Can we agree that police kill too many people without accountability?

Orlando FL

Description

A study reported by numerous news sources examines how over 17,000 police killings have not been reported because Medical Examiners have intentionally misclassified the cause of death. “The undercounted killings are not missing; the NVSS keeps a remarkably accurate tally of American deaths. Rather, they are miscategorized in the system. Some under-reporting may be unintentional, the result of poor training or ambiguous instructions. Critically, the study notes, medical examiners filling out death reports are prompted in their documentation to, “Describe how the injury occurred.” If the involvement of law enforcement is not recorded in this text field, the paper says, then the death will not be accurately coded into the system. The multistep process and open-ended question makes capturing a death by police in the federal database “more complicated than [capturing a death by] cirrhosis or lung cancer,” says Mohsen Naghavi, the paper’s senior author. The results of the study are staggering: Over the last four decades, nearly 31,000 Americans died at the hands of police, while fewer than 14,000 of those killings were properly recorded by the government — meaning the federal data “did not report 55.5 percent of all deaths attributable to police violence.” For police killings of Black Americans, the undercounting was greater still, with “5,670 deaths missing” from official federal statistics, “out of an estimated 9,540 total deaths. But the researchers also sound the alarm over “substantial conflicts of interest” that “could disincentivise” accurate recording. Medical examiners often work for their local police departments, and in some rural areas sheriffs serve double duty as coroners. “Currently, the same government responsible for this violence is also responsible for reporting on it,” warns co-lead author Fablina Sharara.” There must be legislation passed to reign in the police! Transactional Immunity must be ended, accountability must be gained!