Posted on 02/10/2018 1:53:14 PM PST by marktwain
Most justified homicides, both by police and by private citizens, are not recorded in the FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR).
The Washington post has been collecting information on fatal police shootings from published sources and social media for the last three years.
They have found that police in the United States consistently shoot and kill about a thousand people each year. Virtually all of them are justified homicides.
For the third year in a row, police nationwide shot and killed nearly 1,000 people, a grim annual tally that has persisted despite widespread public scrutiny of officers’ use of fatal force.
Police fatally shot 987 people last year, or two dozen more than they killed in 2016, according to an ongoing Washington Post database project that tracks the fatal shootings. Since 2015, The Post has logged the details of 2,945 shooting deaths, culled from local news coverage, public records and social-media reports.
The FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR) for 2015 reports 442 justifiable homicides by police Almost all, 441, were shootings. In 2016, 435 justifiable homicides were recorded in the UCR by police. 429 were shootings.
The Post only records fatal police shootings, instead of justifiable homicides.
The ratio of the Post recorded fatal shootings by police vs. the justifiable homicide shootings by police, recorded by the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, is 45 percent.
Only 45 percent of fatal police shootings are officially recorded by the FBI in the UCR.
Police have strong incentives to record justifiable shootings by their officers.
There are significant incentives to not record justifiable shootings by private citizens.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
Who decides what gets reported?
Not a surprise since they aren't crimes. About the only time it would be listed as a crime was if two people attacked the intended victim and he shot and killed one of the attackers. In many states that justifiable homicide could be considered felony murder by the surviving attacker.
By definition, a justifiable homicide is not a crime. The Uniform Crime Report only includes crimes.
By definition ‘homicide’ is not a crime. It is a coroner’s finding that a person has be killed by another person.
Murder and manslaughter are crimes.
Who decides what gets reported?
The reporting is all voluntary. The police officers are supposed to follow the FBI UCR directions.
They track arrests, not convictions.
Somehow this needs to be ore accurately tracked. Not just the homicides, but defensive gun uses, since the perps often survive being shot. The public at large would likely be amazed at how often good guys put down bad guys.
The FBI UCR started publishing numbers on justified homicides in 1988.
They use a very restricted definition.
It is a difficult number to track.
Mostly it is done with victim surveys. From the CDC study commissioned by the Obama administration:
Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence,
although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996;
Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defen-
sive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by
criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to
more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 vio-
lent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand,
some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual
defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook
et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the
field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an
extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19
national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret
because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.
Police agencies across the country are politically forced not to report crimes so that the political area looks better than it is.
This has been known for decades.
Just like the FBI does not report Hispanics are criminals. They are lumped in with “whites”, but they are reported when they are the victims as “Hispanic”.
No wonder the silence on Seth Rich. Protecting HRC by any means is justified.
Does that include dogs?
I agree, especially when displaying a firearm ends the crime. But the police know when they cover a scene where a citizen used a firearm lawfully to defend themselves and could report that data. I also understand many don't want to for political reasons.
UCR reporting rules define a homicide as the intentional killing of a human by another. Period. Regardless of circumstances. Homicide and hate crime are the two incident based reports in the UCR system, where “victim”, actor, weapon, location, time, etc can all be linked and cross-tabulated. There is a field to record if the homicide was justified. But even when justified, it’s still a homicide for scoring.
One problem is that rulings by coroners juries, DA’s, etc can drag out for months. By that time the UCR reports were due and submitted, maybe without the homicide being recorded. Plus UCR reports are often a low priority for departments when it comes to assigning people to the task.
And yes, some departments play games with the numbers, especially when district commanders are rated on their stats and there are poor quality controls. . It’s called “going down with crime”. Philly got caught with that about 20 years ago.
Why is everything by Dean Weingarten incoherent and disjointed?
And what the hell is that a picture of?
Re: Hispanics. You are incorrect. Age, Sex, Race of victims and arrestees are recorded the same. Race options are white, black, Asian and Native American/Pacific Islander. Ethnicity options are Hispanic or Non-Hispanic, applied to either white or black. It is reported as W/H or W/N or; B/H, B/N.
Thus the whole kerfluffle over George Zimmerman being a white Hispanic was a nothingburger. That is a standard reporting description under UCR and NCIC rules.
I think the author might be comparing apples to oranges with some of his statistics.
Also, the FBI does not record an arrest for suspicion of murder as a murder. A prosecutor must file a formal charge of murder before the FBI does that. Since 99% of murder defendants either plead guilty or are found guilty, the resulting error is a very small one.
One area that is still subject to large error is the ethnicity of convicted murderers.
First, reporting ethnicity to the FBI is voluntary.
Second, ethnicity is determined by “self-reports.” Many Hispanic murderers identify as “white,” which causes the white murderer rate to increase, and the Hispanic rate to decrease.
Another factor that distorts ethnicity of murderers is the number of unsolved murders.
About 80% of white murders are solved. About 60% of Hispanic murders are solved. Only 40% of Black murders are solved.
Since most murder victims are the same ethnicity as their murderer, this means that a huge number of Black and Hispanic murderers are not recorded in the FBI data, and, once again, that completely distorts the comparison between white murderers and other ethnicities.
Re: “Just like the FBI does not report Hispanics are criminals. They are lumped in with “whites”, but they are reported when they are the victims as “Hispanic.”
That was actually changed starting in 2016, and possibly before. Hispanics are now counted in both categories.
Unfortunately, the ethnic statistics are still distorted, and ALWAYS against whites.
Reporting ethnicity to the FBI is voluntary, and only about 65% of jurisdictions (population and location unknown) report.
Also, ethnicity is “self-reported,” and many Hispanics identify as white.
Finally, the ethnicity of murderers is totally distorted because of a huge disparity in unsolved murders.
80% of white murders are solved. Just 60% of Hispanic murders. And only 40% of Black murders.
Since murder victims are usually the same ethnicity as their murderer, a huge number of Black and Hispanic murderers walk away free, and are never reported.
Also, the FBI does not record an arrest for suspicion of murder as a murder. A prosecutor must file a formal charge of murder before the FBI does that. Since 99% of murder defendants either plead guilty or are found guilty, the resulting error is a very small one.
If that is so, how does the FBI count cases where the murderer is unknown?
They count murder victims - as certified by the medical examiner and investigators.
If the murderer is unknown, nothing is recorded.
That’s why comparing the number of white murderers to the number of Black and Hispanic murderers is completely bogus.
There is no data adjustment for unsolved murders.
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