Title: 1,000 people in the US die every year in police shootings. Who are they? - News @ Northeastern
Headings: 1,000 people in the US die every year in police shootings. Who are they?
1,000 people in the US die every year in police shootings. Who are they?
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In every subtype, African-Americans were victims at a rate higher than their proportion to the national population. “ This disparity is at its most extreme among incidents involving unarmed victims who pose no apparent threat to law enforcement,” says Joey Wertz, a medical student at the University of California Los Angeles who was first author of the study. Such details contribute to a larger, sobering issue, says Miller. “A third of all homes have guns in this country, and we know that police shootings are occurring at higher rates when people live in areas with more guns,” says Miller. “ It’s really sobering. It makes you want to step back and try to think about ways to help everybody reduce the number of fatal encounters. I mean, nobody walks away from this better.” A next step will be to compare fatal encounters against encounters that did not result in a shooting, in hope of coming up with methods that may help defuse the violence. The database recently expanded to account for all 50 states, which should strengthen future studies. “This report is a modest addition to what’s out there,” Miller says. “