Black Men Are More Likely To Die At Hands Of Police: Top Things You May Have Missed About Policing This Week

From USA today

Police three times more likely to kill black men

If you’re a black man, you are three times more like­ly to be killed by police than a white man, accord­ing to a recent study pub­lished in the American Journal of Public Health. The study looked at all-male homi­cides report­ed in the last six years. Eight per­cent of them were police killings. And of the 6,300 total male homi­cides, near­ly 1,800 of them were black men. What’s more, is that this issue is preva­lent across the coun­try. There’s not a sin­gle place in the U.S. where the risk of a black man get­ting killed by police is less than dou­ble that of a white man. 

Video shows officer restraining child

After a Facebook video of a white police offi­cer force­ful­ly restrain­ing a black boy went viral, the Georgia Police Department released the offi­cer’s body cam­era video to pro­vide con­text in the midst of racial bias accu­sa­tions. The offi­cers were arrest­ing a domes­tic vio­lence sus­pect when the man’s 10-year-old son began scream­ing and cry­ing. The boy lunged at one of the offi­cers, caus­ing them to land on the patrol car, accord­ing to the police state­ment. The offi­cer then pinned the boy to the ground. Once the boy calmed down, the offi­cer let him up and allowed him to see his father in the back of the cop car. The inci­dent is cur­rent­ly under investigation. 

Teen flees bike ticket, gets hit by cop-car

A 16-year-old boy in Sacramento was run­ning from a bicy­cle vio­la­tion when he was hit by a patrol car Sunday night. 
Police attempt­ed to stop the boy for light­ing vio­la­tions on his bike, but he ran off. The offi­cers chased after him and called for back­up, and one of the addi­tion­al police cars struck the boy. He was cit­ed for resist­ing arrest but did­n’t suf­fer any life-threat­en­ing injuries. His fam­i­ly said they plan to take legal action. A woman claims she was also hit by the cop car dur­ing the col­li­sion, but police have not yet con­firmed this sec­ond incident.

A win for immigrants

Immigrants liv­ing in Orlando, Florida, with­out legal per­mis­sion no longer need to wor­ry about being deport­ed if they talk to the city’s police force. 

Orlando com­mis­sion­ers vot­ed on Monday to stop police offi­cers from ask­ing about the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of “law-abid­ing” cit­i­zens. Crime vic­tims and wit­ness­es, as well as low-lev­el traf­fic offend­ers, need not wor­ry about speak­ing to the police. Commissioner Tony Ortiz, who con­tributed to the res­o­lu­tion’s suc­cess, explained that this was not “sanc­tu­ary city” leg­is­la­tion, but one that allows immi­grants of good char­ac­ter to live in the coun­try peacefully.

Police officer forced out for racial slur

A Kentucky police depart­ment took dis­ci­pli­nary action after one of its offi­cers called a black teen a“wild ani­mal that needs to be put down” in a Facebook post. Former offi­cer Brian Smith was inves­ti­gat­ed by the Louisville Police Department after an attor­ney com­plained that Smith’s Facebook account dis­played “deep-seat­ed bias against minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties.” Chief Steven Conrad planned to fire Smith in January due to his Facebook posts, but ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to sus­pend him for 30 days with­out pay. Smith resigned from the depart­ment in April. 
And just today the NYPD police com­mis­sion­er fired Daniel Pantaleo the cop who mur­dered Eric Garner.