There has certainly been a lot of attention on citizens who have been killed by police officers. The recent events (thanks to cellphone video) in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis have put a national spotlight on this very contentious issue.
Dyfed Loesche, a “data journalist” with Statista.com, did some digging and came up with, what I found to be, surprising numbers on what is happening in the country.
Watching the coverage and hearing the rhetoric, you would assume the majority of people being killed by police officers are black men, but you would be wrong. As of July 8, 238 white males have been killed versus 123 black men (you can see all the information on the data graph below).
The other number that jumps out to me is that of the 509 killed this year, at least 124 were thought to be suffering some sort of mental illness. David Brown, Dallas police chief, who lost 5 officers in a horrific attack said police are left to solve the problems left by government officials.
“Not enough mental health funding, let the cop handle it. Not enough drug addiction funding, let’s give it to the cops. Here in Dallas we have a loose dog problem. Let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, give it to the cops. 70 percent of the African-American community is being raised by single women, let’s give it to the cops to solve as well. That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems. I just ask other parts of our democracy along with the free press to help us.”
