12 Extremely Disturbing Statistics About Police Violence and Black People That Should Alarm You

More Dangerous Than a Terrorist Americans are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist. Of course, if we consider only African-Americans, the risk of a Black person being killed by law enforcement is even higher. State-Sponsored Lynching According to the most recent FBI reports, from 2005 to 2012, a white police officer killed a Black person nearly twice a week. That's about the same number of Black people lynched on a weekly basis during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The War Against Young Black Males Young Black males between the ages of 15 and 19 were killed by police officers at a rate of 21 times greater than their white counterparts. Criminal Injustice System Of the country's 17,000 police departments, only 750 agencies report fatalities to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting Program -- a measly 4 percent. Reports show that 18 percent of the Blacks killed were younger than 21, compared to 8.7 percent of whites. Killing Black Babies The young Black boys killed are often disturbingly young. There were 41 teens 14 years old or younger reported to have been killed by police from 1980 to 2012. Among them, 27 were Black; eight were white; four were Hispanic, and one was Asian. Black Cop Black officers account for a little more than 10 percent of all fatal police shootings. Of those they kill, though, 78 percent were Black. Overusing Force Sixty-seven percent of those teens who were shot dead while fleeing or resisting arrest, according to police, were Black. Death by Mysterious Circumstances In instances where people were killed by the police and the circumstances of those killings were listed as "undetermined," 76 percent of the victims were Black. The Cop Who Cried 'Officer Under Attack' From 1980 to 1984, “officer under attack” was listed as the cause for 33 percent of the deadly shootings. In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled that police could only justify using deadly force if the suspects posed a threat to the officer or others. Twenty years later, looking at data from 2005 to 2009, “officer under attack” was cited in 62 percent of police killings. Wannabe Cops Join In Police officers, security guards or self-appointed vigilantes extrajudicially killed at least 313 African-Americans in 2012, according to a recent study. This means a Black person was killed by a security officer every 28 hours. Usually Unarmed Suspect According to a report, 71 percent had no weapon at all at the time they were killed or police claimed the suspect had a gun but it couldn't be proven. Sources: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Vital Statistics System F.B.I.’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program Propublica Malcolm X Grassroots Movement TheWashingtonsBlog PBS - American Experience: Lynching

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