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Wednesday, Jun 24, 2020

Have police shootings of unarmed Black men declined since 2015?

William Boger, Gigafact Foundry
yes

In 2015, according to the Washington Post, police in the U.S. shot 38 unarmed Black men. In 2019, they shot 14. So far in 2020, the Post says, they have shot six. The Post, whose data is widely cited in the absence of any official statistics, notes that in every year surveyed about 1,000 Americans were killed by police. Including armed victims, in 2019 police killed 102 Black men and one woman, with Blacks killed at twice the rate of whites.

Another independent source, Mapping Police Violence, seeks to include all deaths at the hands of police, whether or not gunfire is involved. It reports that police killed 28 unarmed Black people in 2019, down from 78 in 2015. Shootings of unarmed Blacks totaled 23, down from 54 in 2015. Blacks accounted for 24% of those killed in 2019 but 13% of the population.

Sources

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