Police around the U.S. use force on at least 300,000 people each year, injuring an estimated 100,000 of them, finds a data analysis on law enforcement encounters. Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group, launched a database on Wednesday cataloging non-fatal incidents of police use of force, including stun guns, chemical sprays, K9 dog attacks, neck restraints, beanbags and baton strikes, The Guardian reports. The database features incidents from 2017 through 2022, compiled from public records requests in every state. The findings suggest that despite widespread protests against police brutality after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, overall use of force has remained steady since then and has increased in many jurisdictions.
The data build on past reports that found police kill about 1,200 people each year, or three people a day, a death toll that has crept up every year and dramatically exceeds rates in comparable nations. The nonfatal force statistics show how the killings are just a small fraction of broader police violence and injuries caused by law enforcement. In the absence of a national tracking system for use of force, Mapping Police Violence said it obtained data on use-of-force incidents from more than 2,800 agencies, covering nearly 60% of the population, and got six full years of data from 634 of those departments. The organization calculated average rates of force by population to get national estimates. The data are considered an undercount as they cover only incidents disclosed by officers and agencies, and many states have laws restricting access to police files. Of the agencies that disclosed data for 2022, representing about half of the country, Mapping Police Violence found there were 1.2 uses of force reported for every 1,000 residents. The most common use of force was stun guns, which are considered “less-lethal” but can have deadly consequences; the organization tracked more than 20,000 stun gun deployments.
Comments