Statistics about fatal police shootings are notoriously hard to come by, so the Washington Post started counting this year. The result is an analysis of 385 fatal police shootings — more than 2 per day — around the nation during the first 5 months of 2015. Reports the
Post:
About half the victims were white, half minority. But the demographics shifted sharply among the unarmed victims, two-thirds of whom were black or Hispanic. Overall, blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred.
And if you’re wondering if any of those fatal shootings produced charges against an officer, here’s what the newspaper found: only 3 resulted in an officer being charged with a crime — less than 1 percent of the total number of cases nationwide.
Continue reading