Hands Up, Still Shot: 2/3 of Unarmed Police Killing Victims Are Minority

There are a few high-profile names we hear in the news when we it comes to police shootings – Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray – but this year alone, there are hundreds more. Around 385 to be exact and that was since June 1. If this isn’t appalling enough, of the unarmed victims killed by police, 2/3 happened to be black or Hispanic.

These results come from the “Washington Post” and according to their calculations, that’s about 2 per day and we’re just at the halfway mark of this year. If this trend continues, by the end of the year, police would’ve shot and killed around 1000 people.

When it comes to police shooting and killing victims, about half are white and half are identified as minority. However, the alarming stat is the fact that when victims are unarmed, 2/3 turn out to be minority.

When it comes to age, victims range from 16 to 83. Then when census numbers were taken into account for the areas where the black victims were killed, they were killed at around 3 times the rate of whites are other minorities.

The federal government is challenging these numbers and say they don’t accurately reflect reality. However, “The Post” interviewed several experts and found that numbers aren’t tracked accurately nationwide, many shootings are blamed on poor policing and the police must take responsibility for the lives lost.

It sounds like we’re still not being all the way honest with ourselves when it comes to police shootings, especially unarmed shootings and it’s time to have an open and frank conversation when it comes to police forces and their practices. How many more lives need to be lost?