Police Killing Citizens, 2015

This email from Campaign Zero is the thing that's getting my attention today. Assuming you, my reader, are not on their email list, I thought I would share it in its entirety.


Today, we released The 2015 Year-End Police Violence Report, focused on police killings in America's 60 largest cities. The data, part of the Mapping Police Violence project which is the foundation for our work with Campaign Zero, shows which of these cities' police departments kill people at higher or lower rates than others. Three charts presenting the data and the source dataset are attached. Key findings include:

Police killed at least 1,152 people in America from January 1st through December 15, 2015. Nearly a quarter of these killings, 249 in total, were committed by the police departments of America's 60 largest cities, which police 17% of the U.S. population.

59 of the nation's largest 60 city police departments killed people in 2015, and some killed people much more than others:

• Bakersfield, Oklahoma City, Oakland, Indianapolis Metropolitan, Long Beach, New Orleans, St. Louis Metropolitan, and San Francisco Police Departments killed people at the highest rates in 2015.
• St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department killed over 7x more people per capita in 2015 than did Philadelphia Police Department, meaning your risk of being killed by your city's police department were 7x higher if you lived in St. Louis compared to Philadelphia this year.
• Of the 60 police departments reviewed, only Riverside Police Department did not kill anyone in 2015.
• The 60 largest city police departments disproportionately killed black people, who are 41% of the victims despite being only 20% of the population living in these jurisdictions.
• 14 of the 60 largest police city departments killed black people exclusively in 2015, 100% of the people they killed were black; for only 5 police departments were 100% of those killed white.

Data shows that police violence and community violence are completely separate issues. While some have blamed "black on black" crime for being responsible for police violence in our communities, data shows that high levels of violent crime in cities did not make it any more or less likely for police departments to kill people. Rather, as investigations into some of the most violent police departments in America show, police violence reflects a lack of accountability in the culture, policies, and practices of the institutions of policing. Campaign Zero, among other initiatives, seeks to directly address the policies and practices that contribute to police violence.
We hope these facts and statistics will help you make the case to end police violence in your community. More analysis of police violence will be released in the coming weeks.

In solidarity,

DeRay, Netta, Brittany and Sam