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Sunday, June 7th, 2015

Imagine: you call the police to check on your grandfather, and they shoot him

Author:     Steven W. Thrasher
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:    
Link: Imagine: you call the police to check on your grandfather, and they shoot him
Stephan:   Here is the latest on the Guardian's research on American police violence. It is an increasingly ugly story. Something has gone seriously wrong about the way we train and regulate our police. The evidence is the evidence. We are way past polemic argument on this subject. The fact that this is coming out in the most prestigious British newspaper, when no American paper is tracking police violence like this, makes it all the more damning.
You don’t expect your Golden Years to be ended by a police. But it happens. Credit: Cultura RM/Alamy

You don’t expect your Golden Years to be ended by a police. But it happens.
Credit: Cultura RM/Alamy

You’re never too old to be killed by an interaction with a police officer in the United States: though the Guardian’s analysis of every police killing in 2015 to date found that the average age of people killed by police is 37, some 20 people killed this year have been in their 60s, seven in their 70s, and two in their 80s – about six elderly people a month.

The circumstances behind the killing of elder citizens by police mirror the many reasons why Americans of all ages (some 473 in total this year as of the time this was published) are killed by police.

But police encounters with the elderly which turn deadly are largely triggered by three things: vehicular slaughter; episodes of extreme violence – sometimes with the victim possibly intending […]

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