Fatal shootings by cops increase in first half of 2016; more are recorded on video
Police officers fatally shot 491 people in the first six months of 2016, an increase from 465 people killed by police during the same period last year, according to a tally by the Washington Post.
About half of those killed were minorities and about half were white, the Washington Post reports. Mental illness played a role in a quarter of the incidents.
In most of the cases, officers were confronted by suspects who had guns. In half of those cases, the suspects fired first. Twenty officers were shot and killed while on the job in the year’s first six months, compared to 16 officers last year.
Twenty-one percent of the shootings in the first half of 2016 were recorded on camera, some of them by police cameras and some by witnesses. In raw numbers, 105 shootings were recorded in the first half of the year, compared to 76 that were recorded the first half of last year.
Video is playing an increasing role in prosecutions. According to the Post, murder and manslaughter charges against officers in fatal shootings have tripled in the last 18 months. The use of video evidence in those cases has doubled.
FBI Director James Comey has suggested that the presence of video has made officers less likely to confront suspects. The Post says its analysis, however, “suggests that the ubiquitous nature of video has not yet had the deterrent effect that police and civil rights groups have predicted—at least as it applies to fatal force.”
