law-enforcement capacity. 12 incidents (8 percent) were other cases of arrest-related deaths in which the victims died after being Tasered or otherwise restrained by law enforcement officers. These incidents are more complicated than shootings; the exact cause of death is harder to pin down. In some cases, a victim’s preexisting health issues are blamed. 10 incidents (7 percent) were killings by police officers acting outside the line of duty or accidental deaths. Examples include an officer who killed two women in a drunken-driving accident, a murder-suicide in which an officer killed his ex-wife, and a woman killed in a collision with a police SUV that was pursuing a suspect. These are all newsworthy deaths, but they aren’t examples of the use of deadly force by police officers in the line of duty. We wouldn’t necessarily expect a comprehensive governmental database of police killings to include them. By the narrowest measure possible — in which we give police every benefit of the “cause of death” doubt in incidents where they Tasered or restrained suspects – 85 percent of the sampled incidents were the sort of police killings the government might be expected to keep track of.