Story by Maddie Watkins
March marks the third month of the year, and by this time, 201 people had already been killed by police in 2022, according to data from Campaign Zero’s Mapping Police Violence. This same data reveals another harrowing statistic. Out of the 365 days we have in a year, only 15 days in 2021 went by without a police officer killing someone.
Campaign Zero is a non-profit organization that encourages policymakers to focus on evidence-based solutions to reduce policy violence. They believe their Mapping Police Violence data is “the most comprehensive accounting of people killed by police since 2013.”
And I, for one, have to agree with their data.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that about 1,200 people were killed by police between June of 2015 and May of 2016, and the Campaign Zero data successfully identified 1,104 people killed by police within this time frame.
This data is particularly scary if you, like me, are a Black person in America. We are 2.9 times more likely to be killed by police than White people in the U.S.
And the rest of the Mapping Police Violence data supports that. An overwhelming number of the civilians killed are Black. In 2021 alone, 266 Black civilians died at the hands of police. There were 189 days that year when police killed a Black person. That’s over half of the year.
We are not the only ones who should be concerned either. Actually, Pacific Islanders are killed by policy even more frequently, with 87 killings per million people since 2013, which is 25 more than the killings in the Black population. Asians are least at risk, with 7.3 killings per million, followed by 22 in the White community. Native Americans and Hispanics fall in the third and fourth highest deaths, respectively.
This data makes it clear. This is a problem, and this has to stop.
We need to stop giving these people a platform to do whatever they want without consequences. There is absolutely no justification to killing people that ultimately didn’t do anything wrong. We can't keep allowing the same excuse of self defense. A regular civilian can’t get away with killing someone who wasn’t trying to kill them, so why is it ok for police officers?
Between 2013-2020, 98.3% of killings by police resulted in no charges against the officers, according to the Mapping Police Violence data.
In August of 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot to death by officer Darren Wilson after Wilson ordered Brown and his friend, Dorian Johnson, to stop walking on the street and get on the sidewalk. An altercation ensued between Wilson and Brown leading to Brown, who was unarmed, being shot six times.
After months of trial, it was concluded that Wilson was acting out of self-defense and would not be charged for the killing. There’s a common argument that if you are not doing “bad” or illegal things, then you won’t be affected by police violence. How many times have you heard “bad things happen to bad people?”
But this is rarely the case. Many people killed are unarmed, just like Brown. They are no threat. The police are killing innocent people and they are essentially getting away with murder.
Plus, even if the person in question was doing something illegal, what is bad enough to warrant the end of your life? Writing a bad check?
When these corrupt police officers don't get punished for their actions, others see this as a greenlight to completely disregard human life. The lack of accountability and punishment leaves the community scared. People of color fear calling the police because there's ultimately no guarantee that you won't get gunned down in your own home. It's sad that we have to live in a world where we are more scared of the people that are supposed to protect us than the actual thing that they are supposed to protect us from.
As a solution to this, communities have suggested defunding the police. To defund the police, means “reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality,” according to the Brookings Institution, a non-profit public policy organization.
Initially, I was against this idea because I misinterpreted it. I thought that meant just completely cutting police salaries down, which would make no sense because then less people would want to serve the community. After doing more research, I found out that defunding the police could actually be a positive thing.
Defunding the police means that money doesn't just go away. Instead, it’ll get put into other government programs. With that money, we can build things like community centers in low income areas. Community centers give the children a place to go besides the streets. It keeps the youth out of trouble. Less crime means less police presence, creating less tension between the police and the people.
However, this is no easy feat. On June 1, 2021, Governor Greg Abbott signed a slate of legislation to increase criminal penalties for protesters and to punish cities that reduce police budgets. He is part of the problem. Silencing our voices instead of actively trying to find solutions is what makes the community so angry.
The powers that be have spent their time working on trying to keep us quiet when that energy could have been used to try to find solutions to the real problem. That's a piece of that wedge between the people and the government. It makes us feel less valued.
So many lives have been lost from police violence for far too long, and we need to follow through with the solutions that are commonly brought up in discussion.
Even though defunding the police is a positive step, we still need more. That money should also go into better screening for police.
When they go through training, they should go through an actual psychological screening to make sure we don't have unstable people walking around with guns. As of 2015, Texas is reevaluating its approach to evaluating the psychological and emotional health of officers.
The “shoot to kill” mindset has also been a highly problematic factor. It gives police the excuse to completely disregard human life. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that there are plenty other ways to defuse the situation. A taser works perfectly fine to get control over a situation. If it is absolutely necessary to shoot someone, shooting someone in non vital areas would be significantly better than actually killing someone.
We also need to have better protocols for search warrants.
In January of this year, a 19-year-old named Isaiah Tyree Williams was sleeping peacefully on his couch when police broke into his apartment at 5 a.m. and executed him. They were serving a search warrant to the wrong apartment building and were not charged for their crimes. We have yet another Black teenager, with his whole life ahead of him, who is now dead due to police incompetence.
All of my proposed solutions align with Campaign Zero’s policy solutions. The organization advocates for limiting use of force, independent investigations, more effective training, ending for-profit policing, and demilitarization.
This is not the first time the police have killed someone by accident. Remember Breonna Taylor? Taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen is imperative.
We need to prioritize doing whatever it takes to keep people safe. It’s past time to address police brutality.