Black Americans killed by police twice as likely to be unarmed as white people

Source: The Guardian

Black Americans killed by police twice as likely to be unarmed as white people

Guardian analysis finds 102 people killed by police so far this year were unarmed,
and that agencies are killing people at twice the rate calculated by US government

Jon Swaine, Oliver Laughland and Jamiles Lartey in New York
Monday 1 June 2015 13.38 BST

Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be unarmed when killed during encounters with police as white people, according to a Guardian investigation which found 102 of 464 people killed so far this year in incidents with law enforcement officers were not carrying weapons.

An analysis of public records, local news reports and Guardian reporting found that 32% of black people killed by police in 2015 were unarmed, as were 25% of Hispanic and Latino people, compared with 15% of white people killed.

The findings emerged from a database filled by a five-month study of police fatalities in the US, which calculated that local and state police and federal law enforcement agencies are killing people at twice the rate calculated by the US government’s official public record of police homicides. The database names five people whose names have not been publicly released.

The Guardian’s statistics include deaths after the police use of a Taser, deaths caused by police vehicles and deaths following altercations in police custody, as well as those killed when officers open fire. They reveal that 29% of those killed by police, or 135 people, were black. Sixty-seven, or 14%, were Hispanic/Latino, and 234, or 50%, were white. In total, 102 people who died during encounters with law enforcement in 2015 were unarmed.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/black-americans-killed-by-police-analysis