Title: Why Police Officers Aren't Held Accountable When They Kill People | Teen Vogue
Headings: Why Police Officers Aren't Held Accountable When They Kill People
Why Police Officers Aren't Held Accountable When They Kill People
There's lack of accountability at every level of the system.

Content: He compiled data about officer arrests since 2005 that shows how officers constantly avoid punishment for illegal actions. He found that even arrests for drunk driving rarely end in convictions, and arrests or internal discipline for misconduct are more likely for veteran officers than rookie cops, who are often seen as more reckless and prone to violence. His research found that just 41 on-duty police officers were charged with either murder or manslaughter between 2005 and 2011, the same period in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation recorded several thousand justifiable homicides. It is difficult to determine exactly how many fatal police shootings occur each year. In fact, in 2015 former FBI director James Comey described the bureau’s system for tracking fatal police shootings as a “travesty.” The FBI has difficulty in tracking police misconduct because federal databases rely upon local law enforcement departments voluntarily reporting incidents, according to the Washington Post. As head of the FBI, James Comey met with then-President Barack Obama to discuss policing in the United States. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
In 2014, The Wall Street Journal did an analysis of records offered between 2007 and 2012 by the United States' largest police forces, and found that over 550 law enforcement shooting deaths weren't included in the FBI's statistics. The exact number of police departments in the United States is unknown, though estimates place the number somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000, depending on what kind of agencies are counted. In 2016, Comey announced that the bureau would construct a database to more carefully monitor police uses of force, beginning a pilot program for the data collection in 2017.