Global Research - How many people are killed every year by the police in the U.S.? The exact number is not known. There is no federal agency that keeps track. The FBI compiles annual statistics for “justified homicides” by police—and all reported police killings are registered as “justified” by the FBI.
According to FBI statistics, there were 461 “justified homicides” by police in 2013. However, the website KilledByPolice.net reported that U.S. non-military police killed 748 people in just the last eight months of 2013, and 1,100 in 2014. The KilledByPolice numbers were compiled using mainstream media sources. Actual totals are undoubtedly higher, as not all police killings are reported, and it is virtually impossible to check all of the tens of thousands of media sources in the country.
By contrast, in England, also a capitalist country with a long history of racism, police reportedly fired guns three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities. Police do not carry guns on patrol in England.
From 2010 through 2014, there were five fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent of England’s, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same time period!
In 2011, the FBI reported 404 “justifiable homicides” by U.S. police. Based on the data collected by KilledByPolice for 2013 and 2014, the real number of police killings for 2011 was likely over 1,000. There were two reported police killings in England, meaning that the rate of killing by U.S. police was about 100 times that of English cops in 2011.
The same year, German police, who do carry guns, reportedly killed six people. Germany, another racist, capitalist country with large numbers of oppressed minorities, has a population about one-quarter that of the U.S. So on a per capita basis, U.S. police were 40 times as likely to kill as German cops.
Canada, another multi-national state with about 12 percent the population of the U.S., also reported six fatal police shootings in 2011, meaning that U.S. cops were 20 times as likely to kill as their Canadian counterparts.
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