Posted on 02/25/2008 6:29:50 AM PST by Soliton
More than 2,000 criminal suspects died in police custody over a three-year period, half of them killed by officers as they scuffled or attempted to flee, the government said Thursday.
The study by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics is the first nationwide compilation of the reasons behind arrest-related deaths in the wake of high-profile police assaults or killings involving Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo in New York in the late 1990s.
The review found 55 percent of the 2,002 arrest-related deaths from 2003 through 2005 were due to homicide by state and local law enforcement officers. Alcohol and drug intoxication caused 13 percent of the deaths, followed by suicides at 12 percent, accidental injury at 7 percent and illness or natural causes, 6 percent. The causes of the deaths for the remaining 7 percent were unknown.
(Excerpt) Read more at browardtimes.com ...
I guess that explains why Michael Moore didn’t get the Oscar this year. They had a sufficiently anti-American documentary already.
So how many people have died while in the care of hospitals in the same time period?
The actions of a lot of police officers are “anti-American”.
For the most part, they behave as a privileged caste - an armed aristocracy who extort special perks and benefits from elected officials thorough their powerful lobbies like the PBA and FOP. IN the meantime, their primary function is to terrorize speeding members of the underclass of civilians who are squeezed harder and harder to pay their ever inflated benefits.
Give me a gun to protect myself - I don't need a cop and that isn't their function anyway. They show up AFTER the damage is done.
How many healthy people walk into a hospital and get carried out dead?
No, I was responding to Soliton’s comment below the article.
Quagmire.
While some of these people’s deaths are no doubt a blessing, I also have no doubt that many of those ‘drug/alcohol’ and ‘accidental’ and even a few ‘suicides’ belong in the homicide category.
The Justice Department study released Thursday suggests that most of the police killings would be considered justified, although it does not make that final determination. About 80 percent of the cases involved criminal suspects who reportedly brandished a weapon “to threaten or assault” the arresting officers.The rest of the story < / Paul Harvey >Another 17 percent involved suspects who allegedly grabbed, hit or fought with police. More than one-third of the police killings, or about 36 percent, involved a suspect who tried to flee or otherwise escape arrest.
You think 2000 healthy people get killed in hospitals every year. Been nice chatting with you.
That’s a silly analogy.
People go to hospitals because they’re sick or injured. Also, there is the added complication of illegible handwriting, mistaken dosages or wrong medicines administered and the urgency of certain health issues which are often unsolvable by the time they are discovered.
Again, many of those deaths in police custody are ‘justified’ or truly accidental or result of suicide or self-inflicted injury. But only a naive observer would believe the stats truly represent the number of homicides here or believe all or even 99 percent involve police doing the right thing but an unfortunate result occurring.
probably more than a hundred times two little.....
And police never lie.
So what we are talking about is really the remaining 1000.
Fight the cop, or attempt to flee, I've no sympathy for them.
Yes, just like that woman who had her face pummeled was ‘resisting or fighting.’
“resisting” and “disorderly conduct” are the easy ones to nail people with OR CYA (or fellow officer’s hindparts) with.
The ‘rest’ of the story would require breaking down each case, not just looking at ‘official’ explanations.
Waco and Ruby Ridge were ‘good shoots’ too, officially.
You’re a buffoon if you really believe that. It’s obvious you don’t know any Police Officers on a personal level or you know that this is not true. Are their some who use the position to act out because they were teased when younger, sure. But to say “For the most part...yada, yada,” is ignorant and really intellectually dishonest.
From the article;
“Keep in mind we have 2,000 deaths out of almost 40 million arrests over three years, so that tells you by their nature they are very unusual cases,” said Christopher J. Mumola, who wrote the study.
If my math is right, since 55% of the deaths were homicides, that works out to about .33 homicides/13,000,000 arrests/year.
But criminals are always honest and pure.
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