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Friday, February 11th, 2022

Fatal police shootings in 2021 set record since The Post began tracking, despite public outcry

Author:     Marisa Lati , Steven Rich and Jennifer Jenkins
Source:     The Washington Post
Publication Date:     9 January 2022 | 5:22 p.m. EST
 Link: Fatal police shootings in 2021 set record since The Post began tracking, despite public outcry
Stephan:   The police in the United States are notable for several things. They get the least training in any developed nation, they have the lowest education requirements, and they kill more people than any other, as research organizations style it, "rich" country.  More than 1,000 a year are shot and killed, And, as this report describes, it has been over 1,000 a year for the past seven years. In contrast, in England and Wales 3 people were shot and killed last year by police. In countries as widespread as Denmark and Japan it is very rare for the police to shoot and kill someone. Many nations go years between a single police killing. It is also true that in America more police are killed than in other countries In both instances these occurrences are the manifestation of American obsessive gun psychosis, and the behavior it stimulates.
Officers investigate the scene of a police shooting on Dec. 29 in Silver Spring, Md.
Credit: Katherine Frey/The Washington Post

Police shot and killed at least 1,055 people nationwide last year, the highest total since The Washington Post began tracking fatal shootings by officers in 2015 — underscoring the difficulty of reducing such incidents despite sustained public attention to the issue.

The new count is up from 1,021 shootings the previous year and 999 in 2019. The total comes amid a nationwide spike in violent crime — although nowhere near historic highs — and as people increasingly are venturing into public spaces now that coronavirus vaccines are widely available.

Despite setting a record, experts said the 2021 total was within expected bounds. Police have fatally shot roughly 1,000 people in each of the past seven years, ranging from 958 in 2016 to last year’s high. Mathematicians say this stability may be explained by Poisson’s random variable, a principle of probability theory that holds that the number of independent, uncommon events in […]

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