Tehran Times – U.S. police killed more than 1,200 American civilians in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record since monitoring groups started tracking nationwide police violence in 2013.
Whilst the numbers have risen over the years, the deeply controversial circumstances that lead to a fatal police shooting have remained the same. According to Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research organization that maintains a database of U.S. police brutality, in addition to civilians being shot or physically assaulted, police shot dead at least 1,247 Americans last year. Only ten days went past in 2022 when a civilian was not killed on the streets of America.
A preliminary count for 2023 shows more than 700 police killings so far this year. This is a very highly possible undercount for this year as more cases are undoubtedly set to be registered when taking into account the pattern of police killings over the years.
According to Mapping Police Data, the group “strives” to collect official data sources from local and state government agencies but largely collects data from publicly accessible media sources. But not all police killings make the media, so the numbers could be higher. Despite the record death toll in 2022, experts say the nature of the police killings has remained consistent with previous years.
Many Americans were killed when no reported offense had even taken place, whilst other cases involved traffic violations, mental health or welfare checks of the victims, claims of a domestic disturbance and around 10% involved cases where a weapon was allegedly seen, but in many cases were never recovered from the crime scene. Americans have a constitutional right to carry a firearm.
In essence, on many occasions, police used unnecessary and deadly force during very routine encounters with the public. More alarmingly is the nature of the deadly police shootings against Americans. Many victims were running away from the police when they were shot dead.
As a result, the bullets targeted the victims back, which experts argue means they posed no danger for the police and that the use of lethal force was not needed.
Whilst experts argue that the U.S. authorities have allowed the police to be the judge, jury, and executioner, the number of “law enforcement” killings means police have taken that unlawful position to another level.
At the same time in 2022, racial disparities persisted, despite the largest civil uprising since the 1960s following the daylight murder of George Floyd, a black American choked to death by a white officer in May 2020?.
Mapping Police Violence reported that Black Americans made up 24% of those killed last year, despite making up only 13% of the population. Overall, Black Americans are three times more likely to be killed by the police than white people.
This inequality is very high in some cities, such as Minneapolis, where police have killed Black residents at a rate 28 times higher than white residents, and Chicago, where the rate was 25 times higher.
Anti-police violence advocate groups, and Black rights organizations as well as the Black communities have frequently accused the police of distorting the facts leading up to the killing of the victims, with police initially claiming their lives were at risk, but further investigations proving otherwise.
Among the many civilian victims of police killings are: Erik Poul Moller Nielsen (36), Monica Vaught (49), David Aguilera (35), Irvin Moorer Charley (34), Matthew J. Parks (30), Jalen Randle (29), Patrick Lyoya (26), Ketura Wilson (21), Omari Cryer (25), Da’Shontay King Sr. (37), Stephanie Dantzler (53) and her two daughters, Shanice Dantzler-Williams (28) and Miranda Dantzler-Williams (22), Jayland Walker (25), Marshall Curtis Jones (27), Dante Kittrell, Raymond Chaluisant (18), Andrew Tekle Sundberg (20), Roderick Brooks (47), Donovan Lewis (20), Keshawn Thomas (27), Nasanto Crenshaw (17).
The list is endless, and the difference in using lethal force against Black Americans is very clear. Amid the police killings and other acts of brutality, hundreds of thousands of more men and women are incarcerated under a judicial system that is also widely branded as discriminatory against Black Americans.
The U.S. is the self-proclaimed flag bearer of human rights in the world. But the data paints a much darker picture of human rights in America, which often labels false accusations against its adversaries over human rights.
At the UN General Assembly this week, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi touched on the audacity of the U.S. to use the tragic death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in Iran in September 2022 to lecture Tehran about human rights.
An investigation into Mahsa Amini resulted in a coroner’s report that showed the circumstances leading up to her death involved no blow to her head or other vital organs, (as captured by CCTV) and that the intelligence agencies of Iran’s enemies led by the U.S., Britain and Israel played a vital role in the unrest last year which led to the death of security force and civilians.
“Last year, the Iranian nation was the target of the biggest media attack and psychological war in history. Can America, which is the biggest prison for mothers in the world, honestly worry about women’s rights?” Raisi asked.
Between 1980 and 2021, the number of incarcerated women in the U.S. increased by more than 525%, rising from a total of 26,326 in 1980 to 168,449 in 2021.
According to a Cambridge University Press in 2018, there are over 1 million women under various types of confinement or supervision by a network of agencies that administer a jurisdiction’s prisons.
“During this period, the image that was transmitted from Iran to the world was the product of suppressing valid information and disseminating invalid information,” the Iranian president pointed out. He also said that “despite producing and publishing tens of thousands of false news and reports about Iran, important facts about Iran are being censored all over the world.”
Amid a lack of serious discussion in the United States about the unlawful police killings at a government or local authority level, what appears to be crystal clear is that the victims of loved ones shot dead by police killings will continue to get worse. The astonishing killing of civilians continues to be deeply systemic.
by Ali Karbalaei
