U.S. Police ‘kill More Than 2 People A Day:’ Analysis

In an alley in Denver, police gunned down a 17-year-old girl joyrid­ing in a stolen car. In the back­woods of North Carolina, police opened fire on a gun-wield­ing moon­shin­er. And in a high-rise apart­ment in Birmingham, Alabama, police shot an elder­ly man after his son asked them to make sure he was okay. Douglas Harris, 77, answered the door with a gun.

The three are among at least 385 peo­ple shot and killed by police nation­wide dur­ing the first five months of this year, more than two a day, accord­ing to a Washington Post analy­sis. That is more than twice the rate of fatal killings tal­lied by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment over the past decade, a count that offi­cials con­cede is incomplete.

“These shoot­ings are gross­ly under-report­ed,” said Jim Bueermann, a for­mer police chief and pres­i­dent of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to improv­ing law enforce­ment. “We are nev­er going to reduce the num­ber of police shoot­ings if we don’t begin to accu­rate­ly track this information.”

A nation­al debate is rag­ing about police use of dead­ly force, espe­cial­ly against minori­ties. To under­stand why and how often these shoot­ings occur, The Washington Post is com­pil­ing a data­base of every fatal shoot­ing by police in 2015, as well as of every offi­cer killed by gun­fire in the line of duty. The Post looked exclu­sive­ly at shoot­ings, not killings by oth­er means, such as stun guns and deaths in police custody.

Using inter­views, police reports, local news accounts and oth­er sources, The Post tracked more than a dozen details about each killing through Friday, includ­ing the victim’s race, whether the per­son was armed and the cir­cum­stances that led to the fatal encounter. The result is an unprece­dent­ed exam­i­na­tion of these shoot­ings, many of which began as minor inci­dents and sud­den­ly esca­lat­ed into violence.

Among The Post’s findings:

• 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.

• The vast major­i­ty of vic­tims — more than 80 per­cent — were armed with poten­tial­ly lethal objects, pri­mar­i­ly guns, but also knives, machetes, revving vehi­cles and, in one case, a nail gun.

• _Forty-nine peo­ple had no weapon, while the guns wield­ed by 13 oth­ers turned out to be toys. In all, 16 per­cent were either car­ry­ing a toy or were unarmed.

• The dead ranged in age from 16 to 83. Eight were chil­dren younger than 18, includ­ing Jessie Hernandez, 17, who was shot three times by Denver police offi­cers as she and a car­load of friends alleged­ly tried to run them down.

The Post analy­sis also sheds light on the sit­u­a­tions that most com­mon­ly gave rise to fatal shoot­ings. About half of the time, police were respond­ing to peo­ple seek­ing help with domes­tic dis­tur­bances and oth­er com­plex social sit­u­a­tions: A home­less per­son behav­ing errat­i­cal­ly. A boyfriend threat­en­ing vio­lence. A son try­ing to kill himself.

Ninety-two vic­tims — near­ly a quar­ter of those killed — were iden­ti­fied by police or fam­i­ly mem­bers as men­tal­ly ill.

In Miami Gardens, Florida, Catherine Daniels called 911 when she couldn’t per­suade her son, Lavall Hall, a 25-year-old black man, to come in out of the cold ear­ly one morn­ing in February. A diag­nosed schiz­o­phrenic who stood 5‑foot‑4 and weighed bare­ly 120 pounds, Hall was wear­ing box­er shorts and an under­shirt and wav­ing a broom­stick when police arrived. They tried to stun him with a Taser gun and then shot him.

The oth­er half of shoot­ings involved non-domes­tic crimes, such as rob­beries, or the rou­tine duties that occu­py patrol offi­cers, such as serv­ing warrants.

Nicholas Thomas, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in March when police in Smyrna, Georgia, tried to serve him with a war­rant for fail­ing to pay $170 in felony pro­ba­tion fees. Thomas fled the Goodyear tire shop where he worked as a mechan­ic, and police shot into his car.

Although race was a divid­ing line, those who died by police gun­fire often had much in com­mon. Most were poor and had a his­to­ry of run-ins with law enforce­ment over most­ly small-time crimes, some­times because they were emo­tion­al­ly troubled.

Both things were true of Daniel Elrod, a 39-year-old white man. Elrod had been arrest­ed at least 16 times over the past 15 years; he was tak­en into pro­tec­tive cus­tody twice last year because Omaha police feared he might hurt himself.

On the day he died in February, Elrod robbed a Family Dollar store. Police said he ran when offi­cers arrived, jump­ing on top of a BMW in the park­ing lot and yelling, “Shoot me, shoot me.” Elrod, who was unarmed, was shot three times as he made a “mid-air leap” to clear a barbed-wire fence, accord­ing to police records.

Dozens of oth­er peo­ple also died while flee­ing from police, The Post analy­sis shows, includ­ing a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion — 20 per­cent — of those who were unarmed. Running is such a provoca­tive act that police experts say there is a name for the injury offi­cers inflict on sus­pects after­ward: a “foot tax.”

Police are autho­rized to use dead­ly force only when they fear for their lives or the lives of oth­ers. So far, just three of the 385 fatal shoot­ings have result­ed in an offi­cer being charged with a crime — less than 1 percent.

The low rate mir­rors the find­ings of a Post inves­ti­ga­tion in April that found that of thou­sands of fatal police shoot­ings over the past decade, only 54 had pro­duced crim­i­nal charges. Typically, those cas­es involved lay­ers of damn­ing evi­dence chal­leng­ing the officer’s account. Of the cas­es resolved, most offi­cers were cleared or acquitted.

In all three 2015 cas­es in which charges were filed, videos emerged show­ing the offi­cers shoot­ing a sus­pect dur­ing or after a foot chase:

• In South Carolina, police offi­cer Michael Slager was charged with mur­der in the death of Walter Scott, a 50-year-old black man, who ran after a traf­fic stop. Slager’s attor­ney declined to comment.

• In Oklahoma, reserve deputy Robert Bates was charged with sec­ond-degree manslaugh­ter 10 days after he killed Eric Harris, a 44-year-old black man. Bates’s attor­ney, Clark Brewster, char­ac­ter­ized the shoot­ing as a “legit­i­mate acci­dent,” not­ing that Bates mis­tak­en­ly grabbed his gun instead of his Taser.

• And in Pennsylvania, offi­cer Lisa Mearkle was charged with crim­i­nal homi­cide six weeks after she shot and killed David Kassick, a 59-year-old white man, who refused to pull over for a traf­fic stop. Her attor­ney did not return calls for comment.

In many oth­er cas­es, police agen­cies have deter­mined that the shoot­ings were jus­ti­fied. But many law enforce­ment lead­ers are call­ing for greater scrutiny.

After near­ly a year of protests against police bru­tal­i­ty and with a White House task force report call­ing for reforms, a dozen cur­rent and for­mer police chiefs and oth­er crim­i­nal jus­tice offi­cials said police must begin to accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for the car­nage. They argue that a large num­ber of the killings exam­ined by The Post could be blamed on poor policing.

“We have to get beyond what is legal and start focus­ing on what is pre­ventable. Most are pre­ventable,” said Ronald Davis, a for­mer police chief who heads the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

Police “need to stop chas­ing down sus­pects, hop­ping fences and land­ing on top of some­one with a gun,” Davis said. “When they do that, they have no choice but to shoot.”

As a start, crim­i­nol­o­gists say the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ana­lyze police shoot­ings. Currently, the FBI strug­gles to gath­er the most basic data. Reporting is vol­un­tary, and since 2011, less than 3 per­cent of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agen­cies have report­ed fatal shoot­ings by their offi­cers to the FBI. As a result, FBI records over the past decade show only about 400 police shoot­ings a year — an aver­age of 1.1 deaths per day.

According to The Post’s analy­sis, the dai­ly death toll so far for 2015 is close to 2.6. At that pace, police will have shot and killed near­ly 1,000 peo­ple by the end of the year.

“We have to under­stand the phe­nom­e­na behind these fatal encoun­ters,” Bueermann said. “There is a com­pelling social need for this, but a lack of polit­i­cal will to make it happen.”

For the vast major­i­ty of depart­ments, a fatal shoot­ing is a rare event. Only 306 agen­cies have record­ed one so far this year, and most had only one, the Post analy­sis shows.

However, 19 depart­ments were involved in at least three fatal shoot­ings. Los Angeles police lead the nation with eight. The lat­est occurred May 5, when Brendon Glenn, a 29-year-old home­less black man, was shot after an alter­ca­tion out­side a Venice bar.

Oklahoma City police have killed four peo­ple, includ­ing an 83-year-old white man wield­ing a machete.

“We want to do the most we can to keep from tak­ing someone’s life, even under the worst cir­cum­stances,” said Oklahoma City Police Chief William Citty. “There are just going to be some shoot­ings that are unavoidable.”

In Bakersfield, California, all three of the department’s killings occurred in a span of 10 days in March. The most recent involved Adrian Hernandez, a 22-year-old Hispanic man accused of rap­ing his room­mate, dous­ing her with flam­ma­ble liq­uid and set­ting fire to their home.

After a man­hunt, police cor­nered Hernandez, who jumped out of his car hold­ing a BB gun. Police opened fire, and some Bakersfield res­i­dents say they are glad the offi­cers did.

“I’m relieved he can’t come back here, to be hon­est with you,” said Brian Haver, who lives next door to the house Hernandez torched. “If he came out hold­ing a gun, what were they sup­posed to do?”

Although law enforce­ment offi­cials say many shoot­ings are pre­ventable, that is not always true. In dozens of cas­es, offi­cers rushed into volatile sit­u­a­tions and saved lives. Examples of police hero­ism abound.

In Tempe, Arizona, police res­cued a 25-year-old woman who had been stabbed and tied up and was scream­ing for help. Her boyfriend, Matthew Metz, a 26-year-old white man, also stabbed an offi­cer before he was shot and killed, accord­ing to police records.

In San Antonio, a patrol offi­cer heard gun­shots and rushed to the park­ing lot of Dad’s Karaōke bar to find a man shoot­ing into the crowd. Richard Castilleja, a 29-year-old Latino, had hit two men and was still unload­ing his weapon when he was shot and killed, accord­ing to police records.

And in Los Angeles County, a Hawthorne police offi­cer work­ing over­time was cred­it­ed with sav­ing the life of a 12-year-old boy after a fran­tic woman in a gray Mercedes pulled along­side the offi­cer and said a white Cadillac was fol­low­ing her and her son.

Seconds lat­er, the Cadillac roared up. Robert Washington, a 37-year-old black man, jumped out and began shoot­ing into the woman’s car.

“He had two revolvers and start­ed shoot­ing both of them with no words spo­ken. He shot and killed the mom, and then he start­ed shoot­ing at the kid,” said Eddie Aguirre, a Los Angeles County homi­cide detec­tive inves­ti­gat­ing the case.

“The deputy got out of his patrol car and start­ed shoot­ing,” Aguirre said. “He saved the boy’s life.”

- — - -

In about half the shoot­ings, police were respond­ing to non-domes­tic crim­i­nal sit­u­a­tions, with rob­beries and traf­fic infrac­tions rank­ing among the most com­mon offens­es. Nearly half of blacks and oth­er minori­ties were killed in such cir­cum­stances. So were about a third of whites.

In North Carolina, a police offi­cer search­ing for clues in a hit-and-run case approached a green and white mobile home owned by Lester Brown, a 58-year-old white man. On the front porch, the offi­cer spot­ted an ille­gal liquor still. He called for back­up, and drug agents soon arrived with a search warrant.

Officers knocked on the door and asked Brown to secure his dog. Instead, Brown dashed upstairs and grabbed a Soviet SKS rifle, accord­ing to police reports.

Neighbor Joe Guffey told a local TV reporter that he was sit­ting at home with his dogs when the shoot­ing start­ed: “Pow, pow, pow, pow.” Brown was hit sev­en times and pro­nounced dead at the scene.

While Brown alleged­ly stood his ground, many oth­ers involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty chose to flee when con­front­ed by police. Kassick, for exam­ple, attract­ed Mearkle’s atten­tion because he had expired vehi­cle inspec­tion stick­ers. On the day he died, Kassick was on felony pro­ba­tion for drunk­en dri­ving and had drugs in his sys­tem, police and autop­sy reports show.

After fail­ing to pull over, Kassick drove to his sister’s house in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, jumped out of the car and ran. Mearkle repeat­ed­ly struck Kassick with a stun gun and then shot him twice in the back while he was face-down in the snow.

Jimmy Ray Robinson, a.k.a. the “Honey Bun Bandit,” had robbed five con­ve­nience stores in sin­gle a week in cen­tral Texas, grab­bing some of the sticky pas­tries along the way. Robinson, a 51-year-old black man, fled when he spot­ted Waco police offi­cers stak­ing out his home.

Robinson sped off in reverse in a green Ford Explorer. It got stuck in the mud, and four Waco offi­cers opened fire.

“They think they can out­run the offi­cers. They don’t real­ize how dan­ger­ous it is,” said Samuel Lee Reid, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Atlanta Citizen Review Board, which inves­ti­gates police shoot­ings and recent­ly launched a “Don’t Run” cam­paign. “The pan­ic sets in,” and “all they can think is that they don’t want to get caught and go back to jail.”

- — - -

The most trou­bling cas­es began with a cry for help.

About half the shoot­ings occurred after fam­i­ly mem­bers, neigh­bors or strangers sought help from police because some­one was sui­ci­dal, behav­ing errat­i­cal­ly or threat­en­ing vio­lence. Sometimes police were called just because some­one was wor­ried about some­one else’s welfare.

Take Shane Watkins, a 39-year-old white man, who died in his mother’s dri­ve­way in Moulton, Alabama.

Watkins had nev­er been vio­lent, and fam­i­ly mem­bers were not afraid for their safe­ty when they called Lawrence County sheriff’s deputies in March. But Watkins, who suf­fered from bipo­lar dis­or­der and schiz­o­phre­nia, was off his med­ica­tion. Days ear­li­er, he had declared him­self the “god of the fifth ele­ment” and demand­ed whiskey and beer so he could “cleanse the earth with it,” said his sis­ter, Yvonne Cote.

Then he start­ed threat­en­ing to shoot him­self and his dog, Slayer. His moth­er called Cote, who called 911. Cote got back on the phone with her moth­er, who watched Watkins walk onto the dri­ve­way hold­ing a box cut­ter to his chest. A patrol car pulled up, and Cote heard her moth­er yell: “Don’t shoot! He doesn’t have a gun!”

“Then I heard the gun­shots,” Cote said.

Lawrence County sheriff’s offi­cials declined to com­ment and have refused to release doc­u­ments relat­ed to the case.

“There are so many unan­swered ques­tions,” she said. “All he had was a box cut­ter. Wasn’t there some oth­er way for them to han­dle this?”

Catherine Daniels called police for the same rea­son. “I want­ed to get my son help,” she said. Instead, offi­cers Peter Ehrlich and Eddo Trimino fired their stun guns after Hall hit them with the met­al end of the broom­stick, accord­ing to inves­tiga­tive documents.

“Please don’t hurt my child,” Daniels plead­ed, in a scene cap­tured by a cam­era mount­ed on the dash of one of the patrol cars.

“Get on the f — ing ground or you’re dead!” Trimino shout­ed. Then he fired five shots.

Police spokesman Mike Wright declined to com­ment on the case. Daniels said no one from the city has con­tact­ed her. “I haven’t received any­thing. No apol­o­gy, nothing.”

But hours after her son was killed, Daniels said, offi­cers inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing dropped off a six-pack of Coca-Cola.

“I regret call­ing them,” Daniels said. “They took my son’s life.”

- — - -

Washington Post staffers Ted Mellnik, John Muyskens and Amy Brittain con­tributed to this report.