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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Wall Street Journal
Hundreds of Police Killings Are Uncounted in Federal Stats
FBI Data Differs from Local Counts on Justifiable Homicides
By
Rob Barry And
Coulter Jones
Updated Dec. 2, 2014 10:33 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—When 24-year-old Albert Jermaine Payton wielded a knife in front of the police in this city’s southeast corner, officers opened fire and killed him.
Yet according to national statistics intended to track police killings, Mr. Payton’s death in August 2012 never happened. It is one of hundreds of homicides by law-enforcement agencies between 2007 and 2012 that aren’t included in records kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest data from 105 of the country’s largest police agencies found more than 550 police killings during those years were missing from the national tally or, in a few dozen cases, not attributed to the agency involved. The result: It is nearly impossible to determine how many people are killed by the police each year.
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Public demands for transparency on such killings have increased since the August shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Mo. The Ferguson Police Department has reported to the FBI one justifiable homicide by police between 1976 and 2012.
Law-enforcement experts long have lamented the lack of information about killings by police. “When cops are killed, there is a very careful account and there’s a national database,” said Jeffrey Fagan, a law professor at Columbia University. “Why not the other side of the ledger?”
Police can use data about killings to improve tactics, particularly when dealing with people who are mentally ill, said Paco Balderrama, a spokesman for the Oklahoma City Police Department. “It’s great to recognize that, because 30 years ago we used to not do that. We used to just show up and handle the situation.”
Three sources of information about deaths caused by police—the FBI numbers, figures from the Centers for Disease Control and data at the Bureau of Justice Statistics—differ from one another widely in any given year or state, according to a 2012 report by David Klinger, a criminologist with the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a onetime police officer.
To analyze the accuracy of the FBI data, the Journal requested internal records on killings by officers from the nation’s 110 largest police departments. One-hundred-five of them provided figures.
Those internal figures show 1,825 police killings in those 105 departments between 2007 and 2012, 47% more than the FBI’s tally for justifiable homicides in those departments’ jurisdictions, which was 1,242, according to the Journal’s analysis. Nearly all police killings are deemed by the departments or other authorities to be justifiable.
The full national scope of the underreporting can’t be quantified. In the period analyzed by the Journal, 753 police entities reported about 2,400 killings by police. The large majority of the nation’s roughly 18,000 law-enforcement agencies didn’t report any.
“Does the FBI know every agency in the U.S. that could report but has chosen not to? The answer is no,” said Alexia Cooper, a statistician with the Bureau of Justice Statistics who studies the FBI’s data. “What we know is that some places have chosen not to report these, for whatever reason.”
FBI spokesman Stephen G. Fischer said the agency uses “established statistical methodologies and norms” when reviewing data submitted by agencies. FBI staffers check the information, then ask agencies “to correct or verify questionable data,” he said.
The reports to the FBI are part of its uniform crime reporting program. Local law-enforcement agencies aren’t required to participate. Some localities turn over crime statistics, but not detailed records describing each homicide, which is the only way particular kinds of killings, including those by police, are tracked by the FBI. The records, which are supposed to document every homicide, are sent from local police agencies to state reporting bodies, which forward the data to the FBI.
The Journal’s analysis identified several holes in the FBI data.
Justifiable police homicides from 35 of the 105 large agencies contacted by the Journal didn’t appear in the FBI records at all. Some agencies said they didn’t view justifiable homicides by law-enforcement officers as events that should be reported. The Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia, for example, said it didn’t consider such cases to be an “actual offense,” and thus doesn’t report them to the FBI.
For 28 of the remaining 70 agencies, the FBI was missing records of police killings in at least one year. Two departments said their officers didn’t kill anyone during the period analyzed by the Journal.
About a dozen agencies said their police-homicides tallies didn’t match the FBI’s because of a quirk in the reporting requirements: Incidents are supposed to be reported by the jurisdiction where the event occurred, even if the officer involved was from elsewhere. For example, the California Highway Patrol said there were 16 instances in which one of its officers killed someone in a city or other local jurisdiction responsible for reporting the death to the FBI. In some instances reviewed by the Journal, an agency believed its officers’ justifiable homicides had been reported by other departments, but they hadn’t.
Also missing from the FBI data are killings involving federal officers.
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Police in Washington, D.C., didn’t report to the FBI details about any homicides for an entire decade beginning with 1998—the year the Washington Post found the city had one of the highest rates of officer-involved killings in the country. In 2011, the agency reported five killings by police. In 2012, the year Mr. Payton was killed, there are again no records on homicides from the agency.
D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said she doesn’t know why the agency stopped reporting the numbers in 1998. “I wasn’t the chief and had no role in decision making” back then, said Ms. Lanier, who was a captain at the time. When she took over in 2007, she said, reporting the statistics “was a nightmare and a very tedious process.”
Ms. Lanier said her agency resumed its reports in 2009. In 2012, the agency turned over the detailed homicide records, she said, but the data had an error in it and was rejected by the FBI. She referred questions about why the department stopped reporting homicides in 1998 to former Chief Charles H. Ramsey, now head of the Philadelphia Police Department. Mr. Ramsey declined to comment.
In recent years, police departments have tried to rely more on statistics to develop better tactics. “You want to get the data right,” said Mike McCabe, the undersheriff of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office in Michigan. It is “really important in terms of how you deploy your resources.”
A total of 100 agencies provided the Journal with numbers of people killed by police each year from 2007 through 2012; five more provided statistics for some years. Several, including the police departments in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Austin, Texas, post detailed use-of-force reports online.
Five of the 110 agencies the Journal contacted, including the Michigan State Police, didn’t provide internal figures. A spokeswoman for the Michigan State Police said the agency had records of police shootings, but “not in tally form.”
Big increases in the numbers of officer-involved killings can be a red flag about problems inside a police department, said Mike White, a criminologist at Arizona State University. “Sometimes that can be tied to poor leadership and problems with accountability,” he said.
The FBI has almost no records of police shootings from departments in three of the most populous states in the country—Florida, New York and Illinois.
In Florida, available reports from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement don’t conform to FBI requirements and haven’t been included in the national tally since 1996. A spokeswoman for the state agency said in an email that Florida was “unable” to meet the FBI’s reporting requirements because its tracking software was outdated.
New York revamped its reporting system in 2002 and 2006, but isn’t able to track information about justifiable police homicides, said a spokeswoman for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. She said the agency was “looking to modify our technology so we can reflect these numbers.”
In 1987, a commission created by then-Governor Mario Cuomo to investigate abuse of force by police found that New York’s reports to the FBI were “inadequate and incomplete,” and urged reforms to “hold government accountable for the use of force.” The spokeswoman for the state criminal-justice agency said it isn’t clear what the agency did in response back then.
Illinois only began reporting crime statistics to the FBI in 2010 and hasn’t phased in the detailed homicide reports. “We cannot begin adding additional pieces because we are newcomers to the federal program,” said Terri Hickman, director of the Illinois State Police’s crime-reporting program. Two agencies in Illinois deliver data to the FBI: Chicago and Rockford.
In Washington, D.C., councilman Tommy Wells held two hearings this fall on police oversight. He said he was surprised that the department hadn’t reported details of police killings to the FBI. “That should not be a challenge,” he said.
More than two years after the knife-carrying Mr. Payton was shot and killed by D.C. police, his mother, who witnessed the killing, said she is still looking for answers. Helena Payton, 59, said her son had many interactions with local police because of what she said was his mental illness. “All the cops in the Seventh District knew him, just about,” she said.
The officers who arrived that Friday afternoon in August, in response to a call from Mr. Payton’s girlfriend, had never dealt with her son, she said. According to Ms. Payton, her son walked outside holding a small utility knife. As he approached the officers, they fired dozens of bullets at him, she said. He died soon after.
The U.S. attorney’s office is reviewing the incident, as is customary in all police shootings in Washington. A spokesman for the office declined to comment on the status of the case. The Washington police department, citing the continuing investigation, declined to provide the officers’ names, a narrative of what happened, or basic information usually included in the reports to the FBI, such as the number of officers involved in the shooting.
The officers involved are back on duty, according to D.C. authorities, but the case isn’t closed.
Write to Rob Barry at rob.barry@wsj.com and Coulter Jones at Coulter.Jones@wsj.com
1. Hundreds of Police Killings Are Uncounted in Federal Stats
Hundreds of Police Killings Are Uncounted in Federal Stats |
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Wed Dec 03, 2014 10:20 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Wed Dec 03, 2014 10:22 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Cop Block
Read the following and tell us how you feel: " Hundreds of Police Killings Are Uncounted in Federal Stats "
"To analyze the accuracy of the FBI data, the Journal requested internal records on killings by officers from the nation’s 110 largest police departments. One-hundred-five of them provided figures.
Those internal figures show 1,825 police killings in those 105 departments between 2007 and 2012, 47% more than the FBI’s tally for justifiable homicides in those departments’ jurisdictions, which was 1,242, according to the Journal’s analysis. Nearly all police killings are deemed by the departments or other authorities to be justifiable.
The full national scope of the underreporting can’t be quantified. In the period analyzed by the Journal, 753 police entities reported about 2,400 killings by police. The large majority of the nation’s roughly 18,000 law-enforcement agencies didn’t report any."
(Repost from Pig State News) -Jabar/ We Copwatch/ Bay Area Intifada
Read: http://online.wsj.com/…/hundreds-of-police-killings-are-unc… |
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Wed Dec 03, 2014 10:24 am |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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Sure cure for that don't engage the police as a thug and you probably have little to worry about except of course being killed by a member of your own race. And of course I would suggest to cops everywhere don't get in a situation where you might have to defend yourself against the thugs, that is apparently what Obama Sharpton holder and the rest of the baiters want. Let them have at it and pick up the pieces after the fact.
Also cops take note who the libs support as their go to source."Repost from Pig State News", yup that's a source that sounds legit for sure and certainly fits the narrative of lefties everywhere.  |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Wed Dec 03, 2014 10:37 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:37 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:41 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Report Finds Police Departments Making Their Own Rules, Not Reporting Hundreds of Homicides to The FBI
By: Rachel Blevins Dec 5, 2014
Not Reporting Police Killing
A recent analysis found that the killings of hundreds of individuals by law enforcement officers have not been reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The study, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, stated that after looking at records from 105 of the nations largest police forces, there was a gap of 583 homicides that were not included in the FBI's records from 2007 to 2012.
The analysis found that the departments recorded 1, 825 officer-involved killings over the five-year period, which was 45 percent higher than the tally of 1, 242 that had been reported to the FBI.
According to Yahoo News, this massive gap "makes it nearly impossible to figure out how many people cops kill – justifiably or not – every year."
The Wall Street Journal reported that local police departments are not required to provide the FBI with either statistics or detailed records on how many individuals are killed by police officers.
According to CBS News, police departments have "developed their own policies that generally permit officers to use force when they reasonably fear imminent physical harm," which ultimately gives officers "the benefit of the doubt by prosecutors," and makes and grand jurors "reluctant to second-guess their decisions."
This is evidenced in the case of Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson during a confrontation in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9. The Grand Jury choose not to indict Wilson on murder charges, sparking riots and protests throughout the country.
Another instance that recently ignited protests from the American public is the case of Eric Garner, who was choked to death by Officer Daniel Pantaleo in New York City, on July 17. The Grand Jury choose not to indict Pantaleo, despite the fact that unlike in Wilson case, Pantaleo's actions were caught on video.
In addition to the freedom local police departments are given regarding their policies for use of force, they are also given a great amount of freedom when deciding how to use the military equipment they obtain with grants from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
As previously reported, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is in charge of providing grants for military equipment, does not have a system in place to determine the extent to which police departments use the equipment, and as a result the grant program "exists with little oversight."
In the newest episode of the Truth in Media Project, which will be released on December 10, Investigative Journalist Ben Swann looks at the root of Police militarization, and the effect it is having on society. Watch the trailer below:
Rachel Blevins
Rachel Blevins is a student in the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University. She aspires to break the left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning authority as she establishes her Journalism career. |
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Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:48 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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http://thefreethoughtproject.com/comments-cops-eric-garner-decision-turn-stomach/
cop-comments
The popular law enforcement website, policeone.com published a story on the outcome of the Eric Garner grand jury decision Wednesday, and it was riddled with disturbing comments from police officers.
According to Policeone.com’s own terms, to leave a comment, “You must be a verified law enforcement professional,” so these comments below are from real cops.
The article itself was not an opinion piece, it was a simple aggregate story from the AP, stating the facts of the case.
But that did not stop the jackboot peanut gallery from chiming in.
The first comment sets the tone of the page as user rdramsey displays his ignorance on the facts in this case stating that Garner died from a preexisting coronary condition.
comment-5
Well rdramsey, you and the rest of the leo’s on policeone would be wrong in believing this. The New York City Medical Examiner’s office even released a statement ruling that the official cause of death was a homicide due to “compression of neck, chest and positioning during restraint by police.”
Next we have policeone user, VON1 with his words of wisdom, celebrating the fact no charges were filed against any officers who physically assaulted a man, leading to his death over the accusations of selling loose cigarettes.
comment-7
At the end of his comment, VON1 states that his job is to “kick some thug ass.” Oh I’m sorry VON1, I thought you swore an oath to uphold the constitution, I didn’t realize that ‘kicking thug ass’ was now your job description.
The next cop comment brings out the racial tensions that this officer apparently holds.
comment-2
In the comment below, by VON1, he illustrates the attitude held by so many police officers. “Well he didn’t immediately ‘submit’ and start licking boot, so he deserved to die.” He then makes some ominous reference to “blinders.”
comment-3
Perhaps only slightly less disturbing than these officers’ callous, racist, and repugnant remarks, is their grammar.
A recurring theme among these LEOs, is calling anyone who disagrees with a cop, a “thug.” In the comment below buddy245 is likely talking about protesters when he says, “chasing around these thugs.”
comment-1
In perhaps the most disturbing comment from this policeone.com article, user SAPDMAS refers to a group of humans as “ungrateful, spoiled, hateful animals.” Way to show your true colors SAPDMAS.
comment-6
With cops dehumanizing people in this manner, is it any wonder that they resort to deadly force so quickly?
What none of these law enforcement officers seem to grasp is the fact that they can apply a certain level of discretion. You do not have to immediately escalate an otherwise completely peaceful situation into a violent one. Was the state’s missing revenue from a man selling cigarettes worth more than the life of another human being?
Eric Garner was being accused of the “crime” of selling loose cigarettes. His life was ended that day because police officers felt that the 3 cents in tax revenue that the state may have lost because Garner may have sold a loose cigarette to someone, was more important than the life of a father of six and husband.
Here is a video reminder of just how separated from the rest of society the NYPD has become. The video below is of a press conference given by the top brass at the NYPD within the days following the death of Eric Garner. There is absolutely zero compassion in their words, and in fact, they go so far as to insinuate that the chokehold didn’t kill Eric Garner, “anti-police rhetoric” did.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/comments-cops-eric-garner-decision-turn-stomach/#Y3vQ1Ov7I3pqMiCL.99 |
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Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:50 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Sat Dec 06, 2014 10:00 am |
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