Police killings

There are about 800 arrest related deaths per year. This is a person killed by an officer. About 250 of those are African Americans. There are another 50 blacks killed by security guards or self-appointed vigilantes. The sites on the Internet say there is no data for how many of those killed were unarmed but that is not true. There is data on every killing and explanations of what happened but no one apparently has taken the time to go through this data. I looked through a representative sampling and I would estimate that 10% or about 30 of these were unarmed. Of these most are cases where the officer felt he was in mortal danger but that is subjective judgment and subject to challenge. If all of these were judged as improper action on the part of the police office that would mean about 2.5 times per month an event like this happens. Of these 30 only a few make national news perhaps 4 or 5 per year. Each time one makes the news people all take sides long before they hear the evidence so when the courts finally rule many are disappointed because they have already made up their minds and they have no room for jury decisions. This happened in the Travon Martin case and in the Casey Anthony case.