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The killing of Laquan McDonald: The dashcam video vs. police accounts

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The killing of Laquan McDonald: The dashcam video vs. police accounts

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By: Daniel Ross
5/4
CRAAP Score:

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The documents shed new light on just how crucial the release of last month's video was and how it contradicts nearly everything police said happened when veteran police officer Jason Van Dyke shot and killed the 17-year-old McDonald around 10 p.m. on October 20, 2014.

The dashcam video shows McDonald walking down South Pulaski Road with a knife in his hand, but strolling away from officers when Van Dyke jumps out of his vehicle and pulls his gun. Van Dyke began firing six seconds after arriving on scene and took 15 seconds to fire 16 shots.

In those moments, shortly before he is shot, McDonald never faces Van Dyke. He spins after being shot and crumples to the ground, his body stiff as he falls. Van Dyke continues to fire, unloading every round from his 9-mm Smith & Wesson handgun. The teen was struck by all 16 bullets, most of them while he was limp on the ground.

The teen was accused posthumously of aggravated assault of four officers, including Van Dyke. One police record said Van Dyke was "injured by offender" but provided no further detail.

The police records showed dashcam videos were recovered from at least two police vehicles, including Van Dyke's, and "found to be consistent with the accounts of all of the witnesses."

The videos were downloaded for investigators within 24 hours after the shooting.

Recordings from five vehicles were released to the public last month, including the primary dashcam video that shows the shooting, and has led to protests. The city had fought the release for 13 months and only relinquished after a judge ordered its release.

Comparing the officers' accounts of the moment of the shooting with the video reveals stunning differences and what appears to be a conspiracy to create a scenario in which deadly force would be justified.

The video does not capture all of McDonald's encounter with the officers.

Officers had begun pursuing McDonald after getting reports of a young black male attempting to break into vehicles at a parking lot for trucks. According to police reports, a man told McDonald to leave the lot and that the teen swung his knife at him. Police soon spotted McDonald and gave chase. At one point, a request was made for a Taser and additional backup ahead of the fatal shooting.

It is possible that some things the officers describe could have occurred before the time frame captured on video. But their accounts of what happen appear to be describing the moments just before the shooting, which the video covers.

Van Dyke's account of events

Van Dyke gave this account of what happened.

"McDonald was holding the knife in his right hand, in an underhand grip with the blade pointed forward. He was swinging the knife in an aggressive, exaggerated manner," according to a written account filed by the reporting detective who interviewed Van Dyke.

"Van Dyke ordered McDonald to 'Drop the knife!' multiple times. McDonald ignored Van Dyke's verbal direction to drop the knife and continued to advance toward Van Dyke. When McDonald got to within 10 to 15 feet of Officer Van Dyke, McDonald looked toward Van Dyke.

"McDonald raised the knife across his chest and over his shoulder, pointing the knife at Van Dyke. Van Dyke believed McDonald was attacking Van Dyke with the knife and attempting to kill Van Dyke. In defense of his life, Van Dyke backpedaled and fired his handgun at McDonald to stop the attack."

The video shows Van Dyke took at least one step forward before firing. McDonald lay nearly motionless on the ground as bullets riddled his body.

The report says this: "McDonald fell to the ground but continued to move and continued to grasp the knife, refusing to let go of it. Van Dyke continued to fire his weapon at McDonald, as McDonald was on the ground, as McDonald appeared to be attempting to get up, all the while continuing to point the knife at Van Dyke."

Even after firing 16 shots, the officer said McDonald clutched the knife and refused his orders to put down his knife. Van Dyke's partner approached the teen and kicked the knife from his hand, according to the police records.

The video does show an officer kicking a knife from McDonald's hand while wounded on the ground.

Partner backs up account

Van Dyke's partner backed up his account, telling the detective that the teen walked down South Pulaski Road, refused officers' orders and then "continued to advance toward the officers."

"When McDonald got to within 12 to 15 feet of the officers, he swung the knife toward the officers in an aggressive manner," Van Dyke's partner said. "Van Dyke opened fire with his handgun and McDonald fell to the ground. Van Dyke continued firing his weapon at McDonald as McDonald continued moving on the ground, attempting to get up while still armed with the knife."

As he waited for an ambulance to arrive on scene, the partner claimed he told the teen: "Hang in there."

Van Dyke's partner told the detective that he didn't fire his gun because Van Dyke was between him and McDonald. But he made it very clear he believed McDonald was "attempting to kill them when the shots were fired."

At least four other officers gave accounts that matched Van Dyke's story, including one who said McDonald "got closer and closer to the officers, continuing to wave the knife."

The video released to the public does not contain any audio.

"Based upon all the facts known at this time and the death of the only offender in this incident," the records said, "this case is now Exceptionally Cleared Closed/Other Exceptional Clearance -- Death of Offender. ...

"The above investigation concluded that Officer Van Dyke's use of deadly force, the discharging of his duty firearm, was within the bounds of Chicago Police Department's use of force guidelines and in conformity with local ordinances and state law."

Reacting to the released documents, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi stressed the investigation was handled by the Independent Police Review Authority and not by police. "The Justice Department is currently investigating any actions and statements of CPD officers in connection with this shooting," Guglielmi said in a written statement. "If the criminal investigation concludes that any officer participated in any wrongdoing, we will take swift action."

60-page autopsy

McDonald was pronounced dead at 10:42 p.m. at Mount Sinai Hospital, less than 45 minutes after the shooting began. The 60-page autopsy enumerates the gunshot wounds:

-- "Gunshot wound of the left scalp."

-- "Gunshot wound of the neck."

-- "Gunshot wound of the left chest."

-- "Gunshot wound of the right chest."

It continues, accounting for 16 bullet wounds and ending with "Gunshot wound of the right upper leg." Bullets shredded McDonald's body. Many exited after ripping through muscles and other body tissue.

The police narrative became the public narrative in news reports. But last month, that whole account unraveled after a judge ordered the release of dashcam video of the shooting.

Van Dyke, 37, was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of McDonald hours before the video was released to the public. It marked the first time a Chicago police officer has been charged with first-degree murder for an on-duty fatality in nearly 35 years.

His attorney has maintained Van Dyke feared for his life when he opened fire. The officer was freed on $1.5 million bond on November 30.

Van Dyke is to appear in court at noon (1 p.m. ET) Friday for a continuance hearing that will eventually determine what judge will preside over the high-profile case.

A grand jury this week formally indicted the officer on six counts of first-degree murder and one count of official misconduct. In returning the indictment, the grand jury alleged Van Dyke "without lawful justification, intentionally or knowingly shot and killed Laquan McDonald."

The grand jury did not elaborate as to why six counts of first-degree murder were returned.

Crisis for the Chicago mayor

The shooting has presented Mayor Rahm Emanuel with his biggest crisis yet, with protesters calling for him to resign and a state lawmaker drafting a bill to recall him. He has said he has no plans to step aside and has pledged to reform the Police Department.

But in a sign of the lost trust between the mayor and the community, Emanuel was met at a school event Wednesday with a chant of "16 shots" -- the students showing they stand with the gunned down teen.

An emotional Emanuel last week told a packed City Council chamber that he was "sorry" for the McDonald shooting and that it should never have happened. "I own it," the mayor said. "I take responsibility for what happened because it happened on my watch.

"And if we're going to fix it, I want you to understand that it's my responsibility."

Whether that will be enough to navigate the crisis remains to be seen. A recent poll showed the mayor's approval rating has sunk to a low of 18% and that more than half of Chicago voters believe he should resign.

As of Thursday, nearly 60,000 people from around the nation had signed a petition calling for the mayor and Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign immediately. CREDO Action says more than 2,000 signatures are from Chicago residents.

The police superintendent and the head of the independent board that investigates police shootings resigned amid the fallout from the McDonald video, and the mayor formed a panel to investigate the Police Department and make recommendations for reform. The Justice Department has launched its own investigation, which the mayor said he welcomes.

"We have a mutual goal to create a stronger, better police department that keeps our neighborhoods safe while respecting the civil rights of every Chicagoan," a statement from the mayor's office said.

He expressed a similar sentiment in an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune earlier this month.

"If any good comes from this tragedy, it should be a historic set of reforms that prevents abuses, promotes transparency and rebuilds the confidence of all Chicagoans that they will be treated fairly," the mayor wrote.

"That is the marker I am setting for myself, the next superintendent and the reform commission I've appointed. And it's one by which I expect to be measured."

CNN's Rosa Floras and Bill Kirkos contributed to this report.

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killing of laquan mcdonald: video vs. police accounts - cnn.com

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Killing of Laquan McDonald: Video vs. police accounts

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The documents shed new light on just how crucial the release of last month's video was and how it contradicts nearly everything police said happened when veteran police officer Jason Van Dyke shot and killed the 17-year-old McDonald around 10 p.m. on October 20, 2014.

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Emotional Obama calls for ¨sense of urgency¨ to fight gun violence

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Emotional Obama calls for ¨sense of urgency¨ to fight gun violence

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By: Daniel Ross
5/4
CRAAP Score:40

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Emotional Obama calls for ‘sense of urgency’ to fight gun violence | CNN Politics

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President Barack Obama grew emotional Tuesday as he made a passionate call for a national “sense of urgency” to limit gun violence.

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Trump cites Chicago gun violence in speech

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Trump cites Chicago gun violence in speech

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By: Daniel Ross
5/4
CRAAP Score:40

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Donald Trump faulted President Barack Obama for failing the nation's inner cities and cited Chicago's history of gun violence as an example of that as he accepted the Republican nomination Thursday night.

"I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, come to an end. Beginning on Jan. 20 of 2017, safety will be restored," Trump told delegates.

"The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead," he said.

Trump, who has billed himself as a "law and order" candidate, contended homicides jumped by 17 percent in the nation's largest cities, calling it the biggest increase in 25 years.

"In the president's hometown of Chicago, more than 2,000 people have been the victims of shootings this year alone. And almost 4,000 have been killed in the Chicago area since he took office," Trump said.

"Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration's rollback of criminal enforcement."

A Tribune review of shooting incidents in the city showed more than 2,200 people had been shot this year as of July 20. The number of deaths since Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, was not immediately available.

Trump was correcting an earlier misstatement. During a July 12 rally near Indianapolis, Trump gave a larger, inaccurate homicide number for Chicago during the Obama presidency.

"Look at Chicago, look at what's going on," he said. "Since President Obama became president, almost 5,000 killings in Chicago and nobody talks about it. Well, we're going to start talking about it."

Also Thursday, Trump pledged to put "the American people" first with a plan to "begin with safety at home," including "safe neighborhoods."

"This administration has failed America's inner cities," he said. "It's failed them on education. It's failed them on jobs. It's failed them on crime. It's failed them in every way and at every single level."
rap30@aol.com mcgarcia@chicagotribune.com

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Trump cites Chicago gun violence in speech

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Donald Trump faulted President Barack Obama for failing the nation's inner cities and cited Chicago's history of gun violence as an example of that as he accepted the Republican nomination Thursday night. "I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, come to an end.

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Sandy Hook Elementary shooting leaves 28 dead, law enforcement sources says  

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Sandy Hook Elementary shooting leaves 28 dead, law enforcement sources says  

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By: Kiara Holder
5/4
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NEWTOWN, Conn.--A shooting rampage in this small Connecticut town on Friday morning left 28 people dead, including 20 children killed inside their elementary school, authorities said.

The dead included the suspected gunman, whom law enforcement sources identified as Adam Lanza, 20. Police said that Lanza first apparently killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared in Newtown. Then he drove in her car to Sandy Hook Elementary, the school at which Nancy Lanza taught kindergarten.

In the car, authorities said, were three guns: a .223 caliber "Bushmaster" rifle and two pistols, a Sig Sauer and a Glock.

At the school, authorities said, Adam Lanza shot and killed six adults - including the school's principal - and 20 children. They were shot in two different rooms of the school, police said.

Police were called to the school after 9:35 a.m., and officers searched the classrooms for a shooter. When they found the gunman, however, he was dead by his own hand. No officer fired a shot.

One other person was injured in the shooting, but survived.

Friday's shooting became the second-deadliest in U.S. history, after the rampage that killed 32 students at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va. It happened in a country that had grown darkly accustomed to public shootings: just five months before, another gunman had killed 12 in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in July.

But the sheer scale of Friday's killing - and the nature of its victims, small children shot in the sanctuary of a school - deepened its horror, and unleashed a shaking kind of grief.

President Obama, in one of his most emotional speeches as president, wiped away tears as he spoke about the shooting from the White House's briefing room. "Our hearts are broken today," Obama said. He promised "meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this," but did not say specifically what he might do.

"I know there's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do. The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between five and 10 years old," Obama paused, seemingly unable to continue for a few moments. "They had their entire lives ahead of them - birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own."

Dorothy Hanson, who is the suspect's grandmother and Nancy Lanza's mother, said in a brief phone interview Friday that she could not fathom the violence that ended their lives.

"I just can't cope with it right now," Hanson said through tears. "She was my daughter, and a beautiful girl and I loved her. I just can't make any more comments than that right now."

Among the dead was the school's principal, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, according to law enforcement sources. Press reports said Hochsprung had been the school's principal since 2010, and had been a schools administrator for 12 years before that. Local news organizations reported that she was married, with two daughters and three stepdaughters.

"She was always enthusiastic, always smiling, always game to do anything," said Kristin Larson, a former secretary of the school's Parent-Teacher Association. In a phone interview, Larson choked up as she recalled Hochsprung hugging students at the start of the school year. "She wanted them to do well in school," Larson said, "but she also wanted them to have fun."

Earlier on Friday, law enforcement sources had misidentified the shooter as Adam's brother Ryan Lanza, 24. Based on reports from those sources, The Washington Post and many other news outlets also identified Ryan Lanza as the suspected shooter.

Ryan Lanza was taken into custody near his home in Hoboken, N.J. on Friday; news reports showed him being escorted in handcuffs by police. But authorities said they do not believe he was involved in the crime. It was unclear what caused the initial confusion between the brothers.

Beth Israel, who lived for a time on the same street as the Lanzas, recalled Adam Lanza as withdrawn, but not threatening in any way.

"Overall, I would just call him a socially awkward kid, I don't know, shy and quiet. Didn't really look you in the eye," Israel said in a telephone interview Friday night. "Just kind of a weird kid, maybe. I can't tell you any specific incidents why [I thought so]," she said.

But there was still something that troubled her about Adam Lanza. When Israel heard that Ryan Lanza - Adam's brother - had been described by law enforcement sources as the shooter, she felt they had the wrong brother: "It has to be Adam, not Ryan," Israel wrote on Twitter.

Police described the school itself as one of the most horrific crime scenes that many had ever encountered, and officials said the first-arriving responders would be given counseling.

Children who were evacuated from the school said later that they had been told to keep their eyes closed until they were outside.

Police said that as the day went on, they had accounted for every child who attended the school, tracking down even those who were absent because of illness. All had been accounted for, they said.

Perhaps the closest echo of this rampage, in the dark history of American massacres, might be a 1989 shooting in Stockton, Calif., where a drifter with an assault rifle opened fire on a schoolyard. Five children died, and 29 others were wounded before the gunman killed himself.

That episode served as a catalyst for a string of laws restricting the use and importation of assault weapons.

The guns used in Friday's shootings were believed to have been purchased legally, and registered to a family member of Adam Lanza's, a law enforcement source said.

Police said they were summoned to the school by a number of 911 calls. Both state and local police converged on the school, according to Connecticut State Police Lt. L. Paul Vance, and "began a complete active shooter search of the building."

Meredith Artley, managing editor of CNN.com, described interviewing a woman who was at the school about 9:30 or 9:35 a.m. The woman was in a meeting with the principal, vice principal and school psychologist when they heard shots from the hall. The three school officials went into the hallway, and the vice principal came crawling back, shot in the foot, Artley said.

The witness, who was not identified but has a 7-year-old at the school, told Artley that she later passed the principal and the psychologist lying in the hallway, surrounded by pools of blood.

In this small town near the New York border, police cars began screaming toward the school. At Berkshire Motors, owner Jim Marcucilli thought he saw 40 police cruisers. He had been working on a car, but its owner, frantic, demanded back the keys. "Oh my God," she said, according to Marcucilli. "I have to get my kid!"

Later, Marcucilli learned that he had a connection to the Lanza family: he had helped Nancy Lanza with dead batteries over the years, and had even bought a car from her. Such connections are common in a small place like Newtown, he said.

"You can't get any closer to home" than an attack at the school, he said. "It's definitely going to affect this community terribly."

Students inside the school were evacuated to a nearby firehouse, where television reporters saw parents tearfully reuniting with their children.

Students recounted hearing police officers on the roof, and classmates so frightened they became sick to their stomachs.

In interview with New York's WABC television, student Brendan Murray said he was in the gym when he heard a banging sound. Students at first thought a custodian had knocked something over, but then they heard a scream.

"Then a police came in and was like, 'Is he in here?' Then he ran out," Murray said. "And then somebody yelled, 'Get to a safe place!' So we went to the closet in the gym."

Eventually, he said, police escorted the students out of the school and to the firehouse, where they reunited with their classmates.

"We sat in our classes," he said. "And were all really happy that we were all alive."

Parent Stephen Delgiadice told the AP that his 8-year-old daughter heard two big bangs and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.

"It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America," he said.

The superintendent's office said the district had locked down schools in Newtown. Schools in neighboring towns also were locked down as a precaution.

A photo posted by The Newtown Bee newspaper showed a group of young students - some crying, others looking visibly frightened - being escorted by adults through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other's shoulders.

Mergim Bajraliu, 17, heard the gunshots echo from his home and raced to check on his 9-year-old sister at the school. He told the AP his sister, who was fine, heard a scream come over the intercom at one point. He said teachers were shaking and crying as they came out of the building.

"Everyone was just traumatized," he said.

Richard Wilford's 7-year-old son, Richie, is in the second grade at the school. His son told him that he heard a noise that "sounded like what he described as cans falling."

The boy told him a teacher went out to check on the noise, came back in, locked the door and had the kids huddle up in the corner until police arrived.

"There's no words," Wilford said, according to the AP. "It's sheer terror, a sense of imminent danger, to get to your child and be there to protect him."

Also Friday, White House press spokesman Carney told reporters that it was not the time to discuss gun control legislation.

"We're still waiting for more information about the incident in Connecticut," Carney replied when asked if the massacre raised questions about gun policy. "As we do, I think it's important, on a day like today, to view this as I know the president, as a father, does, and others who are parents certainly do, which is to feel enormous sympathy for families that are affected and to do everything we can to support state and local law enforcement and to support those who are enduring what appears to be a very tragic event."

He concluded, "I'm sure [there] will be rather a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I don't think today is that day."

Pressed on when that discussion would happen, the spokesman said it would - but not as we were still figuring out how the tragic massacre occurred.

"I think that day will come, but today's not that day, especially as we are awaiting more information about the situation," he said.

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Sandy Hook Elementary shooting leaves 28 dead, law enforcement sources say

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NEWTOWN, Conn.--A shooting rampage in this small Connecticut town on Friday morning left 28 people dead, including 20 children killed inside their elementary school, authorities said. The dead included the suspected gunman, whom law enforcement sources identified as Adam Lanza, 20. Police said that Lanza first apparently killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared in Newtown.

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The Worst Cases of Police Brutality in September 

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The Worst Cases of Police Brutality in September 

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By: Kiara Holder
5/4
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During the first week of September, police killed more civilians than the total number of police officers killed so far this year. By the end of the month, 99 people were killed, according to the Killed By Police database. At least 77 of them were shot and killed.

The Guardian reports that 873 people have been killed by police in 2015, and the number is growing.

These numbers present a counter-narrative to the "War on Cops" messaging that conservative politicians and commentators have ramped up in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. As Radley Balko wrote in a Washington Post column, this rhetoric is damaging and hinders real public discussion about the use of police force. In the midst of the media hype over attacks on police earlier this month, an unidentified Massachusetts officer was fired for fabricating a story about shots being fired at his vehicle, causing an hours-long manhunt for his attacker.

Here are some of the most shocking police encounters in September:

James Blake, New York, NY: When former tennis star James Blake was mistaken for a suspect in an identity-theft ring by an NYPD officer with a history of using excessive force, the unidentified officer charged at him, picked him up and slammed him to the ground. Four other cops helped detain and handcuff Blake, who showed I.D. and cooperated immediately. But Blake was detained for 10-15 minutes before police realized their mistake. The NYPD told ThinkProgress that "once Blake was properly identified and found to have no connection to the investigation, he was released from police custody immediately." Blake received swift apologies from Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton after the wrongful arrest, but Patrick Lynch, head of the New York City police union, called criticism of the officers "un-American" and irresponsible.

Blake told the New York Daily News that at first he didn't want to publicly discuss the incident, but felt he had an obligation to bring to light other instances of excessive police force. An investigation of the alleged use of force has been directed to the Internal Affairs Bureau.

Jeremy McDole, Wilmington, Delaware: While responding to a call about McDole shooting himself, several Delaware police officers wound up fatally shooting the wheelchair-bound man. Wilmington Police said that he was "armed with a handgun." But in a bystander video that depicts McDole adjusting himself in his chair, he does not appear to have a weapon in his hands. Relatives of the deceased contend that he was sitting with his hands in his lap, and also dispute that he was suicidal. His death is under investigation by officials from the Delaware Department of Justice's Office of Civil Rights and Public Trust.

Keith McLeod, Reisterstown, MD: 19-year-old Keith McLeod was fatally shot by an officer who claimed to have seen the victim reach around his back and pull out what seemed to be a handgun. The officer was responding to reports that McLeod tried to use a fake prescription. Baltimore County released a statement reporting that surveillance footage showed McLeod "abruptly whipping his hand around and pointing it toward the officer, as if with a weapon." Police confirmed the following day that no weapon was found at the scene.

The incident occurred close to where 25-year-old Freddie Gray died of a spinal injury while in police custody.

Unidentified, Stockton, CA: 16-year-old black teenager was tackled by multiple officers after allegedly jaywalking in a bus-only lane early one morning. A video of the arrest shows an unnamed officer pressing a baton against him, as the boy screams "get off me." The officer hits the boy twice with the baton and tells him to get on the ground. Seconds later, four more officers tackle the child to the ground and handcuff him. An investigation was launched after the attack and the boy's family filed an official complaint. The police department maintains that the officers' actions were justified.

Unidentified, Rancho Cordova, CA: In a scene that authorities described as a "chaotic situation," deputies shot and wounded an innocent bystander after mistaking his cellphone for a gun. Police arrived at the scene after neighbors reported hearing multiple rounds of gun shots. Ben Ledford, who was identified as the gunman, walked out of his home and surrendered to authorities. The wounded bystander had his hand stretched out while filming officers swarm the neighborhood, when two deputies then fired shots at him, striking him once in the leg. They later realized the bystander was not involved in the shooting.

Dominic Fuller, Auburndale, FL: Sheriff deputy shot and killed a man armed with a stapler. Deputies were called to investigate suspicious activities and found Fuller sitting in a stolen car outside of a house. Fuller ran as the deputies approached him, which lead to a chaotic chase through the neighborhood. A witness reported hearing Fuller say he had a gun, and other witnesses reported him saying he was armed. According to the Sheriff's office, he was refusing command and standing in a doorway with his right arm behind his back. When Fuller lifted his hand, the deputy saw a black and chrome object. Deputy Gabriel Reveron fired five times at Fuller. It was later confirmed that he was holding a stapler.

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The Worst Cases of Police Brutality In September - ThinkProgress

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During the first week of September, police killed more civilians than the total number of police officers killed so far this year. By the end of the month, 99 people were killed, according to the Killed By Police database. At least 77 of them were shot and killed.

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12 Shocking Examples of Police Brutality... just This Month 

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12 Shocking Examples of Police Brutality... just This Month 

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By: Kiara Holder
5/4
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Meanwhile, the decade-long war on terror has stocked local police departments with weapons from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan-do local police really need drones and tanks? (Journalist Radley Balko has extensively documented the militarization of police by way of the wars on drugs and terror.) The shift toward more aggressive, violent policing has had tragic results on the ground. AlterNet has assembled an incomplete list of brutal and unnecessary police actions, from this month alone.

Cell phone footage taken by his mother shows a teen boy being thrown to the ground and pinned by police. His crime? Giving officers a funny look while armed with a puppy. As Steven Hsieh wrote on AlterNet:

Fourteen-year-old Tremaine McMillan says he was feeding his puppy and playing on the beach with some friends when cops riding ATVs approached him and asked what he was doing. The "peacekeeping" officers say they saw McMillan roughhousing with another teenager, told him it was "unacceptable behavior," and asked where his mother was. When McMillan walked away, they chased him on ATVs, jumped out, pinned him to the ground and arrested him. According to police reports, McMillan "attempted to pull his arm away, stating, 'Man, don't touch me like I did something.'"

Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta justified the use of force, saying McMillan was exhibiting threatening "body language," which includes "clenched fists." McMillan adamantly denies this charge because, well, he was holding a puppy.

Why wait for a crime to occur when you can just instigate one? As Kristen Gwynne reported:

In a video segment on ABC News, they say they were "thrilled" when their son-who has Asperger's and other disabilities and struggled to make friends-appeared to have instantly made a friend named Daniel.

"He suddenly had this friend who was texting him around the clock," Doug Snodgrass told ABC News. His son had just recently enrolled at Chaparral High School.

"Daniel," however, was an undercover cop with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department who " hounded" the teenager to sell him his prescription medication. When he refused, the undercover cop gave him $20 to buy him weed, and he complied, not realizing the guy he wanted to befriend wanted him behind bars.

In December, the unnamed senior was arrested along with 21 other students from three schools, all charged with crimes related to the two officers' undercover drug operation at two public schools in Temecula, California (Chaparral and Temecula Valley High School). This March, Judge Marian H. Tully ruled that Temecula Valley Unified School District could not expel the student, and had in fact failed to provide him with proper services.

After beating a father of four to death, police allegedly tried to cover up video evidence. Natasha Lennard reported:

Following the death of father of four, David Sal Silva last week, his family's attorneys are calling for police to release bystander video evidence that reportedly shows California Highway Patrol officers brutally beating the 33-year-old. A video from a surveillance camera (which does not show the scene closeup) has been released and shows the man repeatedly struck with a baton. Local press have also reported on details from a 911 call made, in which witness Sulina Quair, 34, said "There is a man laying on the floor and your police officers beat the (expletive) out of him and killed him. I have it all on video camera.â€ˆWe videotaped the whole thing." Officers say they were responding to a call about an intoxicated man and that Silva had fought them.

Attorneys representing the Silva family expressed concern that police may tamper with video evidence and demanded that they be given access to any recordings of the lethal incident. Details emerged, the Bakersfield Californian reported, that officers confiscated the phones of bystanders who had captured the event as it unfolded. Police reportedly arrived at Quair's home to take his phone.

South Texas lawmen ransacked an elderly couple's home looking for drugs, and finding none, forced the husband to set up a cocaine dealer and took a kilo for themselves, the couple claim in court.

Jose and Maria Perez sued Hidalgo County, Sheriff Guadalupe "Lupe" Trevino and the City of Mission in Federal court.

Five sheriff's officers, including members of the unit mentioned in the Perezes' lawsuit, pleaded guilty this week to drug charges.

"In July 2012, Jose G. Perez and his wife, Maria Guadalupe Perez ... were sitting in their home when six armed men burst into their home demanding drugs," the complaint states. "These invaders were agents and officers of the Panama Unit of the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Department and officers of the Mission Police Department. These intruders proceeded to ransack the furniture and broke open cabinets searching for their illegal prize.

"When the intruders found nothing in the home of plaintiffs, they forced the elderly couple into an unmarked SUV, and told Jose G. Perez to 'call someone that sells drugs or else.'

Police often rely on their tasers to diffuse dangerous situations. Then there are times tasers turn a non-dangerous situation into a deadly one.

On May 16th, Forth Worth police entered the home of Jarmaine Darden in search of cocaine. The raid, which does not appear to have uncovered any cocaine, ended with the 34-year-old father dead after he was tased multiple times by police.

Family members told CBS 11 that the 350-pound man, who'd been asleep on the couch when police came in, couldn't drop to the ground on his stomach as officers commanded because he suffered from asthma.

"They physically pulled him off the couch because, like I said, he was asleep. They pulled him off the couch and they tried to put him on his stomach. He can't breathe on his stomach. He don't even lie on the bed on his stomach," said Donna Randle, the mother of victim Jarmaine Darden, 34.

A hearing-impaired Washington woman failed to follow police orders, because she couldn't hear them. So police grabbed her and started punching her in the face, as she tried calling 911 for help:

In a recording of the 911 call, Graham can be heard saying: "You attacked me before you said anything! There is no point whatsoever for you to touch me like that, especially with my condition, so how dare you even touch me?" The officer is heard saying that she is under arrest.

Another responding officer punched Graham in the face a few times, while telling Graham not to resist arrest. When a police officer put weight on Graham's hip-where she was injured-she reacted by trying to flip over. Federal Way police said she assaulted an officer during that struggle, reports KIRO 7.

A photo published by KIRO 7 shows Graham with black and blue marks over her eye and face.

Protesters rallied in St. Louis, MO on Wednesday over the death of 25-year-old Cary Ball Jr., who was shot 25 times by police officers last month. Police say Ball refused to pull over for a traffic stop, eventually crashed into a parked car, and started running. According to police, Ball pointed a semi-automatic handgun at the officers, prompting them to open fire.

Several witnesses who spoke to the family, however, say Ball threw his gun on the ground and was walking toward police with his hands up to surrender when he was shot. Some unverified reports say 7 of the 25 shots hit him in the back. Police say there was no surveillance video in the area to verify exactly what happened.

Ball was an honor student with a 3.86 GPA, majoring in human services at Forest Park Community College, where he had been celebrated as an "emerging scholar." According to family and friends, Ball was working to reform his life after being convicted of armed robbery when he was 17. His older brother, Carlos Ball, said Cary probably ran from the police because, as an ex-convict, it was illegal for him to possess a gun.

Who are the real criminals?

You may have heard about the protests at the DOJ by foreclosed upon homeowners demanding that Eric Holder prosecute some bankers for their criminal activity. If you haven't, you can read all about it here.

Unfortunately, I received reports last night that citizens exercising their right to peacefully protest were being casually tasered by the authorities.

This came from my friend Jason Rosenbaum, who was there:

At the start of the action, when the protesters and homeowners arrived at the south entrance of the DOJ, we were greeted by half a dozen police in tactical gear or uniforms and a metal barrier cutting off access to a small courtyard in front of the large DOJ doors. The group of protesters rallied at the barrier and the planters next to it that made up the square and homeowners slowly climbed over the barriers in an attempt to gain an audience at the DOJ and register their complaints. At that point, the police were keeping people from climbing over, but eventually the police retreated and a few homeowners and protesters made it over and sat down to occupy that space. More joined them. After about 10 minutes, as more climbed over the barrier and the crowd occupied more space, the police retreated up the few steps leading to the door, and eventually ceded the square entirely by going inside the DOJ, leaving the protesters and homeowners alone in the square. The protesters took down the barriers at that point and everyone occupied the square, complete with signs, chants, couches, tents, and the like. (There's video/photos of this on my Twitter feed, @j_ro.)

That was phase one -- for the next phase, the protest split into three groups, with one staying at the south entrance and the two others to take entrances on the north and west sides of the building. I went with the group going to the west, and we were met again by police presence at the west entrance. We pushed on through to the north entrance around the block, and again were met by police. After sitting down there for a bit and taking the intersection down the block, we were notified that our brethren needed our help back at the south entrance and we marched over.

When I got there with the crowd in my group, the police had about a dozen homeowners in plastic cuffs on the south steps and had set up a police line around the original square in front of the door. The people in my group rushed through the line to sit down with their fellow protesters and homeowners being arrested, and it was at this point that at least one officer took out his taser gun, pulled the trigger, and started using it to push back those in the crowd coming to the support of those being arrested. That's what you see in my video. As Matt noted, it was over very quickly, with protesters looking to peacefully support those who were being arrested being tased and pushed back, and those being arrested led into a police van and driven away for processing.

At this point, as the arrests were being loaded into the van, another group of about a dozen sat down inside the police barrier and as far as I know they're still there (I had to leave about an hour after the initial arrests). So there may be more arrests to come shortly.

Ashlynn Avery, who has diabetes, asthma and sleep apnea, was suspended for cutting class, and had to sit in the in-school suspension room. While she was reading "Huckleberry Finn," she dozed off. First, the in-school suspension supervisor walked over to her cubicle and struck it, which caused the cubicle to hit Avery's head, according to the lawsuit. She woke up, but soon fell back asleep. The supervisor, Joshua Whited, then took the book from her and slammed it down, which caused the book to hit the student in the chest.

Avery was then told to leave the room, according to the complaint, and police officer Christopher Bryant followed her. Bryant slapped her backpack, and then "proceeded to shove Ashlynn face first into a file cabinet and handcuff her," the complaint states. While in the car, Avery vomited. She was taken to a hospital and had to wear a cast as a result of her injuries.

The Philadelphia Daily News reports that Angelique Gerald-Porter was near her home watching a violent arrest that her friend, Salimah Milton, was videotaping. After Gerald-Porter got off her steps, a police officer told her to get back. According to the lawsuit, she complied, but the officer, Ian Nance, told her to walk to the end of the block. Gerald-Porter refused since she lived steps away.

Then Nance said: "This is our property right now," and took Gerald-Porter to the ground. In the ensuing altercation, Nance allegedly punched her in the stomach, and dragged her down her steps by her hair. Her two-year-old son was pinned beneath her and was kicked, according to the lawsuit. Gerald-Porter "was bloodied, her clothes torn and she was nearly naked in the street, the suit says. Gerald-Porter and her son were both treated for injuries at Lankenau Hospital," the Daily News reports.

A California sheriff's deputy needlessly Tasered and then shot a man to death after his father called 911 seeking help for his son's depression, the family claims in court. Parents and two brothers of the late George I. Ramirez sued Stanislaus County, its sheriff's department, Sheriff Adam Christianson, and Deputy Art Parra Jr. in Federal Court.

George Ramirez, the father, says he called 911 on April 16, 2012, seeking help for his son. Ramirez says in the complaint that he told the 911 operator that his son was depressed, but never said that the family was in danger or that a crime was in progress.

Deputy Parra responded, finding the father changing a headlight and the mother indoors doing housework. The family says Parra asked about the son's whereabouts, but did not ask for details regarding his condition or why the family called 911.

Parra found Ramirez on the couch watching television, unaware that his family had called 911. Parra confirmed his identity and placed him under arrest by ordering him to stand up and turn around, according to the complaint. "In the process of standing up and complying with orders, Ramirez asked Parra why he was under arrest and if he could see his credentials," the complaint states.

Baltimore police beat up a woman and smashed her camera for filming them beating up a man, telling her: "You want to film something, bitch? Film this!" the woman claims in court.

Makia Smith sued the Baltimore Police Department, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts and police Officers Nathan Church, William Pilkerton, Jr., Nathan Ulmer and Kenneth Campbell in Federal Court.

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12 Shocking Examples of Police Brutality...Just This Month

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Meanwhile, the decade-long war on terror has stocked local police departments with weapons from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan-do local police really need drones and tanks? (Journalist Radley Balko has extensively documented the militarization of police by way of the wars on drugs and terror.)

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‘They’re Murdering Our Kids And Getting Away With It’

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‘They’re Murdering Our Kids And Getting Away With It’

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By: Dre Evans
5/2
CRAAP Score--50

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Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri came as no shock to the hundreds of Americans of color who have lost loved ones in officer-involved shootings. Below, some of these people discuss their experiences and share their thoughts on the grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Brown this summer.
Thirteen-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr. was playing "cops and robbers" in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project in 1994 when NYPD Officer Brian George mistook the teen's toy rifle for a real weapon. George fired one shot into Nicholas' stomach, killing him. Then-Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes declined to convene a grand jury in the case, or to directly press charges against George. The shooting was ruled a justifiable homicide. Twenty years later, Nicholas' father, Nicholas Heyward Sr., is still fighting to keep the memory of his son alive. He's distraught by both the recent death of Akai Gurley -- another unarmed black male shot and killed by a police officer in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project -- and the grand jury's decision in Ferguson. Heyward spoke to The Huffington Post by phone this week. It was clear from his voice that he was close to weeping.
HEYWARD: Honestly speaking, whenever I hear of an innocent victim being killed by the police, I'm in tears. It hurts me so much. I know the officers aren't going to ever be held accountable.

Here's what I would say to [Michael Brown's] family: "Just continue to speak out and expose the truth."

My son was an outstanding student, an outstanding child, very helpful around the house. When my son was alive, in this community, he'd be talking to senior citizens on a bench out here. He was always willing to suck in knowledge from the adults. I remember when I went up to open house at school one night, when we both walked through the door, the principal pointed to my son and said "He's always in my office," and I was like, "What you been up to?!"

But then principal said, "No, he helps me out. He's an outstanding student." I was so overwhelmed by that. He was an amazing kid. I don't just say that because he's my son, but what others have told me about my son also.

My experience has been to organize with those who can identify my pain. You have to talk about that pain, because it's never gonna go away. As the years go on, it gets worse, because you see that it's constantly, constantly happening. You don't want another family to experience the pain and hurt.

That's why I'm still out here 20 years later. They're murdering our kids and they're getting away with it too much. I haven't done enough out here because they're still killing our children. And until that stops, I won't stop.
This Tuesday marked eight years since Sean Bell, 23, was killed by a hail of NYPD bullets in Queens. He was unarmed. Later that day, he was supposed to get married.
The three officers who faced charges were eventually acquitted. On Monday night, Bell's mother Valerie watched the announcement of the Ferguson grand jury decision. She shared her thoughts with HuffPost the following day.

BELL: Yes, I watched it. And I really had no words at the time. All I could say was "wow."

I texted Michael Brown's mother before the decision. I said, "Keep your head up no matter what the decision is, because you gotta be the voice for your son."

[Tuesday] is the anniversary of my son's death. It's like it's happening all over again. Seeing [Michael Brown's family], I'm reliving it again with somebody else. Even though they did indict [the officers who killed] my son, the officers still get off. It's a never-ending story.

I'd tell the Brown family this: You're never gonna forget it. If I was at work today, I'd be at my desk, crying.

You have to try to help make change. These police officers need to be held accountable. They need to go to jail. If we did the same thing as them, we'd go to jail for life.
Oscar Grant III, an unarmed 22-year-old, was shot and killed in Oakland, California, by BART Officer Johannes Mehserle in 2009. Mehserle said he thought he was using his Taser when he shot Grant point-blank in the back with a handgun.
Multiple witnesses recorded the incident on their phones, and the tragedy was later the subject of an acclaimed movie, 2013's "Fruitvale Station," named for the BART station where the shooting occurred. Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in 2010.

Grant's mother, Wanda Johnson, spoke to HuffPost by phone.

JOHNSON: When the [Ferguson] verdict was rendered, it brought back a lot of memories of going through trial and court for my son's case.

I don't think I'm ever going to have that closure. But I believe that Oscar died for a purpose, and one of those purposes was to bring light to the injustice that African-American and brown young men face.

And so with that, every day is an opening for me, because I'm still always talking about Oscar, always sharing the experience that I went through, that my family went through, and working to try to let people know that stereotypes still exist.

People expect you to just get over it in a certain amount of time. One of the things that helped me to cope is being able to help other mothers or families who have lost their children to gun violence. It's an everyday struggle. I go through the transition of not having their child with them, encouraging them. It's a very hard process to deal with. It's very hard.

People are fed up. We have a new generation coming up and they see the injustice taking place in our society. They looked at what happened all the way from Rodney King to my son Oscar Grant and now Michael Brown.

[Brown's family] hasn't had the time to sit down and come to grips with how their family is forever changed. They won't get to smell the roses that their son brings home. They won't get to see his smiling face. They won't get to hear his laugh. They won't get to hear him say "I love you." They won't get to feel his hugs and his touch.

One of the things that they will probably have to do is get away to themselves, for awhile, to really process this, and really just come to grips with Michael not being here anymore.
Errol Shaw was 39 years old when Detroit police Officer David Krupinski fatally shot him at his home on Aug. 29, 2000. Shaw could not hear or speak, and his family said he couldn't understand police orders to put down the rake he was holding. Shortly after Shaw's death, Detroit's mayor asked for a federal review of the police department and police-involved shootings, resulting in a Department of Justice monitoring program that only ended this year.
Krupinski was charged with manslaughter, but was later acquitted.

Shaw's niece, Katina Crumpton, was there when her uncle was killed. She told HuffPost that the deaths of both Michael Brown and her uncle, along with the lack of a criminal conviction for either shooter, prove that our justice system needs an "overhaul."

CRUMPTON: I was very hurt for [Michael Brown's] family. I can understand the agony, the pain, the sorrow. I understand it all because we've been there.

There's still not a sense of normalcy when it comes to what transpired with my uncle. Each day it's a struggle for his mom, my grandmother.

When I got out of my car, as I was walking towards the police officers, I was kind of stating to them, "He's deaf, he's deaf, he can't hear you." They were telling him to drop his rake, but he was actually going to do yardwork. They told me to stop coming. And then one officer pointed the gun at me and told me to stay right where I was. Otherwise, they probably would have killed me, too.

Now, when I see a police officer, I literally cringe. I get nervous. It's been that way with my entire family and people who know about our case. We have no trust in our judicial system. We have no trust in police officers anymore. It's very, very difficult as a community to move forward if we can't even trust the police to protect and serve.

It's like the judicial system is dehumanizing us as a people. Like we are not a concern. Like we are just not human beings. It's utterly ridiculous how these officers are getting away with these senseless murders.
O'Shaine Evans, 26, was fatally shot by San Francisco police Officer David Goff on Oct. 7. Goff reportedly suspected that Evans was part of a group of men who'd just burglarized an SUV near AT&T Park. He approached Evans, who was sitting in a parked car, and asked him to show his hands, according to police. Evans allegedly pointed a gun at Goff, who fired into the car, striking Evans twice. Goff is currently on paid leave while the shooting is under review.
Evans' family doubts that Goff properly identified himself, and police admit that Goff's uniform was partially covered.

The decision in Ferguson was exactly what Evans' sister, Cadine Williams, 34, expected to happen.

WILLIAMS: [Evans] was born in Jamaica, moved here in '92. You know the story. We came here because of poverty. He was trying to be a boxer when they killed him.

Every day I dream about it. I haven't gone back to work. I'm scared in my own house. We grew up together.

I didn't expect anything different to come out of [Ferguson]. It was not surprising to me. For them to charge Wilson with murder, that would have been justice.

[The violent protests] should happen. Burn it down. That's the only way they're going to listen to us, to see we mean business, that we're standing up for [Brown]. I was not [active] until [Evans died]. I wish I had gotten out there before this. It's an eye-opener. It's a lesson learned.

I'm so sorry for [Michael Brown's family's] loss, and that they have to relive the whole nightmare all over again. I feel it for them, because I know what they're going through. It's close to what happened to my brother.
In February 2012, NYPD Officer Richard Haste spotted 18-year-old Ramarley Graham outside a Bronx bodega and reportedly thought he had a gun. Haste and another officer followed Graham back to his apartment.
The officers broke inside without a warrant, and Haste shot Graham once in the chest, killing him. Graham was unarmed, and police say he was trying to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet. His grandmother and his 6-year-old brother watched him get shot.

Haste was indicted later that year, but the indictment was tossed out on a technicality in 2013. A second grand jury declined to indict him. Graham's mother, Constance Malcolm, talked to HuffPost during a protest in New York City Monday night.

MALCOLM: I got an indictment in Ramarley's case and I'm right back to square one. It's sad that [the Brown family] didn't get the indictment.

If it was us, we'd get indicted right away -- before we even got to the precinct.

We're black, and they don't think our lives matter. But we're showing them that they do matter. It's a lot of black youth out here, and it makes a big difference. We're showing that we are somebody. We'll stand strong, be united as one and never be defeated.

If a cop can kick your door down and murder you, what kind of country are we living in? We can't keep burying our kids. It's just too much for a mother.

Remarks have been edited for length and clarity.

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'They're Murdering Our Kids And Getting Away With It'

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Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri came as no shock to the hundreds of Americans of color who have lost loved ones in officer-involved shootings. Below, some of these people discuss their experiences and share their thoughts on the grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Brown this summer.

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New Indiana Criminal Laws Take Effect January 1

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New Indiana Criminal Laws Take Effect January 1

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By: Daniel Ross
5/1
CRAAP Score--43

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By: Dre Evans
5/1
CRAAP Score--50

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A viral Facebook video shows how an innocent black bystander was attacked by a K-9 dog in a crowd of residents due to an incompetent attitude of a police officer.

An innocent bystander, Rafer Allen, a black Virginia man was attacked by a K-9 police dog on Saturday after officers were trying to apprehend a drug dealer suspect in an apartment complex, Atlanta BlackStar reported.

According to reports by Petersburg, Virginia-based news outlets NBC 12, the innocent victim was helpless in trying to secure himself from the dangerous acts of the K-9 dog. Due to the dreadful situation, other bystanders with their children tried escaping being attacked also.

"I stood there like, 'I'm going to take the bite. I don't got no other choice,' " Allen told the news reporter. " 'I'm not about to run. He's too close up on me.' "

According to Allen, the officer had to choke the dog before he could get it off him and that he appeared not to have control over the dog.

"Why do you have to do all that if it's your dog and you've had it for decades?" he asked.

However, police brutality is a common thing that doesn't surprise anyone anymore, because it's as if that is what they are trained for. This is really awful. This tragic accident shows that white police officers use the same methods and have the same attitudes towards black Americans decades ago.

An internal investigation has been launched into the incident by the Petersburg Police Department.
Share this article and help to fight against racial discrimination in our communities.

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Cop Attacks Innocent Bystander With K-9 | BlackMattersUS.com

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An innocent bystander, Rafer Allen, a black Virginia man was attacked by a K-9 police dog on Saturday after officers were trying to apprehend a drug dealer suspect in an apartment complex, Atlanta BlackStar reported. According to reports by Petersburg, Virginia-based news outlets NBC 12, the innocent victim was helpless in trying to secure himself from the dangerous acts of the K-9 dog.

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Men Arrested After Walking Into Dearborn Police Station Carrying Gun, Wearing Armor. 

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Men Arrested After Walking Into Dearborn Police Station Carrying Gun, Wearing Armor. 

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By: Daniel Ross
4/28
CRAAP Score--40

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Local news, headlines, top stories, national news and videos from NBC TV's local affiliate in Detroit, Michigan.

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By: Daniel Ross
4/28
CRAAP--41

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Licenses to carry handguns, issued by other states or foreign countries, will be recognized according to the terms thereof but only while the holders are not residents of Indiana. With the exceptions of limitations on carrying during game seasons, state law is silent on the issue of carrying rifles and shotguns.

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The Other Cultural Forces Behind Police Brutality 

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The Other Cultural Forces Behind Police Brutality 

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By:Kiara Holder
4/28
CRAAP Score- 39

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Even for a radical magazine in a radical decade with Molotov cocktails on its mind, the cover of the July 1969 issue of Ramparts was, shall we say, arresting. Breaking the fourth wall in a big way, it cried Halt! with a helmeted, face-shadowed policeman pointing a revolver square at the reader's head, and offered the following bounty: "$10,000 for Information Leading to the Arrest and Conviction of any Cop who has Murdered a Black Man." Many of Ramparts' insurrectionist covers have dated into countercultural relics. Not this one. Here we are, 46 years later, deep in the second term of the country's first African-American president, and, for all of the country's racial progress, the killings of black men (and boys) by police officers haven't dwindled into a few grievous, rogue-cop incidents; they've appeared to accelerate and hemorrhage into a Rorschach blot of blood pools. Were any magazine to tout a similar wanted poster today the inundation would immobilize its in-box. Ramparts felt compelled to step up to the plate with its graphic proposal because, back in those analog days of Mad Men yore, documentation of police brutality was sketchy, sporadic, heavily dependent on eyewitness accounts. Digital technology has democratized eyewitnesshood, made it less subject to the Rashomon effect. All it takes to record law officers in the act of firing on an unarmed suspect or executing a beatdown is a bystander with a cell-phone camera or a surveillance cam in just the right spot. Yet the vortex impact of viral footage of killer cops-the outrage, protest marches, criminal charges-doesn't seem to have inhibited lethal-forcers. Each week a new victim seems to go up on the scoreboard.

Black Lives Matter was the protest message adopted after the acquittal in 2013 of George Zimmerman in the shooting of the unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. It swelled into a movement as open season seemed to be declared on black males and tragedies multiplied. Black lives matter in America, but white lives rule. Self-styled, homegrown, beef-jerky Red Dawn "Wolverines!" Open Carry showboats can preen about with AR-15s strapped to their backs without meeting kingdom come, and a psycho-killer such as James Eagan Holmes can be apprehended in one piece after conducting a massacre in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater that left 12 dead and 70 wounded, while a black father of four, Rumain Brisbon, can be shot for holding a vial of pills mistaken for a weapon, another can be shot for handling a pellet gun at Walmart (John Crawford, aged 22), and a 12-year-old black child can have his future erased for playing with a BB gun, shot by an officer who may not have been aware the boy was holding a toy gun. (The victim, Tamir Rice, died the next day at the hospital and six months after his death had still not been buried, denied even that dignity. His family finally decided to have him cremated.)

The latitude of response allowable to a black suspect is razor-thin to nonexistent. Resist, like Eric Garner, surrounded by a scrum of cops for the quality-of-life offense of allegedly selling individual cigarettes, or "loosies," and you can find yourself in a choke hold that leaves you gasping, "I can't breathe," until the last breath goes. Flee and you may get shot in the back, like Walter Scott, felled by a South Carolina officer whose fairy-tale account of the incident collapsed when video showed him performing his fatal marksmanship, or like Eric Harris, who uttered, as he lay dying from a gunshot wound, "My God, I'm losing my breath," to which one of Tulsa County's finest responded, "Fuck your breath." Or you may get tossed into a van and reduced to a bag of broken body parts, like Freddie Gray, whose death ignited a raging tempest in Baltimore. Seemingly surrender and you can still get killed point-blank, as happened to Jerame Reid, who emerged from the passenger side of a car at a traffic stop in New Jersey with his hands raised. Six shots later, he was history.

It's no great revelation that racism is rife in many police departments, even those in a city renowned for its liberal cosmopolitanism such as San Francisco, where a toxic spill of text messages between policemen (the most flagrant offender shared this handy health tip: "Cross burning lowers blood pressure! I did the test myself!") led to officer dismissals and the review of thousands of cases. Such slur-slinging is sometimes defended as a combination of gallows humor and fraternal hazing, a Friars Roast on squad-car wheels that expresses camaraderie and releases job pressure, but the torture claims of nearly 200 black men at the hands of a white police commander and detectives in Chicago over the course of decades show that racial slurs emerge from embedded supremacist attitudes.

No matter how unabashedly the novels of Joseph Wambaugh and James Ellroy or television series such as The Shield and True Detective unscrewed the skulls of the armed and dangerous guardians of law and order and gave us a tour of their lusts, greeds, paranoia, prejudices, and borderline-psycho compulsions, it's the Dragnet ideal that dominates our political discourse and editorial pieties, a cardboard knighthood of fallen heroes and a few bad apples. But beneath the lip service, in the dirty rooting section of our limbic brains, we've been cultured to identify with the sentinels at the expense of those in the crosshairs, because that's where power, authority, status, and prerogative suit up every day for duty. We may pity the victims, but pity is a watery emotion compared with the blood rush of a good chase and a vigorous takedown. The long-running success of Cops derives its voyeuristic fascination from this valorizing of the figure in the foreground, the camera riding sidekick on the night shift and allowing the viewer to share the cops' windshield view of the world, which is often a pretty skanky panorama of sketchy behavior, so many of the perps appearing to opt for the pants-less look. Cops spawned a genre of police-perspective procedurals that make up the meat of the programming lineup of cable channels such as CI (Crime & Investigation), with its heavy rotation of Manhunters: Fugitive Task Force; Jacked: Auto Theft Task Force; and Dallas SWAT and its spin-off, Kansas City SWAT. Yes, this is a country that treats its urban SWAT teams as if they were Real Housewives, though in fairness the SWAT members behave far more admirably between Starship Trooper raids in full battle gear than those table-flipping divas in their gauche finery. Beyond the confines of reality-TV conventions, the picture is much uglier. The Cato Institute features a handy "interactive map of botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids" as a supplement to Radley Balko's book Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America -raids described as "needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers." A reality almost never reflected in Hollywood films, where SWAT units are either anonymous centurions backing up the overpaid hero or fodder for some drug kingpin's or super-villain's booby trap.

This marriage of outlaw-sheriff mystique and a militarized warrior class, where Dirty Harry meets RoboCop, has been a long time bulking and armoring up. In The Second Civil War, published in 1968, Garry Wills reported on the preparations for containment and suppression of racial uprisings-ghetto control-to prevent a black militant guerrilla insurgency from turning American cities into The Battle of Algiers. It wasn't a work of alarmism. In 1968, Civil War II wasn't some prototype Tea Party/neo-Confederate wet-dream Nightmare on Elm Street scenario, but a plausible irruption after Detroit's "12th Street Riot," the year before-which left 43 dead, hundreds injured, and an estimated 1,400 buildings burned-and the nationwide conflagration ignited by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Race relations would improve in the following years and decades, but the domestic arms race, like the international military overstretch, never quite abates. After 9/11, the date from which so much of our hulking entropy can be marked, the War on Terror revived police militarization with a righteous vengeance. State and local law enforcement in communities that didn't have a mouse squeak of a threat risk from sleeper cells could roll out hardware worthy of a Pentagon yard sale. As our twin theaters of operation in Afghanistan and Iraq tapered down, military equipment was re-deployed Stateside, courtesy of the Department of Defense, even such vital peacekeeping machines as the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, capable of withstanding bomb blasts. Because, as we all are aware, this country's rotting infrastructure is pimpled with I.E.D.'s. North Little Rock, Arkansas, even retains a couple of armed robots formerly used in Afghanistan, robots being especially attractive acquisitions because they don't put in for overtime or expect pensions.

Much of this hardware has been rolled roughshod over citizens' rights in the War on Drugs, but with the decriminalization of marijuana trending, it will have to be put to other wasteful uses, since adults in authority never want to give up their toys. It will be oiled and ready to quell civil disorder, which we're likely to see more of in chronically poor regions and urban sectors now threatened with resource scarcity due to drought and environmental destruction. Thousands of citizens in Detroit and Baltimore have had their water turned off owing to nonpayment of bills, an excellent way to foster a powder keg. Part of the premonitory hold of The Walking Dead is the sense that it may be a preview of coming attractions.

To preserve black lives and the lives of every vulnerable shade, body cams, indictments of officers, and the A.C.L.U. of Missouri's "Mobile Justice" app (for videoing police encounters) are all to the good, as is the social-justice crusade that has mobilized (see Jay Caspian Kang's profile of activist DeRay Mckesson, "Our Demand Is Simple: Stop Killing Us," The New York Times Magazine, May 10), but what's also required is a concerted rollback of police-statism and penal-colony proliferation-a genuine libertarian movement, not the mostly frat-bros version we have now. Because what looms behind this country's gunslinger mentality is a prison-gray machine.

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The Other Cultural Forces Behind Police Brutality

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Racism isn't the only thing behind the increasing slaughter of black men (and boys) by the police. There's also a long-ingrained culture that glorifies law enforcement and now, thanks to the War on Terror, a domestic glut of Pentagon hardware.

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The Brutality of Police Culture in Baltimore

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The Brutality of Police Culture in Baltimore

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By: Kiara Holder
4/28
CRAAP Score - 42

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Years of abuses are every bit as egregious as what the Department of Justice documented in Ferguson, Missouri, and as deserving of a national response.

Jose Luis Magana / Reuters

In Baltimore, where 25-year-old Freddie Gray died shortly after being taken into police custody, an investigation may uncover homicidal misconduct by law enforcement, as happened in the North Charleston, South Carolina, killing of Walter Scott. Or the facts may confound the darkest suspicions of protestors, as when the Department of Justice released its report on the killing of Michael Brown.

What's crucial to understand, as Baltimore residents take to the streets in long-simmering frustration, is that their general grievances are valid regardless of how this case plays out. For as in Ferguson, where residents suffered through years of misconduct so egregious that most Americans could scarcely conceive of what was going on, the people of Baltimore are policed by an entity that perpetrates stunning abuses. The difference is that this time we needn't wait for a DOJ report to tell us so. Harrowing evidence has been presented. Yet America hasn't looked.

I include myself.

Despite actively reading and commenting on police misconduct for many years, I was unaware until yesterday that the Baltimore Sun published a searing 2014 article documenting recent abuses that are national scandals in their own rights.

A grandmother's bones were broken. A pregnant woman was violently thrown to the ground. Millions of dollars were paid out to numerous victims of police brutality.

And almost none of us noticed!

So I join all who say that protests in Baltimore should remain peaceful, and I will continue to withhold judgment about Gray's death until more facts are known.

But I also insist that Baltimore protests are appropriate regardless of what happened to Freddie Gray, as is more federal scrutiny and intervention. Although much was rightly made of Ferguson's racially unrepresentative local leadership, the presence of a black mayor and a diverse city council has not solved Baltimore's police problem, partly because the DOJ responded to revelations of epidemic brutality with less than the full-scale civil rights probe that some residents requested and because Maryland pols have thwarted reform bills urged by city leaders.

There are so many good reasons for locals to be outraged.

The Baltimore Sun's article shows why in detail. And a few choice excerpts are the best beginning in this attempt to contextualize the ongoing protests within recent history.

Let's start with the money.

$5.7 million is the amount the city paid to victims of brutality between 2011 and 2014. And as huge as that figure is, the more staggering number in the article is this one: "Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil-rights violations." What tiny percentage of the unjustly beaten win formal legal judgments?

If you're imagining that they were all men in their twenties, think again:

Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson. Those cases detail a frightful human toll. Officers have battered dozens of residents who suffered broken bones - jaws, noses, arms, legs, ankles - head trauma, organ failure, and even death, coming during questionable arrests. Some residents were beaten while handcuffed; others were thrown to the pavement.

The 87-year-old grandmother was named Venus Green. A former teacher with two college degrees, she spent her retirement years as a foster parent for needy children. She was on her porch one day when her grandson ran up crying for an ambulance.

He'd been shot.

The article goes on to tell her story from a legal document in her successful lawsuit:

Paramedics and police responded to the emergency call, but the white officer became hostile. "What happened? Who shot you?" Green recalled the officer saying to her grandson, according to an 11-page letter in which she detailed the incident for her lawyer. Excerpts from the letter were included in her lawsuit. "You're lying. You know you were shot inside that house. We ain't going to help you because you are lying."

"Mister, he isn't lying," replied Green, who had no criminal record. "He came from down that way running, calling me to call the ambulance."

The officer, who is not identified in the lawsuit, wanted to go into the basement, but Green demanded a warrant. Her grandson kept two dogs downstairs and she feared they would attack. The officer unhooked the lock, but Green latched it. He shoved Green against the wall.

She hit the wooden floor. "Bitch, you ain't no better than any of the other old black bitches I have locked up," Green recalled the officer saying as he stood over her. "He pulled me up, pushed me in the dining room over the couch, put his knees in my back, twisted my arms and wrist and put handcuffs on my hands and threw me face down on the couch."

After pulling Green to her feet, the officer told her she was under arrest. Green complained of pain. "My neck and shoulder are hurting," Green told him. "Please take these handcuffs off." An African-American officer then walked in the house, saw her sobbing and asked that the handcuffs be removed since Green wasn't violent. The cuffs came off, and Green didn't face any charges. But a broken shoulder tormented her for months.

When pondering the fact that Baltimore paid out $5.7 million in brutality settlements over four years, consider that the payout in this case was just $95,000. (For the story of the pregnant woman and many others, the full article is here.)

Lest anyone imagine that this investigation was the only tipoff of egregious misconduct among Baltimore police, more context is useful. The period covered in the brutality investigation came immediately after the FBI caught 51 Baltimore police officers in a scheme that resulted in at least 12 extortion convictions.

Shortly after the investigation was published this happened on a Baltimore street:

This year a detective who retired from the police force last year demonstrated a violent streak-he allegedly took part in a motorcycle-club brawl that left a man hospitalized. Also in 2014, "a city police officer was charged with felony assault after he stormed into a home in full uniform Monday and threatened to kill his wife with his service weapon." And Baltimore police tased a hospitalized meningitis patient 5 times in the course of ten minutes. He died soon after. Prosecutors did not file charges.

Another cop was charged with an assault on a 14-year-old boy.

Even animals couldn't escape the brutality of the Baltimore police last year. In July, "Officer Thomas Schmidt, a 24-year veteran assigned to the Emergency Services unit, was placed on paid administrative leave after police say he held down a Shar-Pei while a fellow officer, Jeffrey Bolger, slit the dog's throat." A month later, a Baltimore police officer plead guilty "to a felony animal cruelty charge after he fatally beat and choked his girlfriend's Jack Russell terrier," an August 5 article noted. The very same year, even one of Baltimore's good cops couldn't escape the horror show of dead animals: "Four investigators from agencies outside Baltimore are working to determine who left a dead rat on the car windshield of an officer who was cooperating with prosecutors on a police brutality case."

What about the prior year?

There was a murder-suicide, with a policeman . And that's not even getting into killing a firefighter, his girlfriend, and himself. There was a different officer who killed himself in jail after being charged with killing his fiancée. In yet another case, "Abdul Salaam, 36, says he was beaten in July 2013 after a traffic stop by officers Nicholas Chapman and Jorge Bernardez-Ruiz and that he never got a response to his complaint filed with internal affairs," The Sun reported. "Those officers would be implicated less than three weeks later in the death of 44-year-old Tyrone West while he was in police custody." Also in 2013, a jury acquitted an off-duty police officer on manslaughter charges after he chased down and killed a 17-year-old boy who may or may not have thrown a rock that thumped harmlessly into his front door serious corruption that wasn't brutality.

I could go on, but I've long since started to skim past stories like " Baltimore police officer pimps out his own wife" and thinking, meh, I've seen worse from cops there. The cop who shot himself and lied about it to get worker's comp benefits? Meh, at least he didn't shoot someone else and then lie about what happened. There is just a staggering level of dysfunction in the department, and residents of Baltimore, a city that could use a professional crime-fighting force if ever there was one, have suffered under it year after year after year. Pick one. (Take 2008! A Baltimore cop shot a man twice in the back. He was acquitted, too.)

There is so much I haven't included ( example), and I've just trawled through the archives of The Baltimore Sun for a two-year period. They cover most police-involved deaths, but no newspaper covers more than a minuscule subset of use-of-force incidents.

So no wonder protestors are out in Baltimore after this latest death.

No wonder that a meeting on police brutality this week had to be moved to a bigger venue because so many Baltimore residents are concerned enough to come out in person. "Dozens of residents-most of them black-inundated federal officials with their assertions that city police have been brutalizing residents with impunity," a just-published Baltimore Sun article reports. It includes a quote from a 35-year-old who asked the feds, "When are you all going to help us?"

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The Brutality of Police Culture in Baltimore

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Years of abuses are every bit as egregious as what the Department of Justice documented in Ferguson, Missouri, and as deserving of a national response. In Baltimore, where 25-year-old Freddie Gray died shortly after being taken into police custody, an investigation may uncover homicidal misconduct by law enforcement, as happened in the North Charleston, South Carolina, killing of Walter Scott.

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Dozens of Cases are Dismissed after and Reviewed in Georgia after officers fired

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Dozens of Cases are Dismissed after and Reviewed in Georgia after officers fired

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By: Kiara Holder
4/28
CRAAP Score- 37

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The prosecutors were sifting through the cases in the aftermath of the events of April 12, in which Officer McDonald was captured on video kicking Demetrius B. Hollins, a 21-year old black man, in the head during a traffic stop near Lawrenceville, a suburb of Atlanta.

Sergeant Bongiovanni, in a separate video, was shown punching Mr. Hollins. "The actions of these officers completely undermine their credibility, and they cannot be relied upon as witnesses in any pending prosecution," Ms. Szabo's statement said.

When "police officers betray the public's trust and confidence, justice demands that all those cases that depend on their credibility be dismissed without delay," it said.

The move by the prosecutors underlines their acknowledgment of the impact that the officers' firings could have on the county, which has a population of about 850,000.

It also highlights a process that typically takes place when an officer is disciplined for behavior that raises questions about his or her credibility as a witness in previous cases they have handled. Some cases can involve charges as serious as drug dealing or murder that could send an innocent person to prison.

"If the person is filing false reports or planting evidence, that's a no-brainer. Every case would be reviewed," Bill Fitzpatrick, the chairman of the National District Attorneys Association, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "In Gwinnett County, the D.A. was faced with pretty damning evidence regarding this incident.

"The D.A. is sending the absolute correct message that the integrity of the system is more important than some past convictions," he added.

The case in Georgia also became another example of how cellphone videos recorded by bystanders can prompt investigations into the kind of police behavior that can fuel mistrust between mostly white law enforcement officers and black people - a consequence the police department suggested it wanted to avoid when it announced last week that the men were fired.

"The actions of these two officers have implications that will be felt for some time," it said. "However, we also believe that our decisive action in terminating both officers speaks volumes about what is expected of each officer that wears a Gwinnett County Police badge."

According to the Sergeant Bongiovanni's incident report, the episode started at about 4:30 p.m. last Wednesday when he tried to pull over the Acura Integra driven by Mr. Hollins because it did not have a license plate, a light was broken and Mr. Hollins had changed lanes without signaling.

Mr. Hollins slowed down but did not stop until the car stalled, the report said. Sergeant Bongiovanni's report said that the car had smelled of marijuana and that Mr. Hollins had begun to act strangely. Mr. Hollins ignored a request to get out of the car, he wrote.

But a cellphone video, taken by a witness and discovered online by the police, showed Mr. Hollins standing up with his hands up as he got out of the car, and Sergeant Bongiovanni punching him in the face. Another video showed Officer McDonald stomp or kick Mr. Hollins in the head as Mr. Hollins was lying on the ground with his hands cuffed.

The police department statement said that Officer McDonald, 25, used "unnecessary and excessive" force and that Sergeant Bongiovanni 41, had lied about the encounter.

Mike Puglise, Mr. Bongiovanni's lawyer, said in an interview on Monday that his client had "followed protocol to de-escalate the situation" and that he was still considering whether to formally appeal his termination from the department. He noted that officers do not have the luxury of analyzing a video over and over.

"They have to act as the situation dictates," Mr. Puglise said. "All we would ask is that there is not a rush to judgment."

An attorney for Mr. McDonald could not be reached on Monday.

Mr. Hollins last week told NBC News that he had a previous "encounter" with Sergeant Bongiovanni, who "charged me with the same charges" as he was given last week, including possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, obstruction of a police officer and traffic violations.

The department said it had started a criminal investigation into the actions of both officers. Mr. Porter, the district attorney, said on Tuesday that his office expected to speak with Mr. Hollins later this week as part of that investigation.

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police brutality  misconduct and shootings

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Dozens of Cases Are Dismissed and Reviewed in Georgia After Officers are Fired

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The prosecutors were sifting through the cases in the aftermath of the events of April 12, in which Officer McDonald was captured on video kicking Demetrius B. Hollins, a 21-year old black man, in the head during a traffic stop near Lawrenceville, a suburb of Atlanta.

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Gun control isn't the answer we already know how to stop the violence.

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Gun control isn't the answer we already know how to stop the violence.

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BY:Troy Hightower
CRAAP SCORE--40

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The AR-15, used in the Newtown and Aurora shootings, has become a lighting rod in a wrenching debate over what a gun like this is for and whether anyone should have one. CNBC's Brian Sullivan examines the controversy and the rise of the AR-15, the rock star of America's gun industry.

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BY.Troy Hightower
CRAAP SCORE--40

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Gun control is a hot button issue, especially in the wake of so many recent, tragic mass shootings. It is also a polarizing issue, which means that it tends to divide people.

When you're writing an argumentative essay, it generally doesn't matter what side of an issue you take. What matters is that you take a side and support whichever position you choose.

In the case of the gun control issue, you could plausibly-and defensibly-take either side: strict regulation up to and including an outright ban on firearms or complete legalization of individual gun ownership.

Either way, you're going to need strong evidence.

With this in mind, I've sourced 12 gun control articles from online publications that illustrate both sides of the debate, plus two articles that can help you understand the background of the issue.

For each article, I've included the author's basic point and why the article is a worthwhile resource, as well as citations for APA and MLA 7th and MLA 8th editions.

No matter what side you argue, this post will point you to some credible sources for your argumentative gun control essay.

6 Supporting Gun Control Articles

This article discusses what is perhaps the greatest source of contention in the entire debate: the Second Amendment's wording.

The author quotes former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who advocates changing the Second Amendment's confusing language to clarify that it only applies to those serving in a militia.

Formerly called BusinessWeek until 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek has been around since 1929 and has earned numerous industry publication awards.

Barrett, P. M. (2014, February 10). Gun control and the Constitution: Should we amend the Second Amendment? Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved from http://www. bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-20/gun-control-and-the-constitution-should-we-amend-the-second-amendment

Barrett, Paul M. "Gun Control and the Constitution: Should We Amend the Second Amendment?" Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg, 20 Feb. 2014. Web. 10 July 2016.

Barrett, Paul M. "Gun Control and the Constitution: Should We Amend the Second Amendment?" Bloomberg Businessweek, 20 Feb. 2014, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-20/gun-control-and-the-constitution-should-we-amend-the-second-amendment. Accessed 10 July 2016.

A quick note about citations. I've included both MLA 7th edition and MLA 8th edition, as well as APA, citations for each article that you can use if you decide to reference the source in your gun control essay.

Because the MLA 8th edition went into effect in early 2016, not all professors/schools will require the use of the new format. Check with your professor to see which edition he or she prefers.

The 8th edition of MLA also suggests that you include the URL in each entry. Including the date you accessed an online source is now optional. I've included both pieces of information in my examples.

(Again, check with your professor to see what he or she prefers.)

Bovy tackles the gun issue by arguing that the debate should not be about closing loopholes in gun control. She doesn't argue that specific types of guns should be banned, but argues that all guns should be banned.

This article is published by New Republic, which "...was founded in 1914 as a journal of opinion which seeks to meet the challenge of a new time" ( NewRepublic.com). "Today, the New Republic is the voice of creative thinkers, united by a collective desire to challenge the status quo" ( NewRepublic.com).

This well-researched article was written in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting. It covers three main areas:

An in-depth discussion of the meaning of existing gun laws and the Second Amendment.

The difference between now and the time in which the Amendment was drafted.

How the drastically increased killing power of modern firearms makes any reference to the laws crafted two centuries ago obsolete.

LePore is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, as well as many other national news magazines.

LePore, J. (2012, April 23). Battleground America. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/23/battleground-america

LePore, Jill. "Battleground America." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 23 Apr. 2012. Web. 10 July 2016.

LePore, Jill. "Battleground America." The New Yorker, 23 Apr. 2012, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/23/battleground-america. Accessed 10 July 2016.

Hamblin discusses one of the most problematic aspects of the gun control debate: the fact that it is so politicized.

Here, the author explains his opinion by framing it in his own experiences. He states that he lost his job when he published a column arguing that it's possible to regulate guns without infringing on individuals' rights.

Hamblin is a frequent contributor and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Hamblin, J. (2014, June 29). Why we can't talk about gun control. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive /2014/06/how-to-interpret-the-second-amendment/373664

Hamblin, James. "Why We Can't Talk About Gun Control." The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 29 June 2014. Web. 10 July 2016.

Hamblin, James. "Why We Can't Talk About Gun Control." The Atlantic, The Atlantic Monthly Group, 29 June 2014, www.theatlantic.com/politics /archive/2014/06/how-to-interpret-the-second-amendment/373664. Accessed 10 July 2016.

This editorial by the the LA Times Editorial Board explains that, even though California has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, there are still many loopholes. The editorial board argues that stricter regulations for purchasing guns and ammunition need to be in place to stop gun violence.

The Los Angeles Times is a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper that has been in publication for more than 134 years.

Times Editorial Board. (2016, April 22). California's proposed gun laws won't change our culture of violence, but they will make us safer. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-adv-california-guns-20160422-story

Times Editorial Board. "California's Proposed Gun Laws Won't Change Our Culture of Violence, but They Will Make Us Safer." LATimes.com. Los Angeles Times Media Group, 22 Apr. 2016. Web. 10 July 2016.

Times Editorial Board. "California's Proposed Gun Laws Won't Change Our Culture of Violence, but They Will Make Us Safer." Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Media Group, 22 Apr. 2016, www.latimes.com/opinion/ editorials/la-ed-adv-california-guns-20160422-story. Accessed 10 July 2016.

Though you might not automatically think hard-hitting news when you think of Rolling Stone magazine, the author of this brief article succinctly sums up four common pro-gun arguments and explains why she doesn't feel they're effective.

Rolling Stone covers a variety of cultural, music, social, and political news and is a well-established magazine.

Now that we've examined articles in favor of gun control, let's take a look at a few articles that are against gun control.

6 Opposing Gun Control Articles

Published in the LA Times, this op-ed piece is written by Evan DeFilippis and Devin Hughes, who are the founders of the gun violence prevention site Armed With Reason.

The authors argue that gun control laws don't deter criminals and cannot prevent mass shootings.

Wilson, an author of several books about crime and a teaching fellow at Pepperdine University, asks an interesting question: how could or would we ever get rid of the hundreds of millions of guns that already exist in the United States?

He takes the stance that banning firearms is pointless, that "the genie is out of the bottle." He discounts the debate-driven by the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred just before he wrote the article-as being driven by election politics and, therefore, insincere. Though this source is a bit older, it still raises a valid question.

Wilson, J. Q. (2007, April 20). Gun control isn't the answer. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved fromhttp://www.latimes.com/la-oe-wilson20apr20-story.html

Wilson, James Q. "Gun Control Isn't the Answer." LATimes.com. Los Angeles Times, 20 Apr. 2007. Web. 10 July 2016.

Wilson, James Q. "Gun Control Isn't the Answer." Los Angeles Times, 20 Apr. 2007, www.latimes.com/la-oe-wilson20apr20-story.html. Accessed 10 July 2016.

Hardy argues that sweeping gun control legislation proposed by the anti-gun lobby leaves no room for compromise. He then does a U-turn and complains about the slippery-slope nature of bans on one kind of weapon, such as assault weapons or sniper rifles, leading slowly but surely to total prohibition.

Hardy fears that the gun control lobby is on a crusade to wipe out individual gun ownership altogether.

Hardy is an Arizona attorney and a Second Amendment scholar and writer.

This opinion piece discusses one woman's experience with gun violence and why she believes gun control is not the answer.

Taya Kyle, the writer of this article, is also the author of American Wife: A Memoir of Love, War, Faith, and Renewal. The movie American Sniper was based on her late husband, Chris Kyle.

Kyle, T. (2013, July 18). 'American Sniper' widow: Gun control won't protect us. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/opinions/taya-kyle-gun-control

Kyle, Taya. "'American Sniper' Widow: Gun Control Won't Protect Us." CNN.com. Cable News Network, 18 July 2013. Web. 10 July 2016.

Kyle, Taya. "'American Sniper' Widow: Gun Control Won't Protect Us." CNN, 18 July 2013, www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/opinions/taya-kyle-gun-control. Accessed 10 July 2016.

This article includes an interview with James Jacobs, director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University School of Law. He is also a professor of constitutional law and the author of Can Gun Control Work?

In this article, Jacobs examines misunderstandings about gun control and examines the effectiveness of various gun control strategies.

The author gives examples of incidents of gun violence that were stopped by people carrying guns, arguing that had such people not been on the scene, the results would have been worse.

Hunter is an aide to conservative senator Rand Paul.

2 Resources About the Gun Control Debate

If you're looking for articles with more background on the subject, check out these two resources that provide an overview of gun control and a variety of discussions about the topic.

In 2015-2016, the well-respected news source CNN aired a series of programming titled Guns in America. This resource contains both articles and videos about a wide array of gun-related topics, including town-hall meetings, an interview with President Obama, gun violence statistics, interviews with the NRA, a discussion of the gun industry, and segments about guns and police.

The articles and videos are too numerous to cite in this post, but I've included one sample to help illustrate how you might cite these resources.

Simon, M., & Sanchez, R. (2015, December 4). U.S. gun violence: The story in charts and graphs. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/ 04/us/gun-violence-graphics/index.html

Simon, Mallory and Ray Sanchez. "U.S. Gun Violence: The Story in Charts and Graphs." CNN.com. Cable News Network,4 Dec. 2015. Web. 10 July 2016.

Simon, Mallory and Ray Sanchez. "U.S. Gun Violence: The Story in Charts and Graphs." CNN, 4 Dec. 2015, cnn.com/2015/12/04/us/gun-violence-graphics/index.html. Accessed 10 July 2016.

This article, published by the The New York Times, provides broad definitions of gun control, includes arguments both for and against gun control, and even speculates as to why it's so difficult to solve the debate.

Perez-Pena, R. (2015, October 7). Gun control explained. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/ 07/us/gun-control-explained.html?_r=0

Perez-Pena, Richard. "Gun Control Explained." NYTimes.com. The New York Times Company,7 Oct. 2015. Web. 10 July 2016.

Perez-Pena, Richard. "Gun Control Explained." The New York Times, 7 Oct. 2015, nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/07/us/gun-control-explained.html?_r=0. Accessed 10 July 2016.

Putting it All Together

You can cite these or any of thousands of other gun control articles to buttress your argument. (Read 5 Best Resources to Help With Writing a Research Paper if you need assistance researching more scholarly sources.)

Whichever side of the issue you take, make sure to mention the source, cite it properly (in-text and in your Works Cited or References list), and format direct quotations, summaries, and paraphrases per MLA 7th edition, MLA 8th edition, or APA guidelines.

If you copy the APA or MLA citations I created above, be sure to update the accessed date (10 July 2016) to the date that you accessed the article.

Keep in mind that there will be very, very few sources (including the ones I used above) that are totally objective. Most writers-and most websites-will be catering to an audience. For a fuller list of issues on both sides of the debate, check out these Top Pro & Con Arguments on gun control.

Your job is to filter out the bias and see what value a given person's argument really has. Some of the most rabid commentators on both sides of the issue actually make good points-you just have to get past all the screaming.

Once you're ready to start writing, check out these sample essays on gun control for some ideas on how to put your paper together.

If you need help with writing your essay, read How to Write a Research Paper: a Step-by-Step Guide. Need help with overall formatting according to the style guide you're using? Give these resources a try:

When you're finished drafting your argument, don't forget to have an editor proofread your essay for you.

Good luck!

Psst... 98% of Kibin users report better grades! Get inspiration from over 500,000 example essays.

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12 Gun Control Articles to Support Your Argumentative Essay

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Gun control is a hot button issue, especially in the wake of so many recent, tragic mass shootings. It is also a polarizing issue, which means that it tends to divide people. When you're writing an argumentative essay, it generally doesn't matter what side of an issue you take.

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By.Troy Hightower
4/27
CRAAP SCore--40

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The increase in mass shootings is a much hyped myth. The drop in gun crime is a little noticed reality.

In the wake of the murderous rampage at Orlando's gay nightclub Pulse-the nation's worst mass shooting ever-it's inevitable that politicians would respond by calling for tighter gun-control laws. As Hillary Clinton put it on the Today show, "We need to get these weapons of war off the streets. We had an assault weapons ban, it expired, and we need to reinstate it."

Inevitable, yes, and understandable too. And totally besides the point. Laws addressing criminal behavior aren't going to prevent terrorism.

By every account, the shooter Omar Mateen was ideologically and theologically motivated- he called 911 to pledge his loyalty to the leader of the Islamic State before starting his homophobic attack-and thus unlikely to be deterred by legal prohibitions. His father told NBC News that his son was disgusted by the sight of two men kissing, his ex-wife said that he had beaten her, and his former workmates called him "toxic" and aggrieved by "women, race, and religion." Exactly how reducing law-abiding citizens' legal access to weapons will stop a jihadist bent on a suicide mission or even a garden-variety nut job from a rampage is something politicians don't pause to explain, especially since they never seriously suggest pulling a significant portion of the 357 million guns in America out of circulation.

More specifically, the assault weapons ban that Clinton cites was in effect from 1994 until 2003 and had no discernible impact on gun violence. A 2004 study ( PDF) commissioned by the Department of Justice found that gun crime did decrease during the ban, which outlawed 18 types of rifles and large-capacity magazines (LCMs). But because assault weapons-whether rifles or pistols-were so rarely used in shootings, the researchers concluded that "we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence." The authors argued that if the assault weapons ban were reinstated, its "effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement."

As telling, it's not immediately clear whether one of Mateen's weapons-an AR-15 rifle, among the most popular of its type in the country-would have been covered by the ban. Depending on a series of mostly cosmetic differences, some AR-15s were banned and others weren't.

Nor is there reason to believe that mass shootings are on the rise over the past 30 years or so. Writing in the wake of last fall's shooting at a community college in Oregon, Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, widely regarded as the authority on mass shootings, say there is no clear pattern. "Using the widely accepted definition of at least four killed," he wrote in USA Today, "the Congressional Research Service found that there are, on average, just over 20 incidents annually. More important, the increase in cases, if there was one at all, is negligible. Indeed, the only genuine increase is in hype and hysteria."

In fact, one of the most unremarked-upon developments of the past two decades is a massive, nation-wide reduction in violent crime, especially gun-related violent crime. In 1993, according to Pew Research figures, there were seven gun homicides per 100,000 people. In 2014, the latest year for which there is full data, the rate was 3.4 percent, a decline of nearly 50 percent. "Nonfatal violent firearm crime victimizations dropped even over the same time frame, from 725 per 100,000 to 175 per 100,000.

The result of such a decline is that crime is no longer an issue in national politics the way it was from at least the mid-1960s through the mid-1990s. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon capitalized on rising crime rates, riots, and anti-war protests by running commercials that promised an end to "domestic violence" and that "the wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future in America." George Wallace similarly pledged to "make it possible for you and your families to walk the streets of our cities in safety." Such appeals continued for decades, through the infamous Willie Horton ad in 1988 and Bill Clinton's 1992 spot bragging that he and Al Gore "sent a strong signal to criminals by supporting the death penalty."

By the mid-1990s-at the exact moment most criminologists (including Fox) predicted a historic surge in lawlessness by "super-predators"-crime was off the table as an issue. The reasons for the decline in crime are multiple and not all are unalloyed goods. The reduction of lead in the environment, for instance, may explain some reduction in anti-social behavior and so does an increase not just in the number of police but the use of computer-assisted policing. But it's also true that massively heightened levels of incarceration and aggressive methods that violated civil liberties such as "stop and frisk" played a significant role.

Apart from its gruesome body count, the Orlando shooting is particularly heinous because it targeted gays, a group that until recently was denied legal and cultural support from "normal" society and as likely as not to be harassed as helped by law enforcement. But it shouldn't be used to effect policy changes that will do nothing to prevent the terroristic violence that Mateen perpetrated. Indeed, even the post-9/11 protocols that are in place to monitor likely terrorists failed in this instance, as Mateen was investigated at least twice by the FBI based on tips from co-workers, his background, and his behavior.

Where Hillary Clinton has called for increased gun control, of course, Donald Trump has called for an equally unconstitutional and impossible ban, this one on Muslims and Middle Easterners. The Orlando shooting presents politicians as both crusading and cynical, as they can only offer up solutions that will do nothing but inflame the pre-existing prejudices of their constituents.

The one thing that they-and perhaps us, too-cannot countenance, especially in an era when violence is at a low ebb, is that evil cannot be fully exterminated from our lives.

In the wake of the murderous rampage at Orlando's gay nightclub Pulse-the nation's worst mass shooting ever-it's inevitable that politicians would respond by calling for tighter gun-control laws. As Hillary Clinton put it on the Today show, "We need to get these weapons of war off the streets. We had an assault weapons ban, it expired, and we need to reinstate it."

Inevitable, yes, and understandable too. And totally besides the point. Laws addressing criminal behavior aren't going to prevent terrorism.

By every account, the shooter Omar Mateen was ideologically and theologically motivated- he called 911 to pledge his loyalty to the leader of the Islamic State before starting his homophobic attack-and thus unlikely to be deterred by legal prohibitions. His father told NBC News that his son was disgusted by the sight of two men kissing, his ex-wife said that he had beaten her, and his former workmates called him "toxic" and aggrieved by "women, race, and religion." Exactly how reducing law-abiding citizens' legal access to weapons will stop a jihadist bent on a suicide mission or even a garden-variety nut job from a rampage is something politicians don't pause to explain, especially since they never seriously suggest pulling a significant portion of the 357 million guns in America out of circulation.

More specifically, the assault weapons ban that Clinton cites was in effect from 1994 until 2003 and had no discernible impact on gun violence. A 2004 study ( PDF) commissioned by the Department of Justice found that gun crime did decrease during the ban, which outlawed 18 types of rifles and large-capacity magazines (LCMs). But because assault weapons-whether rifles or pistols-were so rarely used in shootings, the researchers concluded that "we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence." The authors argued that if the assault weapons ban were reinstated, its "effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement."

As telling, it's not immediately clear whether one of Mateen's weapons-an AR-15 rifle, among the most popular of its type in the country-would have been covered by the ban. Depending on a series of mostly cosmetic differences, some AR-15s were banned and others weren't.

Nor is there reason to believe that mass shootings are on the rise over the past 30 years or so. Writing in the wake of last fall's shooting at a community college in Oregon, Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, widely regarded as the authority on mass shootings, say there is no clear pattern. "Using the widely accepted definition of at least four killed," he wrote in USA Today, "the Congressional Research Service found that there are, on average, just over 20 incidents annually. More important, the increase in cases, if there was one at all, is negligible. Indeed, the only genuine increase is in hype and hysteria."

In fact, one of the most unremarked-upon developments of the past two decades is a massive, nation-wide reduction in violent crime, especially gun-related violent crime. In 1993, according to Pew Research figures, there were seven gun homicides per 100,000 people. In 2014, the latest year for which there is full data, the rate was 3.4 percent, a decline of nearly 50 percent. "Nonfatal violent firearm crime victimizations dropped even over the same time frame, from 725 per 100,000 to 175 per 100,000.

The result of such a decline is that crime is no longer an issue in national politics the way it was from at least the mid-1960s through the mid-1990s. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon capitalized on rising crime rates, riots, and anti-war protests by running commercials that promised an end to "domestic violence" and that "the wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future in America." George Wallace similarly pledged to "make it possible for you and your families to walk the streets of our cities in safety." Such appeals continued for decades, through the infamous Willie Horton ad in 1988 and Bill Clinton's 1992 spot bragging that he and Al Gore "sent a strong signal to criminals by supporting the death penalty."

By the mid-1990s-at the exact moment most criminologists (including Fox) predicted a historic surge in lawlessness by "super-predators"-crime was off the table as an issue. The reasons for the decline in crime are multiple and not all are unalloyed goods. The reduction of lead in the environment, for instance, may explain some reduction in anti-social behavior and so does an increase not just in the number of police but the use of computer-assisted policing. But it's also true that massively heightened levels of incarceration and aggressive methods that violated civil liberties such as "stop and frisk" played a significant role.

Apart from its gruesome body count, the Orlando shooting is particularly heinous because it targeted gays, a group that until recently was denied legal and cultural support from "normal" society and as likely as not to be harassed as helped by law enforcement. But it shouldn't be used to effect policy changes that will do nothing to prevent the terroristic violence that Mateen perpetrated. Indeed, even the post-9/11 protocols that are in place to monitor likely terrorists failed in this instance, as Mateen was investigated at least twice by the FBI based on tips from co-workers, his background, and his behavior.

Where Hillary Clinton has called for increased gun control, of course, Donald Trump has called for an equally unconstitutional and impossible ban, this one on Muslims and Middle Easterners. The Orlando shooting presents politicians as both crusading and cynical, as they can only offer up solutions that will do nothing but inflame the pre-existing prejudices of their constituents.

The one thing that they-and perhaps us, too-cannot countenance, especially in an era when violence is at a low ebb, is that evil cannot be fully exterminated from our lives.

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In the wake of the murderous rampage at Orlando's gay nightclub Pulse-the nation's worst mass shooting ever-it's inevitable that politicians would respond by calling for tighter gun-control laws. As Hillary Clinton put it on the Today show, "We need to get these weapons of war off the streets.

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Serena Williams speaks out against police killings: 'I won't be silent'

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Serena Williams speaks out against police killings: 'I won't be silent'

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By: Dre Evans
4/27
CRAAP Score--49

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Serena Williams has spoken out against police killings of African Americans, writing in a heartfelt Facebook post: "As Dr Martin Luther King said: 'There comes a time when silence is betrayal.' I won't be silent."

The tennis champion, arguably one of the greatest sportspeople ever, wrote that she was in a car on Tuesday being driven by her nephew, who is black, when she saw a police car on the side of the road.

"I remembered that horrible video of the woman in the car when a cop shot her boyfriend," she wrote, referencing Philando Castile, whose girlfriend broadcast on Facebook Live the aftermath of his killing by police. "I even regretted not driving myself. I would never forgive myself if something happened to my nephew. He's so innocent. So were all 'the others'."

"Why did I have to think about this in 2016?" she wrote. "Have we not gone through enough, opened so many doors, impacted billions of lives? But I realized we must stride on - for it's not how far we have come but how much further still we have to go."

Williams is the latest - and perhaps the most high-profile - star to join a growing movement of black American athletes who are speaking candidly about how racism and police brutality affect their lives.

In late August, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick set off a nationwide firestorm when he declined to stand for the national anthem to protest about "a country that oppresses black people and people of color".

Kaepernick initially faced virulent backlash from some sports fans and public figures, but many others showed support. More NFL players have joined the silent, pre-game protest, while others have begun speaking out about racism and police brutality during press conferences that usually focus on sports.

On Monday, basketball star LeBron James told reporters that he also fears for the lives of his children, saying: "I look at my son being four years removed from driving his own car and being able to leave the house on his own and it's a scary thought right now to think if my son gets pulled over."

Williams has spoken in the past about her experience as a black athlete in an overwhelmingly white sport. In 2015, she ended a 14-year boycott of a tournament in Indian Wells, California, where she had been booed and jeered as a 19-year-old.

"The undercurrent of racism was painful, confusing and unfair," she wrote in an essay for Time. "In a game I loved with all my heart, at one of my most cherished tournaments, I suddenly felt unwelcome, alone and afraid."

In her Facebook post, however, Williams appeared to promise more vocal activism around racism in policing. "I had to take a look at me," she wrote. "What about my nephews? What if I have a son and what about my daughters?"

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Serena Williams speaks out against police killings: 'I won't be silent'

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Serena Williams has spoken out against police killings of African Americans, writing in a heartfelt Facebook post: "As Dr Martin Luther King said: 'There comes a time when silence is betrayal.' I won't be silent."

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By: Janiya Sansing
4/27
CRAAP Score-- 45

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OK, let's take him." Within seconds two officers grabbed me, each seizing an arm, and shoved me against the drinks machine that rested along the front wall of the McDonald's where I had been eating and working on my report. As I released my clenched hands, my mobile phone and notebook fell to the tiled floor. Then came the sharp sting of the plastic cable tie as it was sealed, pinching tight at the corners of my wrists. I'd never been arrested before, and this wasn't quite how I'd imagined it would go down.

Two days earlier, I'd been sent to Ferguson, Missouri, by the Washington Post, to cover the aftermath of the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. The fatal gunshots, fired by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, on 9 August 2014, were followed by bursts of anger, in the form of protests and riots. Hundreds, and then thousands, of local residents had flooded the streets. For the Ferguson press corps - which would eventually swell from dozens of reporters for local St Louis outlets into hundreds of journalists from farther afield, including dozens of foreign countries - the McDonald's on West Florissant Avenue became the newsroom.

Because the protests were largely, in those first days, organic and not called by any specific group or set of activists, they were also unpredictable. Some of the demonstrators came to demand an immediate indictment of the officer. Others wanted officials to explain what had happened that day, to tell them who this officer was and why this young man was dead. Scores more stood on pavements and street corners unable to articulate their exact demands - they just knew they wanted justice. Covering Ferguson directly after the killing of Mike Brown involved hours on the streets, with clusters of reporters staked out from the early afternoon into the early hours of the morning. At any point a resident or a group of them could begin a heated argument with the police or a reporter. A demonstration that had for hours consisted of a group of local women standing and chanting on a street corner would suddenly evolve into a chain of bodies blocking traffic, or an impromptu march to the other side of town.

It wasn't much later that the riot-gear-clad officers entered the McDonald's, suggesting we all leave because, with protests still simmering outside, things could get dangerous once the sun went down. Then, when it became clear that we were happy to wait and see how things developed outside, they changed their tune. Now the officers were demanding we leave. When I didn't move fast enough, they grabbed me.

I was led out of the restaurant to wait for transport to police headquarters, with Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post, who had also been arrested. We were driven across town in a police vehicle also containing a local minister, still in her clerical collar, who sang hymns for the entire journey.

The officer who arrested us had told us, smirking, that we'd be spending the night in the cells, but he was wrong. They locked us in a cell, but about half an hour later, we were turned loose. Inundated with phone calls from other reporters and media outlets, police chief Thomas Jackson had given orders for us to be released. By the time we were given back our belongings - unlaced shoes, notebooks, phones - we'd become momentary media celebrities.

I'd arrived in Ferguson thinking I'd be there for just a couple of days. I'd write a feature or two, and then I'd go back to DC and get on with writing about politics. But it became clear that I wasn't escaping Ferguson any time soon.

More than 150 people were taken into custody by the Ferguson and St Louis County police departments in the week-and-a-half that followed Mike Brown's death, the vast majority for "failure to disperse" charges that came as a result of acts of peaceful protest. I was the first journalist to end up in cuffs while covering the unrest.

Resident after resident had told stories of being profiled, of feeling harassed. These protests, they insisted, were not just about Mike Brown. What was clear, from the first day, was that residents of Ferguson, and all who had travelled there to join them, had no trust in, and virtually no relationship with, the police. The police, in turn, seemed to exhibit next to no humanity towards the residents they were charged with protecting.

What happened in Ferguson would give birth to a movement and set the nation on course for an ongoing public hearing on race that stretched far past the killing of unarmed residents - from daily policing to Confederate imagery to respectability politics to cultural appropriation. The social justice movement spawned from Mike Brown's blood would force city after city to grapple with its own fraught histories of race and policing. As protests propelled by tweets and hashtags spread under the banner of Black Lives Matter and with mobile phone and body camera video shining new light on the way police interact with minority communities, America was forced to consider that not everyone marching in the streets could be wrong. Even if you believe Mike Brown's own questionable choices sealed his fate, did Eric Garner, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and Sandra Bland all deserve to die?

Ferguson would mark the arrival on the national stage of a new generation of black political activists - young leaders whose parents and grandparents had been born as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, an era many considered to be post-civil rights. Their parents' parents had been largely focused on winning the opportunity to participate in the political process and gaining access to the protections promised them as citizens. Their parents focused on using the newfound opportunities and safeties provided by the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts to claim seats at the table, with political and activist strategies often focused on registering as many black voters and electing as many black leaders to public office as possible. For at least two decades, the days of taking the struggle to the streets had seemed, to many politically active black Americans, a thing of the past.

The shooting of Mike Brown had happened on a quiet side street, in a spot surrounded by four-storey apartment buildings. As the crowds gathered, others took to windows and porches, looking down at the chaos developing below. Within minutes of the shooting, word spread through the surrounding apartments, and beyond, that Brown's hands were up in the air when he was shot. Darren Wilson had encountered Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson while responding to a call about two young men, matching their description, who had just been involved in the robbery of a nearby off-licence.

People in Ferguson did not know whether Brown was attempting to surrender or attempting to attack Wilson when the officer shot him. They did know that the police in Ferguson looked nothing like them: an almost all-white force charged with serving and protecting a majority black city. They knew all too well about the near-constant traffic tickets they were being given, and how often those tickets turned into warrants. And they knew that Mike Mike (as the family called him), the quiet kid who got his hair cut up the street on West Florissant and who was often seen walking around in this neighbourhood, was dead.

Mike Brown's body remained on the hot August ground - a gruesome, dehumanising spectacle that further traumatised the residents of Canfield Drive and would later be cited by local police officials as among their major mistakes.

The Ferguson and St Louis County police had sent scores of officers, some in full riot gear and tactical vehicles, to deal with the growing crowds and to hold them back as they attempted to investigate the scene of the shooting for themselves. All of this is pretty standard for the scene of a police shooting - police, protesters, angered residents and families - but the scale of the immediate response from both the community and law enforcement signalled that Ferguson would be different.

And then, four-and-a-half hours after the shooting, officers finally removed Brown's body from the asphalt. They did not address the crowds who needed answers after spending most of their Saturday hearing inflammatory rumours.

As the police began to leave, church groups started walking down Canfield Drive, following Brown's mother, Lezley McSpadden, who was crying hysterically, to the spot where his blood stained the ground. When they arrived, the groups circled around McSpadden and her husband and began to pray, sing and hug. Some were older folks from the church up the road, others were younger residents who poured out of the Canfield apartments. What had been a rambunctious crowd had composed itself to create a vigil for a violent death.

But the tranquillity didn't last. As the prayer group began to break up, the residents of Canfield began to yell. Prayer wasn't going to fix this. Neither was singing. The police had to answer for this. Why was Mike Brown dead? Why had his body been left out for so long? And when would we get answers? Amid the shouting, someone lit a skip on fire. While moments earlier prayers were being sent up, now it was the flash of flames floating into the night air.

The following day, the Ferguson police department still hadn't explained what had happened or apologised for keeping Brown's body out on the ground for so long. And church groups were calling for a march in the dead teen's honour. After Sunday services concluded, local pastors and their congregations met at the spot where Brown was killed. Hundreds showed up, and started marching and chanting what they believed to be Michael Brown's own words in his final moments.

"Hands up, don't shoot!"

In city after city, I found officers whose actions were at worst criminal and at best lacked racial sensitivity

The cries rang into the air as the crowd, including many students set to begin school the following week, as well as middle-aged residents of the apartment complex, moved forward. As they hit West Florissant and turned left, they were met by a wall of police officers. What had begun as a peaceful march became a heated standoff, blocking traffic in both directions. The crowd continued shouting at the officers, who were shouting back. And as the church groups began to leave, young men emerged who seemed angrier and more determined to extract revenge for Mike Brown's death.

That night, armed vandals took advantage of raging protests to break into the QuikTrip petrol station just a block away from where Brown was killed, grabbing bags of crisps and sodas, cigarettes and lighters, as others ripped the ATM machine from the wall. Before long, the store was ablaze.

Photos and videos from the day of Brown's death had gone viral, but it was the destruction of the QuikTrip, not the police shooting of Mike Brown, that brought the national media's focus to Ferguson. Unrest had now become a riot. Yet another police shooting in a working-class black neighbourhood, even the breaking of a young black body left on public display, didn't catch the attention of the national media. It was the community's enraged response - broken windows and shattered storefronts - that drew the eyes of the nation.

By the time a grand jury concluded on 24 November 2014 that there was not enough evidence to charge Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson with a crime in the killing of Mike Brown, I had been in that city for the better part of three months. I would spend the next eight months crisscrossing the country, visiting city after city to report on and understand the social movement that vowed to awaken a sleeping nation and insisted it begin to truly value black life. Each day, it seemed, there was another shooting. In city after city, I found officers whose actions were at worst criminal and at best lacked racial sensitivity, and black and brown bodies disproportionately gunned down by those sworn to serve and protect.

Meanwhile, the protests had created a countermovement of scepticism, anger and hate, driven by some who genuinely believed that the coverage of Ferguson was overblown and amplified by others with more sinister motivations. These legions of sceptics insisted that the entire story was a fraud, that Mike Brown had deserved his fate, and that tensions in Ferguson were completely stoked by the media - based not on historical injustice, but on real-time race-baiting. The photos and videos that we had posted from the protests had unnecessarily fanned the flames, these critics insisted. And by demanding answers of the Ferguson police department, by wanting to know why this young man had died, the critics declared, we were now responsible for the social unrest in the streets.

On the afternoon of 22 November 2014, two days before the grand jury's decision not to prosecute the officer who shot Michael Brown, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner, officer Frank Garmback, responded to a call about a man with a gun outside a recreation centre. The man who called the police told the dispatcher that the person was possibly a child playing with a toy, information that was never given to Loehmann and Garmback. The officers believed they were responding to an active shooter.

Loehmann and Garmback pulled up in their cruiser next to a park gazebo where for the last hour 12-year-old Tamir Rice had been throwing snowballs and pretending to fire the toy weapon. Their cruiser slid on the snow-covered grass as Loehmann leaped out from the passenger-side door.

Loehmann claimed he yelled for the boy to show his hands, but that instead of complying, the boy lifted his shirt and reached into his waistband. Loehmann said that when he saw Tamir's elbow moving upwards and the weapon coming up out of his pants, he fired two shots. Video of the shooting showed that less than two seconds passed after the officers arrived before one of them shot Tamir dead.

Less than two seconds passed after the officers arrived before one of them shot Tamir Rice dead

"At its core, Tamir's death is a tale of stunning systemic police incompetence and indifference," wrote Phillip Morris, the sole black metro columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It had been revealed that Cleveland police had hired Loehmann, the officer who shot Rice, without checking his references or running a serious background check. Had the city done that, they would have uncovered job reviews from his former supervisor which made it clear he would not recommend that Loehmann, the son of a police officer, be given a badge and a gun.

A few weeks later, I flew to Cleveland, and made it just in time to see the last of about 200 protesters storm into Cleveland city hall, their signs and T-shirts declaring JUSTICE FOR TAMIR as they marched up to the council chambers for the body's final meeting of the year.

That night there was a stinging winter breeze blowing off Lake Erie and drifting through a largely empty downtown Cleveland. Typically, this section of the city would be quiet at this time of night, just after dinner on a weekday, with city employees gone from the public buildings - courthouse, administrative offices, city hall - that line these blocks. But on this night, there was a strong, steady sound of dissent.

"This is a movement, not a moment," declared Lorenzo Norris, a local pastor, as he led the racially diverse if largely young group of protesters into the council chambers. The Cleveland protesters were incensed by a recent federal review that had concluded that their police officers regularly exerted excessive force during routine interactions and pulled their guns (and their triggers) inappropriately.

That investigation had been sparked by another shooting in November 2012, during which Cleveland police officers opened fire on a car that had led them on a chase, discharging 137 bullets into the vehicle, only to later discover that both of those killed had been unarmed. Like their protest brethren in Ferguson, the Clevelanders contended that local elected officials hadn't done enough. "We want change," Norris told me as I caught up with the group. "We must have change."

After the protest, I drove over to see my old friend Colin. We weren't exactly surprised by Tamir Rice's death. We knew the Cleveland police weren't known for their rigour or calculated decision-making - in fact, in the last decade, the Department of Justice had issued not just one but two sets of findings that concluded the department routinely violated the civil rights of the city's residents. As young black men from the suburbs riding through the city in cars a little too nice to have either of us behind the wheel, we'd had our fair share of colourful interactions with Cleveland's finest.

At some point in high school, my best friends and I all had a running joke about "the talk", which most of them had been given by a father or mother or some other relative. The underlying theme of this set of warnings passed down from black parents to their children is one of self-awareness: the people you encounter, especially the police, are probably willing to break your body, if only because they subconsciously view you not only as less than, but also as a threat.

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Protesters against police shootings march in New York, July 2016. Photograph: Press/Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock

Find almost any high school-age black male and ask him about "the talk". Neither of my parents ever really gave it to me, but I heard "the talk" secondhand from the mothers of a few friends. Besides, when you grow up in a mixed-race home - my mother is white, my father black - no one has to tell you that one half of your family looks different than the other and that you need to pay attention. Close attention.

Say "yes sir" or "yes ma'am" to any officer you encounter. If you get pulled over, keep your hands on the wheel. As we drove around in Colin's car listening to Cleveland rap, we'd keep our wallets in the centre console. That way, we wouldn't have to reach into our pockets. Above all, we knew to never, ever run in the presence of a police officer. That's just asking for trouble.

While "the movement" was born in Ferguson in the summer of 2014, it had been conceived in the hearts and minds of young black Americans at different points in the preceding years. One of these moments came in July 2013 with the Florida jury's decision to find George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watchman who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, not guilty.

That year was a major awakening point not just for me but also for other young black men and women across the country. Each story of a police shooting solidified the undeniable feeling in our hearts that their deaths and those of other young black men were not isolated. Peaceful black America was awakened by the Zimmerman verdict, which reminded them anew that their lives and their bodies could be abused and destroyed without consequence. Trayvon's death epitomised the truth that the system black Americans had been told to trust was never structured to deliver justice to them. The "not guilty" verdict prompted the creation of a round of boisterous and determined protest groups, initially Florida-based, although they would eventually expand nationally.

Across the country, at a time when Twitter had yet to become the primary platform for news consumption, a 31-year-old activist in Oakland named Alicia Garza penned a Facebook status that soon went viral. She called the status "a love letter to black people".

"The sad part is, there's a section of America who is cheering and celebrating right now. and that makes me sick to my stomach. We GOTTA get it together y'all," she wrote, "stop saying we are not surprised. that's a damn shame in itself. I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter. And I will continue that. stop giving up on black life.
"Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter," she concluded.

Her friend and fellow activist Patrisse Cullors found poetry in the post, extracting the phrase "black lives matter" and reposting the status. Soon the two women reached out to a third activist, Opal Tometi, who set up Tumblr and Twitter accounts under the slogan.

"Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise," Garza wrote in the group's official history of its founding. "It is an affirmation of Black folks' contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression."

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Activist Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter. Photograph: Kristin Little Photography

While the phrase is now the name of an organisation and is often used to describe the broader protest and social justice movement, Black Lives Matter is best thought of as an ideology. Its tenets have matured and expanded over time, and not all of its adherents subscribe to them in exactly the same manner - much the way an Episcopalian and a Baptist, or a religious conservative and a deficit hawk, could both be described as a Christian or a conservative, yet still hold disagreements over policy, tactics and lifestyle. For the young black men and women entering the adult world during the Obama presidency, the ideology of Black Lives Matter, not yet an organisation nor a movement, carried substance, even heft. It was a message that resonated with the young black men and women who had been so outraged and pained by the Zimmerman verdict. And the decision by Tometi to focus on Twitter and Tumblr, then second-tier social media outlets, instead of Facebook, proved a stroke of strategic genius.

Both networks allow for more organic, democratic growth. Unlike Facebook, in which virality is determined by algorithms, visibility on Twitter and Tumblr is determined directly by how compelling a given message, post, or dispatch is. A phrase like #blacklivesmatter, or #ferguson, or, later on, #BaltimoreUprising, can in a matter of moments transform from a singular sentence typed on an individual user's iPhone into an internationally trending topic. #blacklivesmatter didn't catch on immediately, but its time would soon come.

As writer and historian Jelani Cobb wrote in the New Yorker, in what remains one of the definitive profiles of the creation of the organisation: "Black Lives Matter didn't reach a wider public until the following summer, when a police officer named Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson. Darnell Moore, a writer and an activist based in Brooklyn, who knew Patrice Cullors, coordinated 'freedom rides' to Missouri from New York, Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston. Within a few weeks of Brown's death, hundreds of people who had never participated in organised protests took to the streets, and that campaign eventually exposed Ferguson as a case study of structural racism in America and a metaphor for all that had gone wrong since the end of the civil-rights movement."

As of March 2016, the 10th anniversary of Twitter, the hashtag #blacklivesmatter had been used more than 12m times - the third most of any hashtag related to a social cause. At the top of the list, however, sits #ferguson, the most-used hashtag promoting a social cause in the history of Twitter, tweeted more than 27m times.

The Movement for Black Lives - as activists had begun calling the protest movement - and the national push for police reform, had faded from the national consciousness during the first months of 2016. There were bursts of attention, but in each instance Americans' focus on race and justice landed like another strong wave, only to recede right back into the ocean. Six months into 2016, my colleagues and I were working on an analysis of the number of Americans killed to date, and had discovered that even after more than a year of protests and outrage, police nationwide were on track to take more lives in 2016 than they had in 2015. Yet none of the men and women killed by police in 2016 had received the same level of attention from the media or had galvanised activists as much as those killed just months earlier.

For racial justice activists, the presidential election was an opportunity to pressure candidates to adopt positions on policing and criminal justice reform, as well as to speak out on other issues of racial disparity.

"People know that the police are still killing people. What we've got to figure out now is what a victory looks like," Kayla Reed, the Ferguson protester still working for the Organization for Black Struggle in St Louis, told me in early 2016. "There isn't going to be a single bill passed that will suddenly encompass all of the ways the system marginalises black and brown people. We have to redo the whole damn thing."

Many of the young activists who had been driven into the street by the police killings of 2014 and 2015 had begun to move away from daily protesting and organising work. Robust conversations circulated about viral videos of the deaths of individuals and the fetishising of black death. Perhaps, some argued, not every video needed to be shared and played on a constant loop.

In early July 2016, two killings reawakened the movement. Videos circulated on social media of the police shootings of two young men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Among the cities that hosted major protests was Dallas, where the police had gone to great pains to support the protesters, cordoning off areas for demonstrators and posing for photos next to signs calling for reforms and justice. It was here that a single gunman attacked white officers in what he later told police negotiators was a targeted retribution for the police killings of black men.

As the list of names grew, so did the urgency of the uprising that would become a movement

A week later, another lone wolf attacked officers in Baton Rouge, killing three. The deaths and injury of the officers in these two cities again shook the nation, underscoring with renewed urgency the depth of the anger and distrust towards police still coursing through America.

The attacks on police officers enraged the law enforcement community. In a country with millions of easily accessible guns and an increasing national distrust of institutions - specifically the police - it wasn't hard to imagine the ease with which someone determined to harm officers could carry out such an attack. "With the number of police shootings that have occurred that seem to be totally unjustified, somewhere in this country, someone was going to do such a thing," John Creuzot, a former prosecutor and judge in Dallas, told me after the shooting.

After the Dallas attack, Barack Obama convened a 33-person conference at the White House, a conversation that ran for four-and-a-half hours - among the longest single-subject conferences of his presidency. The attendees were a mix - young activists such as DeRay Mckesson, civil rights stalwarts such as Al Sharpton, police chiefs and heads of several major police unions, and government officials including the attorney general, Loretta Lynch.

As he facilitated the conversation, Obama often glanced to his left, at Brittany Packnett, a 31-year-old Ferguson protester and co-founder of Campaign Zero - a policy-oriented activist arm that pledged to put forth recommendations for how "we can live in a world where the police don't kill people". This was at least the third time Packnett had met Obama, who after one meeting had been so struck by her command of the room that he pulled her aside to encourage her to one day run for office. She had applied for and was accepted to a spot on the Ferguson Commission, the taskforce convened by Missouri governor Jay Nixon after the unrest in 2014. Next, Obama invited Packnett to join his president's taskforce on 21st-century policing.

I asked what had brought her from the barricades into the policy making rooms - by now, Packnett had joined street protests in more than half a dozen cities.

"Everyone has a role," Packnett said. "There are some people who need to be the revolutionary, and there are some people who need to be at the table in the White House. And I knew it was my job to translate the pain I had seen and experienced in the streets and bring it into these halls of power."

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A protest on West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri. Photograph: Michael B Thomas/AFP/Getty Images

Packnett explains the protest movement as a series of escalating waves. Its conception came from the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, which mobilised black Americans in a demand for justice. Its grand birth, first in Ferguson and then throughout the nation in the autumn of 2014, was prompted by the deaths of Eric Garner, John Crawford and Michael Brown, the cases that showed justice for those killed by the police was not forthcoming. As the list of names grew, so did the urgency of the uprising that would become a movement. 2015 brought a third wave of anger and pain: Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose - another round of death in which the pleas for police accountability became demands. As Obama prepares to leave the White House, it remains to be seen whether the movement birthed by the broken promise of his presidency will live on through the season of his successor.

"The protests will continue," Packnett said confidently when I called her from Cleveland on the first night of the Republican national convention in July. "We're going to work to continue this level of engagement with the next administration; there's just too much at stake." While the targeted killings of the officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge prompted some commentators to declare the movement dead, the activists have not gone quietly.

A few days later came the non-fatal shooting in North Miami of behavioural therapist Charles Kinsey. Kinsey was lying on the ground with his hands in the air, begging not to be shot as he tried to soothe his autistic patient, when an officer fired his gun three times. "I was thinking as long as I have my hands up ... they're not going to shoot me," Kinsey told a local television station from his hospital bed. "Wow, was I wrong."

In the days after the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, thousands of people used an online tool provided by Campaign Zero to petition their local elected officials to demand police reform. In mid-July, as the political media gathered in Cleveland for the GOP convention, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in more than 30 cities.

"We have no choice but to keep going," Packnett told me. "If one of the central demands of the movement is to stop killing us, and they're still killing us, then we don't get to stop, either."
They Can't Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery (Penguin, £9.99). To order a copy for £8.49, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.
* Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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Black Lives Matter: birth of a movement | Wesley Lowery

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OK, let's take him." Within seconds two officers grabbed me, each seizing an arm, and shoved me against the drinks machine that rested along the front wall of the McDonald's where I had been eating and working on my report. As I released my clenched hands, my mobile phone and notebook fell to the tiled floor.

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Deaths in police custody in the United States: Research review

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Deaths in police custody in the United States: Research review

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By: Janiya Sansing
4/27
CRAAP Score-- 39

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The deaths of black men at the hands of white police officers in recent years have raised a number of questions about the treatment of racial minorities within the criminal justice system, as well as about patterns of arrest-related deaths more generally. Some researchers are calling for Congressional-mandated government databases to be more thorough so they can better find patterns in the violent interactions between police and civilians.

The Baltimore Sun's 2014 investigation of these issues in that city revealed that "over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations." Other outlets, such as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have pursued similar investigations in their region. Still, it remains unclear how much these stark events and figures are characteristic of larger patterns across American society.

The limited data available do not suggest a recent overall increase in the number of homicides by police or the racial composition of those killed, despite the high-profile cases and controversies of 2014-2015, according to a New York Times analysis. But a January 2015 report published in the Harvard Public Health Review, "Trends in U.S. Deaths due to Legal Intervention among Black and White men, Age 15-34 Years, by County Income Level: 1960-2010," suggests persistent differences in risks for violent encounters with police: "The rate ratio for black vs. white men for death due to legal intervention always exceeded 2.5 (median: 4.5) and ranged from 2.6 (95 percent confidence interval [CI] 2.1, 3.1) in 2001 to 10.1 (95 percent CI 8.7, 11.7) in 1969, with the relative and absolute excess evident in all county income quintiles."
Arrest-related deaths
The case of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Baltimore man who died in police custody on April 19, 2015 - now ruled a homicide - raises questions specifically about treatment during and immediately after initial arrest. A March 2015 report from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) concludes that the current Arrest-Related Death (ARD) program - which aims to track persons who die in custody in America at the state level - typically only counts about half, at best, of all deaths in police custody, and the coverage rate may be as low as 36 percent. Although that estimate increased in 2011 to somewhere between 59 percent and 69 percent, the "current ARD program methodology does not allow a census of all law enforcement homicides in the United States," researchers conclude.

The BJS's 2015 "Data Quality Profile" report shows that some states have not reported statistics to the federal government in a given year between 2003 and 2011, and a few states have not participated at all.

That said, the federal government has nevertheless attempted to collect as much state-level data as possible in the past: A federal census between 2003 and 2005 found there were 2,002 arrest-related deaths, and "homicides by state and local law enforcement officers were the leading cause of such deaths during this period (55 percent)." (There is no available statistical breakdown of how many of these homicides are the result of involuntary manslaughter or justified acts versus intentional acts that might fall into the category of murder - issues that might be settled years later in the courts.)

For the most recent period where statistics are available (2003-2009), the BJS found that 4,813 persons "died during or shortly after law enforcement personnel attempted to arrest or restrain them... About 60 percent of arrest-related deaths (2,931) were classified as homicides by law enforcement personnel." However, among these 2,931 homicides by law enforcement personnel, 75.3 percent were reported to have taken place in response to a violent offense - constituting a force-on-force situation, such as an intervention with an ongoing assault, robbery or murder: "Arrests for alleged violent crimes were involved in three of every four reported homicides by law enforcement personnel." Still, 7.9 percent took place in the context of a public-order offense, 2.7 percent involved a drug offense, and among 9.2 percent of all homicides by police no specific context was reported.

Other factors implicated in deaths at the state level are as follows, according to BJS:

Further, from 2003 to 2009:

Of reported arrest-related deaths, 45 percent of persons allegedly engaged in assault immediately prior to or during the arrest.... Of reported persons who died during the process of arrest, 95 percent were male. About 42 percent were white, 32 percent were black/African American and 20 percent were Hispanic or Latino. More than half (55 percent) were between ages 25 and 44, and juveniles (persons under age 18) were about 3 percent of all arrest-related deaths.

The federal government also tracks fatalities in jails and prisons through its Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (DCRP); typically, the vast majority of deaths result from illness or suicide, with homicides and unnatural deaths attributed in only a few percent of cases. The state-level requirements for that reporting program expired in 2006, but a new bill was signed into law in 2014. (It is worth pointing out that jails - which see all manner of persons, from those right off the street to those awaiting trial - and prisons - where those convicted of crimes are deliberately and systematically placed - are quite different in their population and environment.)
Reporting on incidents
Experts involved in analysis of these incidents caution that the numbers can often hide meaningful context, and reporters would be well served to go beneath the surface and ask about how data is collected - and any potential holes or weaknesses in the data. Overall, states have varied in their methods of reporting law enforcement-related incidents of many kinds to the federal government, an issue recently addressed by FBI Director James Comey.

For an example of how data, or the lack of it, can matter - and mislead - see the series on prison rape written by David Kaiser for The New York Review of Books. Finally, for news reporters covering individual incidents, context can be crucially important, from the degree to which a neighborhood is a high-crime area, or where assaults on officers are common; to the level of police training to deal with, for example, violent and mentally ill persons; to the precise nature of the incident and whether it involved a suspect threatening public safety at the time of a violent intervention by authorities.

There is also a substantial body of government and academic research on these issues, including on the uses of restraints and other law enforcement practices that may be employed to manage persons detained:

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Summary: The report compares how different government databases track homicides by law enforcement officers and finds the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), run by the Center for Disease Control, the best available because it draws from multiple sources and "captures detailed coded data and rich narratives that describe the precipitating circumstances and incident dynamics for all suicides and homicides occurring in participating states." The authors recommend the NVDRS be expanded to all 50 states. It currently tracks 32.

Research Summary: "Limitations in data and research on the use of firearms by police officers in the United States preclude sound understanding of the determinants of deadly force in police work. The current study addresses these limitations with detailed case attributes and a microspatial analysis of police shootings in St. Louis, MO, between 2003 and 2012. The results indicate that neither the racial composition of neighborhoods nor their level of economic disadvantage directly increase the frequency of police shootings, whereas levels of violent crime do-but only to a point. Police shootings are less frequent in areas with the highest levels of criminal violence than in those with midlevels of violence. We offer a provisional interpretation of these results and call for replications in other settings."

Conclusion: "The majority of law enforcement-related injuries are among white or black young men. Hispanic patients are more likely to be injured by a firearm than struck. When injured by firearm, white and black patients are more likely to die compared with Hispanic patients. Unfortunately, data about these injuries are scattered across multiple data systems. A uniform national system to aggregate these data sources is needed to better understand the scope of the problem, for both law enforcement personnel and civilians."

"Arrest-Related Deaths, 2003-2009: Statistical Tables"
Burch, Andrea M. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2011.

Introduction: "From 2003 through 2009, a total of 4,813 deaths were reported to the Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program. Of these, about 6 in 10 deaths (2,931) were classified as homicide by law enforcement personnel, and 4 in 10 (1,882) were attributed to other manners of death. Suicide and death by intoxication each accounted for 11 percent of reported arrest-related deaths, accidental injury for 6 percent, and natural causes for 5 percent (figure 1). Deaths with manners classified as undetermined or those in which manners were unknown represented about 6 percent of reported arrest-related deaths."

Abstract: "Introduction: Sudden, unexpected arrest-related death (ARD) has been associated with drug abuse, extreme delirium or certain police practices. There is insufficient surveillance and causation data available. We report 12 months of surveillance data using a novel data collection methodology. Methods: We used an open-source, prospective method to collect 12 consecutive months of data, including demographics, behavior, illicit substance use, control methods used, and time of collapse after law enforcement contact. Descriptive analysis and chi-square testing were applied. Results: There were 162 ARD events reported that met inclusion criteria. The majority were male with mean age 36 years, and involved bizarre, agitated behavior and reports of drug abuse just prior to death. Law enforcement control techniques included none (14 percent); empty-hand techniques (69 percent); intermediate weapons such as Taser device, impact weapon or chemical irritant spray (52 percent); and deadly force (12 percent). Time from contact to subject collapse included instantaneous (13 percent), within the first hour (53 percent) and 1-48 hours (35 percent). Significant collapse time associations occurred with the use of certain intermediate weapons."

Abstract: "We presently have little information about how frequently police officers shoot citizens or are involved in any sort of interaction in which citizens die. Despite this, however, researchers persist in using the limited data available on fatal police violence in various sorts of analyses. The current article outlines the liabilities in available counts of fatal police action, describes some of the problems posed by using such data, discusses why counting citizens killed by police bullets is not a sound way to measure deadly force, and offers some ideas for improving measurement of the use of deadly force and other police actions that lead to the death of citizens."

"Arrest-Related Deaths Program Assessment: Technical Report"
Banks, Duren; Couzens, Lance; Blanton, Caroline; Cribb, Devon. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, March 2015, NCJ 248543.

Executive summary: "The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) designed the Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program to be a census of all deaths that occur during the process of arrest in the United States.... We found that over the study period from 2003 through 2009 and 2011, the ARD program captured, at best, 49 percent of all law enforcement homicides in the United States. The lower bound of ARD program coverage was estimated to be 36 percent. These findings indicate that the current ARD program methodology does not allow a census of all law enforcement homicides in the United States. The ARD program captured approximately 49 percent of law enforcement homicides, while the SHR captured 46 percent. An estimated 28 percent of the law enforcement homicides in the United States are not captured by either system. However, the methodology for identifying ARD cases has changed over the observation period. In 2011, the ARD program was estimated to cover between 59 percent and 69 percent of all law enforcement homicides in the United States, depending on the estimation method used. While this coverage estimate still does not result in a census, it does suggest improvements over time in the overall approach to identifying law enforcement homicides and reporting them to the ARD program.

Introduction: "The electronic control device (ECD) has gained widespread acceptance as the force option for law enforcement because of its dramatic reduction in both suspect and officer injury. At the same time, advocacy groups post statements on the Internet listing the hundreds of arrest-related deaths after ECD use with the implication that the ECD involvement was causal. Studies covering a total of >48 000 forceful arrests have consistently found suspect injury rate reductions of ≈65 percent. Of the 250 000 annual ECD field uses in the United States, only 1 in 4000 is involved in an arrest-related death." The research looks at 12 cases of cardiace after ECD application. Results: " These data suggest that the threshold of factual evidence for blaming a cardiac arrest on an ECD should be set very high. The published case reports have not met that threshold."

"The Effect of the Prone Maximal Restraint Position with and without
Weight force on Cardiac Output and other Hemodynamic Measures"
Savaser, Davut J.; et al. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, August 2013, Vol. 30

Abstract: "Background: The prone maximal restraint (PMR) position has been used by law enforcement and emergency care personnel to restrain acutely combative or agitated individual. The position places the subject prone with wrists handcuffed behind the back and secured to the ankles. Prior work has indicated a reduction in inferior vena cava (IVC) diameter associated with this position when weight force is applied to the back. It is therefore possible that this position can negatively impact hemodynamic stability. Objectives: We sought to measure the impact of PMR with and without weight force on measures of cardiac function including vital signs, oxygenation, stroke volume (SV), IVC diameter, cardiac output (CO) and cardiac index (CI). Conclusions: PMR with and without weight force did not result in any changes in CO or other evidence of cardiovascular or hemodynamic compromise."

Abstract: "Introduction: The physiology of many sudden, unexpected arrest-related deaths (ARDs) proximate to restraint has not been elucidated. A sudden decrease in central venous return during restraint procedures could be physiologically detrimental. The impact of body position and applied weight force on central venous return has not been previously studied. In this study, we use ultrasound to measure the size of the inferior vena cava (IVC) as a surrogate of central venous return in the standing position, prone position, and with weight force applied to the thorax in the prone position.... Conclusions: The physiology involved in many sudden, unexpected ARDs has not been elucidated. However, in our study, we found a significant decrease in IVC diameter with weight force compression to the upper thorax when the subject was in the prone position. This may have implications for the tactics of restraint to aid in the prevention of sudden, unexpected ARD cases."

Abstract: "The study sought to determine the physiologic effects of the prone maximum restraint (PMR) position in obese subjects after intense exercise. We designed an experimental, randomized, cross-over trial in human subjects conducted at a university exercise physiology laboratory. Ten otherwise healthy, obese (BMI > 30) subjects performed a period of heavy exertion on a cycling ergometer to 85 percent of maximum heart rate, and then were placed in one of three positions in random order for 15 min: (1) seated with hands behind the back, (2) prone with arms to the sides, (3) PMR position. While in each position, mean arterial blood pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR), minute ventilation (V E), oxygen saturation (SaO ₂), and end tidal CO ₂ (etCO ₂) were measured every 5 min. There were no significant differences identified between the three positions in MAP, HR, V E, or O ₂s at at any time period. There was a slight increase in heart rate at 15 min in the PMR position over the prone position (95 vs. 87). There was a decrease in end tidal CO ₂ at 15 min in the PMR over the prone position (32 mmHg vs. 35 mmHg). In addition, there was no evidence of hypoxia or hypoventilation during any of the monitored 15 min position periods. Conclusion: In this small study of obese subjects, there were no clinically significant differences in the cardiovascular and respiratorymeasures comparing seated, prone, and PMR position following exertion."

Abstract: "Patients present to police, emergency medical services, and the emergency department with aggressive behavior, altered sensorium, and a host of other signs that may include hyperthermia, 'superhuman' strength, diaphoresis, and lack of willingness to yield to overwhelming force. A certain percentage of these individuals will go on to expire from a sudden cardiac arrest and death, despite optimal therapy. Traditionally, the forensic community would often classify these as 'excited delirium' deaths. Objectives: This article will review selected examples of the literature on this topic to determine if it is definable as a discrete medical entity, has a recognizable history, epidemiology, clinical presentation, pathophysiology, and treatment recommendations. Discussion: Excited delirium syndrome is characterized by delirium, agitation, acidosis, and hyperadrenergic autonomic dysfunction, typically in the setting of acute-on-chronic drug abuse or serious mental illness or a combination of both. Conclusions: Based upon available evidence, it is the consensus of an American College of Emergency Physicians Task Force that Excited Delirium Syndrome is a real syndrome with uncertain, likely multiple, etiologies
Keywords: sudden custody deaths, in-custody death, prone restraint, agitated delirium, comparative, historical, justifiable homicide, policing

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Deaths in police custody in the United States: Research review - Journalist's Resource

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The deaths of black men at the hands of white police officers in recent years have raised a number of questions about the treatment of racial minorities within the criminal justice system, as well as about patterns of arrest-related deaths more generally.

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By: Janiya Sansing
4/27
CRAAP Score-- 40

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"Police brutality is really just a tentacle to a larger problem - the racial divide and the systemic racism that goes on from the highest of highs to the lowest of the low of society in America," T.I. told CNN.

The film is set to premiere on BET Monday night, along with a conversation with T.I. on police brutality and gun violence facilitated by CNN political commentator Angela Rye.

President Donald Trump slammed the Black Lives Matter movement as a candidate, lamented a "war on police" and accused the group of helping to instigate police shootings through their protests and rallies against police brutality.

"There is a new (president) but I am still residing under the tenure of Barack Obama," T.I. joked at SXSW during a conversation with Sway Calloway. But, he added, Trump is now in the White House and "we dealin' with it."

T.I., who participated in Black Lives Matter protests, has been one of Trump's most outspoken critics in hip-hop, most recently slamming the President in a series of colorful insults on Instagram following Trump's feud with rapper Snoop Dogg.

The film is the third phase of the Atlanta rapper's "Us Or Else" movement, which kicked off with the release of his 2016 "Us Or Else" EP, and his 10th studio release, "Us Or Else: Letter to the System," which came out in January.

The rapper also wrote a series of open letters in December to Obama and to Trump in January, and a letter advocating for civil engagement addressed to Americans.

T.I., who had his own experience with the law when he was charged with illegal weapon possession in 2008, has been outspoken on issues like police brutality in his music for years.

But it was not until 2014 when unarmed Missouri teenager Michael Brown was shot dead by police, sparking an uprising in Ferguson and fueling the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, that discussions over police brutality truly became major national issues.

"I think (the conversation) has mobilized a lot of people and awakened a lot of people, united a lot of people for a common goal," T.I. said, calling on people to participate in local politics.

Over the past two years, Obama-appointed Attorney General Loretta Lynch launched several Justice Department investigations into police departments around the nation, including Ferguson, Baltimore and Chicago, revealing patterns of racial discrimination in policing and cases of excessive force.

In some cases, the Obama White House has used consent decrees to make changes in policing, which require the city to implement reforms under court supervision whether the police department agrees with the findings or not.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered the Justice Department earlier this month to review all existing consent decrees.

A week later Sessions said that these agreements on reforming police activities "can turn bad" and can lower police morale.

CNN has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.

Stereotypes that dehumanize black people, particularly black men, lead to worse treatment by police officers and the criminal justice system, T.I. said.

"When you operate within your fear of something, you always put yourself at a disadvantage and I think that excessive force is often used because it's an intangible fear (of black men) that exists there."

A new body of research published by the American Psychological Association, which surveyed 950 online participants from the US, found that Americans think black men are bigger than white men, even when they're not. The study also found that participants also identified the black men as, essentially, more of a threat deserving of force.

T.I. lamented the living conditions in America's inner cities and said long-term "excruciating circumstances" have fostered aggression and frustration in various communities.

"If you place any creature in such excruciating circumstances over periods and periods of time ... after so long, they will be agitated and antagonized," T.I. said. "It's human nature, so to not expect that after the type of treatment that has been rendered is insane."

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t.i. speaks out on police brutality - cnnpolitics.com

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CNN caught up with Tip "T.I." Harris at the SXSW festival last month, where the Grammy-winning rapper and actor premiered his latest passion project, "Us or Else" - a short film that examines the relationship between police and the black community.

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Killers Behind The Badge: NewsOne's Investigative Series On Police Brutality In Black America

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Killers Behind The Badge: NewsOne's Investigative Series On Police Brutality In Black America

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By: Dre Evans
4/27
CRAAP Score--47

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From Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo to and Oscar Grant, Black men in the United States of America are murdered, beaten, and violated by officers of the law sworn to "protect and serve" them. Men, such as Darryll C. Price, Lorenzo Collins, Roger Owensby Jr., Jeffrey Irons, and Timothy Thomas, were all found guilty and lynched for the crime of being Black in America.

From the Civil Rights era of hoses, tear gas and dogs, to the iconic imagery of the late-Rodney King being beaten by officers, Black America has a special and urgent need to understand the pathology behind police brutality.

The 4 th amendment clearly states that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue without probable cause."

In this investigative report, NewsOne will venture behind the Blue Line to explore the culture of police brutality in this country.

In data researched and compiled by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Black Left Unity Network, and U.S. Human Rights Network, the picture of how often - and fatally - Black people are victimized by police in this country becomes startling clear. Below are the details of the Black men and women who have been murdered at the hands of police so far this year:

Pattern of Murders By the Numbers Since January 1, 2012
Thirty cases of state sanctioned or justified murder of Black people in the first 3 months of 2012 alone have been found (due to under reporting and discriminatory methods of documentation, it is likely that there are more that our research has yet to uncover)

Of the 30 killed people, 20 were definitely unarmed. 2 probably had firearms, 8 were alleged to have non-lethal weapons.

Of the 30 killed people:

12 were innocent of any illegal behavior or behavior that involved a threat to anyone (although the killers claimed they looked "suspicious");

8 were emotionally disturbed and/or displaying strange behavior.

The remaining 10 were either engaged in illegal or potentially illegal activity, or there was too little info to determine circumstances of their killing.

It appears that in all but two of these cases, illegal and/or harmful behavior could have been stopped without the use of lethal force.

In most cases, where planned, investigations of the deaths have not been completed.

Note: Only seven of the 30 killed people were over 30 years old and two of the six were 31 years old. Two were women.

These murders include the horrific case of 19-year-old Kendrec McDade , who was unarmed when he was shot 7 times by police officers at point blank range, then handcuffed.

It also includes the tragic case of 19-year-old Ramarley Graham who was profiled, chased to his grandmother's house by the NYPD, and then murdered in the bathroom.
Watch Graham's case here:
In another murder that is unrelated to the above study and took place last December, a Fulton County, Ga., grand jury decided not to indict Union City police office Luther Lewis earlier this month for killing 19-year-old Ariston Waiters, who was shot in the back twice.

There are times when murder is not the end result; sometimes systemic racism in the judicial system is what is on full display.

This was the case with 15-year-old Chad Holley (pictured left), whose vicious beating by police officers was captured on video. The result? All of the officers were charged with misdemeanors, and the first officer tried in the case, Andrew Blomberg, was found not guilty.
Watch the Holley beating here:
Though racism has long been the usual suspect in the police brutality narrative, there are pervasive arguments that classism lies at the root of the epidemic.

In a comprehensive study titled, "White, Black, or Blue Cops? Race and Citizen Assessments of Police Officers," which heavily relied on interviews with residents from three neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., Ronald Weitzer 's research yields some interesting results:

With respect to the behavior of White and Black officers, many respondents subscribed to the "blue cops" principle that occupation outweighs racial identity. Neighborhood class position [of citizens] also appears to play a role, with large majorities of...middle class communities...seeing no difference in the conduct of White and Black officers. That officers' race has little influence on perceptions of police behavior.

While this definitely shines the light on the race-inclusive mentality of those behind the Blue Line, the disproportionate number of Black and Brown people targeted by police - specifically in one of the most corrupt law enforcement cities in the world - shows that the race of the citizen is still a deciding factor in how he or she is treated.

Yahoo News reports:

Police stops in New York City have climbed steadily to more than 685,000 last year from nearly 161,000 in 2003. Only 12 percent of those stopped were arrested or ticketed. More than 85 percent were Black or Hispanic, while they make up 51 percent of the city's population.

A Reuters analysis of more than 3 million stops from 2006 through 2011 shows that by far the densest concentrations fell in areas of public housing, home to many of the city's poorest families and where 90 percent of residents are Black or Hispanic. Although one would expect a heavy concentration of police stops in these densely populated areas, the stop rate is disproportionate: In 2011, police stopped people in these areas at a rate more than three times higher than elsewhere in the city, the analysis found.

The study also shows that more than half the searches happened not on the streets and paths around these buildings but inside them - in stairwells, lobbies, and corridors.

These numbers are particularly disturbing in light of a recent anonymous survey of 2,000 retired police officers, which found that manipulation of crime reports - specifically to make crime statistics look better - has long been a part of NYPD culture.

In a separate study titled, "Race and Perceptions of Police Misconduct," Weitzer joined with Steven A. Tuch, also of George Washington University, to examine the causation of negative perceptions of police in the Black community. The answers mirror what many of us have experienced: Black Americans are overwhelming faced with corruption, violence, and profiling more than any other racial or ethnic group:

Whites tend to hold a favorable opinion of the police, favor aggressive law enforcement, and are skeptical of criticisms of the police. There is a racial dimension to this orientation. Many Whites view Blacks as inclined to criminal or violent behavior (Swigert and Farrell 1976; Weitzer 2000; cf. Hurwitz and Peffley 1997).

In response to a question in the 2000 General Social Survey, 48 percent of Whites think that Blacks are "violence-prone." For many Whites, controlling crime is roughly equivalent to intensifying law enforcement against minority individuals or in minority communities.

Stay with NewsOne in the coming weeks as we talk with a law enforcement officer about the culture of police brutality and also an attorney who will shed light on possibly legal methods to eradicate the legal, unchecked violence in our communities.
Until then, chew on this question:
Take Our Poll

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Killers Behind The Badge: NewsOne's Investigative Series On Police Brutality In Black America

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From Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo to and Oscar Grant , Black men in the United States of America are murdered, beaten, and violated by officers of the law sworn to "protect and serve" them. Men, such as Darryll C.

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Police Shootings Test New Era of Violent Social Media Video

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Police Shootings Test New Era of Violent Social Media Video

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By: Dre Evans
4/27
CRAAP Score--49

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Video is turning social media into a virtual crime scene.

In the space of three days, we have seen the deaths of two black men during separate encounters with police in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, and a rampage in Dallas that left five officers killed.

What they all have in common is that for millions of people, these events unfolded through video recorded on smartphones and spread through social media.

As Twitter and Facebook move toward business models that favor video content uploaded by users, those images can stand as an impartial, even crucial, witness to violence that would go unnoticed if it didn't go viral.

The Minnesota video, live streamed on Facebook on Wednesday night, appears to start just moments after an officer fired his weapon at 32-year-old Philando Castile after pulling him over in a traffic stop. Castile's fiancée, Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter were passengers in the car. Reynolds streamed the aftermath on Facebook Live: a bloodied Castile, slumped back in the driver's seat, groaning and clutching his side.

Coming just one day after police shot and killed 37-year-old Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the new video sparked immediate outrage.

"I wanted everyone to know that no matter how much the police tamper with evidence ... I want to put it on Facebook and go viral so that the people can see," Reynolds said later.

Read More: Philando Castile Shooting in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, Sparks Protests

The impact of such encounters is wide reaching. As of Friday morning, Reynolds' video had been viewed over 5 million times on Facebook and was repeatedly played for an even larger audience on television news.

"Violence against the black community is not a new phenomenon," Rashad Robinson, executive director of the civil rights group Color of Change, told NBC News in an email.

"But the rise in camera phones, live streaming, and social media has provided our communities with new tools and platforms to make the country aware of the injustice we face, peacefully organize and demand change," Robinson said. "We can't mistake the presence of these videos for the power to change the written and unwritten rules, but the visuals gives us a new way to bring more people into the efforts to create change."

"Law enforcement and civilians both are entering a new era of recordability," said Jeff Hancock, a professor of communication at Stanford University. "When we're being thoughtful about the fact that our actions can leave a record, we tend to behave better."

There have been many well-documented cases of police brutality caught on camera, going back to the beating of Rodney King in 1991.

"There have been 560 police killings this year already, including 16 in July, but the nation is talking about Castile and Sterling because of the videos," Nicholas Mirzoeff, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, said in an email.

"Live coverage has changed our understanding of the United States," he said. "It's gone from covering the great and the good to being a truly democratic form. A learning curve comes with that. Once, our media was filtered through representatives like Walter Cronkite or Tom Brokaw. Like it or not, that era is over."

With more and more people getting their news through social media - a recent Pew Research Center survey found that more than 81 percent of Americans follow news primarily online - such videos can be powerful evidence when compared to dry police reports, and can essentially serve to level the playing field.

Read More: Philando Castile, Alton Sterling Deaths Latest in Police Shootings Involving Black Men

"Like financial markets, media move in real time and are distributed across the internet, rather than broadcast," said Mirzoeff. "Our politics and our culture are going to have to learn to catch up."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday that videos such as the one showing Castile's shooting "shine a light" on societal issues, saying, "While I hope we never have to see another video like Diamond's, it reminds us why coming together to build a more open and connected world is so important - and how far we still have to go."

At one point on Wednesday, Reynolds' video went offline for about an hour. Social media was quick to cry censorship, but Facebook told NBC News that the video temporarily came down due to a technology error.

"We're very sorry that the video was temporarily inaccessible," the company said in a statement on Thursday. "It was down due to a technical glitch and restored as soon as we were able to investigate. We restored the video as soon as we were able to identify the mistake."

Related: Caught on Camera: The History of the Police Dashcam

Facebook also put a warning on the video and marked it as disturbing.

"This is raw imagery that we're just not familiar with - cognitively, emotionally, psychologically," said Hancock. "We're being exposed to raw human horror that previously was sort of managed. Mainstream media journalists have worked out a very robust set of rules and judgments. And now we're getting around that filter. There's definitely a shift."

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Police Shootings Test New Era of Violent Social Media Video

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Video is turning social media into a virtual crime scene. In the space of three days, we have seen the deaths of two black men during separate encounters with police in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, and a rampage in Dallas that left five officers killed.

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"Police brutality is really just a tentacle to a larger problem - the racial divide and the systemic racism that goes on from the highest of highs to the lowest of the low of society in America," T.I. told CNN.

The film is set to premiere on BET Monday night, along with a conversation with T.I. on police brutality and gun violence facilitated by CNN political commentator Angela Rye.

President Donald Trump slammed the Black Lives Matter movement as a candidate, lamented a "war on police" and accused the group of helping to instigate police shootings through their protests and rallies against police brutality.

"There is a new (president) but I am still residing under the tenure of Barack Obama," T.I. joked at SXSW during a conversation with Sway Calloway. But, he added, Trump is now in the White House and "we dealin' with it."

T.I., who participated in Black Lives Matter protests, has been one of Trump's most outspoken critics in hip-hop, most recently slamming the President in a series of colorful insults on Instagram following Trump's feud with rapper Snoop Dogg.

The film is the third phase of the Atlanta rapper's "Us Or Else" movement, which kicked off with the release of his 2016 "Us Or Else" EP, and his 10th studio release, "Us Or Else: Letter to the System," which came out in January.

The rapper also wrote a series of open letters in December to Obama and to Trump in January, and a letter advocating for civil engagement addressed to Americans.

T.I., who had his own experience with the law when he was charged with illegal weapon possession in 2008, has been outspoken on issues like police brutality in his music for years.

But it was not until 2014 when unarmed Missouri teenager Michael Brown was shot dead by police, sparking an uprising in Ferguson and fueling the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, that discussions over police brutality truly became major national issues.

"I think (the conversation) has mobilized a lot of people and awakened a lot of people, united a lot of people for a common goal," T.I. said, calling on people to participate in local politics.

Over the past two years, Obama-appointed Attorney General Loretta Lynch launched several Justice Department investigations into police departments around the nation, including Ferguson, Baltimore and Chicago, revealing patterns of racial discrimination in policing and cases of excessive force.

In some cases, the Obama White House has used consent decrees to make changes in policing, which require the city to implement reforms under court supervision whether the police department agrees with the findings or not.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered the Justice Department earlier this month to review all existing consent decrees.

A week later Sessions said that these agreements on reforming police activities "can turn bad" and can lower police morale.

CNN has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.

Stereotypes that dehumanize black people, particularly black men, lead to worse treatment by police officers and the criminal justice system, T.I. said.

"When you operate within your fear of something, you always put yourself at a disadvantage and I think that excessive force is often used because it's an intangible fear (of black men) that exists there."

A new body of research published by the American Psychological Association, which surveyed 950 online participants from the US, found that Americans think black men are bigger than white men, even when they're not. The study also found that participants also identified the black men as, essentially, more of a threat deserving of force.

T.I. lamented the living conditions in America's inner cities and said long-term "excruciating circumstances" have fostered aggression and frustration in various communities.

"If you place any creature in such excruciating circumstances over periods and periods of time ... after so long, they will be agitated and antagonized," T.I. said. "It's human nature, so to not expect that after the type of treatment that has been rendered is insane."

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t.i. speaks out on police brutality - cnnpolitics.com

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CNN caught up with Tip "T.I." Harris at the SXSW festival last month, where the Grammy-winning rapper and actor premiered his latest passion project, "Us or Else" - a short film that examines the relationship between police and the black community.

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Guns in the US: The statistics behind the violence

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Guns in the US: The statistics behind the violence

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By: Daniel Ross
4/21
CRAAP Score--36

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Continue reading the main story

In his first weekly address of 2016, Barack Obama vowed to take executive action to increase background checks on gun buyers.

His announcement followed another bloody year in the US in which thousands were killed and tens of thousands wounded by gunfire.

Here's a look at some of the statistics behind the violence.
The statistics
Mass shootings: There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant.

Source: Mass Shooting Tracker

School shootings: There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012. Those figures include occasions when a gun was fired but no-one was hurt.

Source: Everytown for Gun SafetyResearch

All shootings: Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured [those figures exclude suicide]. Those figures are likely to rise by several hundred, once incidents in the final week of the year are counted.

Source: Gun Violence Archive

How the US compares: The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 - the most recent year for comparable statistics - was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1.

Of all the murders in the US in 2012, 60% were by firearm compared with 31% in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10% in the UK.

Source: UNODC.

The home front: So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country. According to research by Politifact, there were about 1.4 million firearm deaths in that period, compared with 1.2 million US deaths in every conflict from the War of Independence to Iraq.

Source: Politifact.

Total number of guns: No official figure exists but there are thought to be about 300 million in the US, held by about a third of the population. That is nearly enough guns for every man, woman and child in the country.

The NRA: The right to own guns is regarded by many as enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, and fiercely defended by lobby groups such as the National Rifle Association, which boasted that its membership surged to around five million in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Gun violence and terrorism: The US spends more than a trillion dollars per year defending itself against terrorism, which kills a tiny fraction of the number of people killed by ordinary gun crime.

According to figures from the US Department of Justice and the Council on Foreign Affairs, 11,385 people died on average annually in firearm incidents in the US between 2001 and 2011.

In the same period, an average of 517 people were killed annually in terror-related incidents. Removing 2001, when 9/11 occurred, from the calculation produces an annual average of just 31.

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Continue reading the main story In his first weekly address of 2016, Barack Obama vowed to take executive action to increase background checks on gun buyers. His announcement followed another bloody year in the US in which thousands were killed and tens of thousands wounded by gunfire.

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BU Study Measures Impact of Gun-Control Laws

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BU Study Measures Impact of Gun-Control Laws

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By: Daniel Ross
4/21
CRAAP Score--46

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Identifies state laws that substantially reduce deaths

More than 90 people are killed by guns every day in the United States. In 2013, there were 33,636 gun deaths in this country. Civilians own approximately 270 million guns, roughly one "for every man, woman, and child," as President Obama noted in an address to the nation in the wake of the shooting rampage at an Oregon community college last October that left 10 dead.

Now, a nationwide study led by Boston University researchers analyzing the impact of gun-control laws in the United States has found that just 9 of 25 state laws are effective in reducing firearm deaths. The researchers used data from 2010 in their analyses.

The study, published March 10 in The Lancet, suggests that three laws implemented in some states could reduce gun deaths by more than 80 percent if they were adopted nationwide. Laws requiring firearm identification through ballistic imprinting or microstamping were found to reduce the projected mortality risk by 84 percent, ammunition background checks reduced it by 82 percent, and universal background checks for all gun purchases reduced it by 61 percent.

Federal implementation of all three laws was projected to reduce the national firearm death rate-10.1 per 100,000 people in 2010-to 0.16 per 100,000, the study says.

"Very few of the existing state-specific firearms laws are associated with reduced mortality, and this evidence underscores the importance of focusing on relevant and effective firearms legislation," says study senior author Sandro Galea, dean of the BU School of Public Health. "Implementing universal background checks for the purchase of firearms or ammunition and firearm identification nationally could substantially reduce mortality in the United States."

Study lead author Bindu Kalesan, a School of Medicine research associate and director of the department of medicine's Evans Center for Translational Epidemiology and Comparative Effectiveness Research, says the study is the first to assess a broad array of gun laws and other relevant state-level data.

"The findings suggest that very few of the existing state gun-control laws actually reduce gun deaths, highlighting the importance of focusing on relevant and effective gun legislation," notes Kalesan. "Background checks for all people buying guns and ammunition, including private sales, are the most effective laws we have to reduce the number of gun deaths in the United States."

The research team constructed a state-level dataset using counts of firearm-related deaths in each state in 2010, information on 25 state laws implemented in 2009, and state-specific characteristics that included gun ownership rates, nonfirearm homicide rates, and unemployment rates. Of the 25 laws, 9 were associated with reductions in mortality, while 9 others-such as the so-called "stand your ground" laws, allowing individuals to use deadly force in self-defense when faced with a perceived threat-were associated with increased mortality; 7 other laws were found to have no correlation with gun-related death rates.

The researchers used a statistical model to determine the independent association of various firearms laws with gun-related homicides, suicides, and overall deaths. They also projected the potential reduction of mortality rates if the three most effective firearms laws were enacted at the federal level.

Laws requiring background checks for both guns and ammunition were the most effective legislation identified in the study, showing the protective effect of state laws that close loopholes in the federal Brady Law, which requires criminal background checks only for guns sold through licensed firearms dealers.

Only seven states had universal background checks in 2010, while just three states had firearm identification laws that require ballistics identification or microstamping of guns that leave markings on the cartridge cases they expel when fired, making it possible to link the cases to particular guns.

The authors noted that their findings corroborated an earlier, smaller state-level study that found local background checks were associated with a 22 percent lower homicide rate.

In 2010, 31,672 gun deaths were recorded, equivalent to 10.1 deaths per 100,000 people. Analyzed by state, Hawaii had the lowest rate (3.31 per 100,000), and Alaska had the highest rate (20.3 per 100,000).

The link between state levels of gun ownership and gun deaths has been well established, but less is known about the effectiveness of existing gun laws. The states have introduced a broad range of laws to strengthen or deregulate the Brady Law. However, about 40 percent of all gun sales are estimated to be private transactions (thus not covered by the Brady Law) that do not require background checks.
Study coauthors were from Columbia University and the University of Bern, Switzerland. Lisa Chedekel can be reached at chedekel@bu.edu.

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BU Study Measures Impact of Gun-Control Laws | BU Today | Boston University

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Identifies state laws that substantially reduce deaths More than 90 people are killed by guns every day in the United States. In 2013, there were 33,636 gun deaths in this country.

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By: Kiara Holder
4/21
CRAAP Score- 37

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"Don't run with scissors in your hand!"

"Don't drive your car on the sidewalk!"

"Do not steal your neighbor's property!"

How many times a day does someone tell you what to do? How often do you have to stop yourself from doing what you want, because you know that this action is prohibited or wrong?

In the United States, it seems like we have laws, rules, and regulations to oversee just about everything. We don't always like these rules, since they often mean that someone is telling us what to do, or keeping us from doing what we want. Yet to live in a civil society, we must have some rules to follow.

Who gets to make these rules? Where do they come from? What happens when we break them? These are the questions this page will seek to answer for you.

LAW

aws are rules that bind all people living in a community. Laws protect our general safety, and ensure our rights as citizens against abuses by other people, by organizations, and by the government itself. We have laws to help provide for our general safety. These exist at the local, state and national levels, and include things like:

Laws about food safety. At the state and local level, health departments have guidelines that restaurants follow for how to store and prepare food in a healthy manner, so that diners won't get sick. At the national level, the Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies inspect food production plants to be sure that the food that shows up in your supermarket is safe to eat.

Speed limits and traffic laws exist so that we drive in a safe manner.

Licensing for doctors and nurses ensures proper training of the people who look after us, and who often have our lives in their hands.

We also have laws that protect our rights as citizens, and which include things like:

Laws that come from the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, that guarantee our basic freedoms like freedom of speech, religion, and the press.

Laws that protect us from discrimination because of our race, gender, age, or because of a disability.

Where do Laws come from?

In the United States, the Constitution is the ultimate source of the law. However, it was never designed to address every specific legal question. Within the boundaries of the Constitution, there are two primary sources of law, and statutory law.

This law comes from the judicial branch. Though the courts do not pass laws, they do interpret them. This means that the judiciary bases their legal decisions on what is written in the Constitution, and on previous court rulings in similar cases. This is a process called stare decisis which in Latin means "let the decision stand."

Statutes are laws created by the legislative branch through the lawmaking process. Statutes are written, discussed, argued and voted on in Congress or in the legislature of a state. The courts then apply and interpret these statutes on a case by case basis.

Laws Over Time

The thing about living in a democracy is that the laws change over time. The laws needed in 1789 when the Constitution was born, and in 1890, 1950, or 1990, are different from the laws needed today. The legislative branch of government must seek to update laws as needed, and the judicial branch has to interpret the laws so that they apply fairly to society at the time.

For example, laws about bullying or stalking have had to be updated to consider social networking sites, cyber bullying and cyber stalking. The original laws didn't take the internet into consideration.

More About Laws

The laws of our nation generally arise out of our shared values and morals. In our nation we have laws at both the national and state levels. As citizens, we tend to be most familiar with state and local laws, since these are the laws we encounter most in our daily lives. These laws protect us against crimes like murder, robbery, rape, and assault. They also insure that we don't drive too fast, that we mow our lawns and keep our dogs on leashes. In the United States, we also have a national government which makes laws. On the national level, we have laws about internet crime, narcotics, treason, as well as things like copyright and patents.

Laws are sometimes controversial, and citizens do not always agree on what should be illegal. Though laws tend to come out of our shared values as a society, not everything that is immoral is illegal. For example:

Foul Language may be offensive to some people, but it isn't illegal.

Narcotics are illegal in most cases, yet some people would like them to be legal for everyone, while others find them to be a threat to public safety and support current laws.

Recently we have seen state and local governments making some laws that may cause us to question the limits of government's power. For example:

Should a state be able to limit the sale of large, 40 ounce sodas in the name of supporting good health?

Should teachers be able to use Facebook? Can they "friend" their students?

Should a city be able to limit the number of fast food restaurants in a neighborhood, to try to make residents make healthier food choices?

Should a municipality be able to tell you how "low" to wear your pants?

The Rule of Law

President Theodore Roosevelt once said, " Ours is a government of liberty, by, through and under the law. No man is above it, and no man is below it."

Rule of Law 1

The American commitment to the rule of law means that every citizen is governed by the same laws, applied through a fair and equal judicial process to resolve disputes peacefully.

Rule of Law 2

Faithfulness to the rule of law allows us to live in a civil society in which everyone's rights are respected; where each of us is guaranteed liberty and equality of opportunity.

Rule of Law 3

As citizens we respect the laws because they are clearly communicated and fairly enforced. Everyone is held accountable to the same laws, and those laws protect our fundamental rights. This is the foundation of the rule of law in the United States.

Rule of Law 4

The words "Equal Justice Under Law" are engraved on the front of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C... These words embody the ideal of the RULE OF LAW, which is at the heart of our American democracy.

Rule of Law 5

In the United States, we have written laws in place to help us settle disagreements peacefully through a fair system of justice. It is the job of the courts to interpret the laws. It is up to judges and juries to decide if we have indeed broken the law.

Law and the Rule of Law

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Why Do We Need Laws? | The Judicial Learning Center

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How many times a day does someone tell you what to do? How often do you have to stop yourself from doing what you want, because you know that this action is prohibited or wrong? In the United States, it seems like we have laws, rules, and regulations to oversee just about everything.

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Report: Chicago Police Are Getting Away With Brutality, And Most Of It Is Against Minorities

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Report: Chicago Police Are Getting Away With Brutality, And Most Of It Is Against Minorities

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By: Dre Evans
4/21
CRAAP Score--48

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A report to be presented to the United Nations next month alleges the Chicago Police Department has engaged in "ongoing, pervasive" violence targeting the city's youth of color in a way perpetuated by its "culture of impunity."

Alarming statistics are presented alongside youth testimony, collected at an August 2014 community hearing and via a confidential "police encounter line," in the report released Wednesday by the We Charge Genocide coalition.

The group of activists, which will present to United Nations Committee Against Torture in Switzerland, is calling for a response from CPD, identification of the department's treatment of colored youth as torture, and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Behind these stories and numbers are real people-real people's severe pain, humiliation, suffering, and death at the hands of those charged with the duty to 'protect and serve' Chicago," the report reads.

Though about 33 percent of Chicago's population is African-American, the city's arrest rate of black youth is disproportionately high, according to the report. In 2011, 77 percent of the Chicago Police Department's youth arrests were of black youth. In 2012, that percentage increased to 79 percent.

The report also notes that black and Latino targets were involved in 92 percent of the Chicago Police Department's uses of stun guns from 2009 to 2011. Throughout the first half of 2014, black targets have been involved in 78 percent of the department's stun gun uses, the report notes.

The use of stun guns has also failed to significantly reduce the number of police-involved shootings since they were implemented by the department in 2010, the report notes. Black Chicagoans are, again, drastically overrepresented among those who are shot by police. As the Chicago Reporter previously observed, black Chicagoans are 10 times more likely than their white peers to be shot by a police officer.

The report notes it's also rare for a Chicago police officer to be held accountable for misconduct allegations. Among 10,149 complaints of excessive force, illegal searches, racial abuse or false arrest filed by residents between 2002 and 2004, only 124 -- 1.2 percent -- were sustained, and only 19 cases led to a penalty of suspension of at least a week or worse, according to the document.

Citing a 2007 report by a University of Chicago Law School professor, the report notes that a brutality complaint filed against police in Chicago is 94 percent less likely to be sustained than elsewhere. In the city, only 0.48 percent of brutality complaints are sustained, compared to 8 percent nationally.

Specifically, the group is calling for the United Nations Committee Against Torture to demand a response from the CPD "regarding the steps it will take both to end this treatment and to fully compensate the individuals, families, and communities impacted by this violence." It further calls on the committee to identify the CPD's treatment of youth of color as torture and for the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into the department.

The release of the report came on the eve of a status hearing for Glenn Evans, the Chicago police commander relieved of his duties in late August after he was charged with aggravated battery and official misconduct for allegedly sticking his gun into the mouth of a suspect. Evans was the subject of more excessive-force complaints than any other CPD officer between 1988 and 2008 but was still promoted to commander. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The We Charge Genocide coalition gets its name from a 1951 petition filed to the U.N. that documented a number of police-involved shootings and human rights abuses.

We Charge Genocide Report On Chicago Police Violence

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Report: Chicago Police Are Getting Away With Brutality, Most Of It Against Minorities

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A report to be presented to the United Nations next month alleges the Chicago Police Department has engaged in "ongoing, pervasive" violence targeting the city's youth of color in a way perpetuated by its "culture of impunity."

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Do Americans trust their cops to be fair and just ? New polls contain surprises. 

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Do Americans trust their cops to be fair and just ? New polls contain surprises. 

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By: Kiara Holder
4/21
CRAAP Score- 36

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Do police officers "routinely lie to serve their own interests?" Thirty-one percent of Americans believe they do, and that number rises to 45 percent among African-Americans, 41 percent among young people and 39 percent among Democrats. Republicans reject that charge three to one (60 to 20 percent).

Those numbers come from a national poll of Americans just conducted by Reuters and the Ipsos polling organization. ( Explore the full results here.) Still, the image of the police is more controversial than the reality.

Asked whether they approve of the job being done by "your local police department," nearly three quarters of Americans say they approve. Approval is high among African-Americans (56 percent) as well as whites (77 percent), among Democrats (72 percent) as well as Republicans (84 percent).

On the other hand, the public is divided over whether "Police officers tend to unfairly target minorities" (37 percent agree, 43 percent disagree). African-Americans and Latinos believe the police do target minorities (69 percent and 54 percent, respectively). Fewer than a third of whites feel that way (29 percent).

The racist image of the police is strongly influenced by politics. A majority of Democrats (53 percent) believe the police unfairly target minorities. Only 19 percent of Republicans agree.

Young people don't trust the police. That's not surprising. They're the ones most likely to get into trouble. In the Reuters poll, young people were more than twice as likely as seniors to endorse the view that police officers tend to unfairly target minorities (53 percent among Americans under 30, 25 percent among those 60 and older).

These days, young Americans are much more likely than seniors to live in a multicultural world and to interact with minorities. Even young whites were more than twice as likely as white seniors to brand the police as racist (42 percent of young whites but only 20 percent of white seniors).

Do Americans "trust the police to be fair and just?" Most do (53 percent). But that, too, is a political issue. Only 30 percent of African-Americans, 43 percent of young people and 47 percent of Democrats say they trust the police to be fair and just. Trust in the police is much higher among seniors (67 percent) and Republicans (70 percent).

Overall, these findings are reminiscent of research showing that Americans tend to be highly critical of Congress, while they hold a favorable view of "your own congressman." That's why they regularly re-elect over 90 percent of congressional incumbents even while denouncing the institution.Education researchers have found that college students tend to give low marks when asked to assess the quality of teaching in their schools. However, when asked to rate the quality of the teacher in the most recent class they attended, the marks come out much higher.

The same rule appears to apply to people's view of the police: "The police may tend to be unfair and racist, but police officers around here are O.K."

The poll also asked people whether they have a favorable impression of the Ferguson police department. Very few Americans have any experience with the Ferguson police department. They probably didn't even know Ferguson was a town in Missouri a year ago. Only 21,000 people live there, out of 316 million Americans. What the public knows about the Ferguson police is what they see on television and read in the news.

And that is intensely political - and racial. Sixty-two percent of Americans say they have a favorable impression of the Ferguson police. But there's a huge difference between African-Americans (32 percent favorable) and whites (69 percent). Republicans are overwhelmingly favorable to the Ferguson police (85 percent). Democrats are divided (51 percent favorable, 49 percent unfavorable).

One question was surprisingly less divisive: "Would you approve of your children (or future children) becoming police officers?" Americans as a whole say yes, 59 to 22 percent. Young people? 68 percent yes. Democrats? 58 percent yes. African-Americans? More tentative, but still favorable. By 45 to 30 percent, blacks approve of their children becoming police officers. In this case, reality - "It's a good job" - is more positive than image.

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Do Americans trust their cops to be fair and just? New poll contains surprises.

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Do police officers "routinely lie to serve their own interests?" Thirty-one percent of Americans believe they do, and that number rises to 45 percent among African-Americans, 41 percent among young people and 39 percent among Democrats. Republicans reject that charge three to one (60 to 20 percent).

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Here's How Many Cops Got Convicted of Murder Last Year  For On-Duty Shootings 

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Here's How Many Cops Got Convicted of Murder Last Year  For On-Duty Shootings 

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By; Kiara Holder
4/21
CRAAP Score - 32

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Many people viewed 2015 as a year of reckoning for police, with continued scrutiny of the use of deadly force spurring momentum for reform. In reality, however, the road to accountability remains a long one.

That point is clearly reflected in the number of police officers who were convicted on murder or manslaughter charges last year for fatally shooting a civilian in the line of duty.

In 2015, that number was zero.

And that's not unusual. No officers were convicted on such charges in 2014 either.

In fact, since 2005, there have only been 13 officers convicted of murder or manslaughter in fatal on-duty shootings, according to data provided to The Huffington Post by Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminology at Ohio's Bowling Green State University. Stinson's data doesn't include cases in which civilians died in police custody or were killed by other means, or those in which officers only faced lesser charges.

One of the last successful convictions came in 2013, when Culpeper Town, Virginia, police officer Daniel Harmon-Wright was sentenced to three years in jail for voluntary manslaughter charges in the slaying of Patricia Cook, an unarmed 54-year-old, a year earlier.

On Feb. 9, 2012, Harmon-Wright responded to a suspicious vehicle call and found Cook parked in a local Catholic school parking lot. In court, Harmon-Wright said when he asked Cook for her driver's license, she rolled up her window, trapping his arm, before beginning to drive away. Harmon-Wright responded by unloading seven rounds into Cook, with fatal shots hitting her in the back and head. But a jury didn't find the officer's testimony credible, returning a guilty verdict on three charges in the shooting death. After serving out his sentence, Harmon-Wright was in 2015.

Some officers in these cases have served out yearslong sentences for their crimes. Others were of jail . Some even became police officers again . But only a tiny portion of cops who kill while on duty ever face charges for their actions, much less actual punishment.

The inability to convict police on murder or manslaughter charges for fatal on-duty shootings contrasts with a recent increase in prosecution, Stinson said. In 2015, 18 officers faced such charges, a significant increase from an average of around five officers each year over the preceding decade. Many of these cases involved incidents from previous years and have yet to go to trial, but if history is any indicator, it seems unlikely that many of the officers will be convicted.

The tiny number of convictions in fatal police shootings looks even smaller when you consider just how many cases the criminal justice system considers each year. Although there are no reliable government statistics on civilians killed by police, data compiled independently last year by outlets like The Guardian and The Washington Post , or civilian tracker Mapping Police Violence , have led to estimates of roughly 1,000 deadly shootings each year.

Of that total, prosecutors and grand juries around the nation each year have determined that around five of these cases involve misconduct worthy of manslaughter or murder charges. And in the end, the criminal justice system typically concludes that only around one shooting each year is consistent with manslaughter or murder.

This means the overwhelming majority of police shooting cases are ultimately determined to be justified homicides, in which deadly force was used lawfully, often in what police say was an effort to protect an officer's safety or to prevent harm to the public.

One reason for the lack of prosecution and subsequent conviction begins with the Supreme Court's legal standard for use of lethal force. According to Graham v. Connor, the landmark 1989 case that established the standard, each "use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight." The ruling specifically cautions against judging police too harshly for split-second decisions made in "tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving" situations. All of this gives officers plenty of leeway to explain why their actions were legal.

The trajectory of police shooting cases has long been determined by police departments themselves, which, until recently, were largely able to control the narrative of events that led to a killing. And when cases have gone to trial, judges and juries have exhibited a tendency to side with the police . All of these factors make it exceedingly difficult to convict an officer, in the rare instances in which they face charges at all.

"Only about 20 percent of the officers arrested are ever convicted of murder or manslaughter," Stinson explained. "Juries and judges seem reluctant to second-guess the split-second life or death decisions of police officers in violent street encounters in the course of their job ... and will give the benefit of every doubt to an officer on trial in these cases. That is not so for other types of crimes by police officers, but it certainly is the case in these shooting cases."

Stinson said that while there is a recent surge in officers charged for murder or manslaughter, it's too early to tell if the upswing is the beginning of a trend. But he believes newer technology like cell phone video and police body cameras have produced a "tipping point," leading the public to take a more critical view of the police's version of events.

While Stinson said he thinks many police shootings are justified, he predicts that we'll continue to see more officers charged with murder or manslaughter in the coming years. But barring considerable reform of a law and justice system that gives police wide latitude to inflict lethal force upon the public, this may not correspond to a similar rise in convictions.

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Here's How Many Cops Got Convicted Of Murder Last Year For On-Duty Shootings

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Many people viewed 2015 as a year of reckoning for police, with continued scrutiny of the use of deadly force spurring momentum for reform. In reality, however, the road to accountability remains a long one.

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Police Brutality and Abuse of Power the New Norm?

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Police Brutality and Abuse of Power the New Norm?

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By: Dre Evans
4/21
CRAAP Score--

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Not a day goes by without news of another case of police brutality or the abuse of power by officers, which begs the question: is this the new norm? There was a time when it was not so common to hear about abuse by the police, let alone see actual footage of the abuse taking place. But now in this age of technology, camera phones, video cameras and even squad car dash cams have made it possible for the general public to have access to the rampant abuse of power by law enforcement. As police brutality becomes more commonplace one is left to wonder if the public can ever really feel safe and protected by the very ones supposedly charged with that duty.

It has been said that the supreme court indicated it was not an officers job to protect the public but only to enforce the laws. If this is in fact the case, then those false "To Protect and Serve" logos need to be immediately removed from every surface they exist on. If citizens cannot depend on those who are charged with the responsibility of peace keeping, who then will keep the peace? How scary is it that often times in situations that are initially harmless, if the police show up, that situation has an increased chance of possibly getting much worse by them becoming involved. An innocent person is more likely to end up with something life changing happening to them that will definitely be painful in one way or another. It is no secret that this scenario is especially true for minorities and has been for a very long time. When viewed from the point of view of minorities, police brutality and the abuse of power by the justice system is not a new norm at all, but has always been the case.

Presently, there has been a noticeable shift in the nature of this long standing abuse. There are now more cases of the police abusing any and everybody be they young, old, black, white, human or animal. They are bursting into homes (often the wrong ones) shooting and killing residents, but then claiming somebody had a weapon or made a sudden move causing them to fear for their lives. They are shooting people in the back then claiming the person again had a weapon or came at them threateningly. In many of these cases the police have been found to have falsified reports, planted evidence and flat out been the aggressor. There was a time when they could and did easily get away with this behavior. Even with incriminating video evidence they still are known to get off without so much as a reprimand. Why is this, and what can both the public and honest law enforcement personnel do about it? The answers may not be easy but the current vibe between average citizens and the police are troubling to say the least.

The rampant and heinous abuse of those officers who operate outside the perimeters of their sworn duties has become much more than just troubling. The problem is heating to a rapid boil as the recent events surrounding the homeless man who was killed by police in Albuquerque have shown. It is sadly not far fetched or extreme to think that it will come down to hand to hand combat in the event of say, marshal law. It is already happening all over the globe. When you can kill with impunity the balance becomes lopsided making a very dangerous recipe for disaster. It seems that with all the gun violence going on, both the police and the public have become jumpy and nervous and much more likely to shoot first and sort out the details later. Trust is rapidly dwindling and the "us" versus "them" syndrome is becoming ever more pronounced and noticeable. Interestingly, when officers are not actively on duty, they tend to lead normal lives just like the rest of us which makes it difficult to understand the animosity and division between them and the public when the uniform goes back on. It has been said that the police are a "gang" unto themselves and that many of them over time develop a genuine sense of superiority over citizens and view them as disposal collateral in the so called war against crime.

These days, people are just downright afraid and distrustful of the police. Even senior citizens are at risk of being killed by a nervous cop, as in the recent case of the elderly gentleman who was tragically shot after exiting his car as he reached over to retrieve his walking stick, which the officer mistook as a shotgun. There were two victims in that situation because the officer who mistakenly shot the man is said to have broken down with abject remorse soon after the shooting. It really shows that things are spiraling out of control when an armed officer has to feel that he can't even trust the intentions of an elder. Yet it would seem that neither can the general public trust the intentions of an officer. You just never know if you're going to have the awful luck of coming into contact with a cop who has an evil agenda. If police contact does occur even under mundane circumstances, the immediate reaction might be to panic and start thinking things like "maybe if I act this way or that way, or say this or say that I can avoid an altercation and not end up getting a bs ticket, going to jail or even worse, getting killed!" What an awful way to have to feel when dealing with the police in minor situations. The threat of police brutality and the abuse of power becoming the new norm is proving to be a deadly combination for both citizens and those charged with policing them.

Someone once shared a theory that the reason so many officers have abusive personalities is because frequently, the types of people who are attracted to law enforcement are usually types who were bullies to begin with. They went on to state that many of them harbor borderline psychotic and deviant personalities and are somehow able to get past the vetting process. It stands to reason that the promise of power and the lack of oversight is appealing to these types. Maybe the vetting process should be vetted! It appears that all too often many officers go well beyond what is required as far as violence is concerned. What ever happened to aiming for non lethal targets when firing on citizens? And why is it so common to see a large number of officers swarm on just one person? Understandably situations can and often do escalate quickly, which is why it is important for officers to get thorough and effective training in how to deal with the public. Because clearly there is a vital component lacking in the process.

It must also be said that obviously all officers are not corrupt or out to kill. Certainly the actions of bad police make it even harder on those who genuinely wish to do an honest job and be upstanding in their privileged positions. In all honesty, the actions of officers who are either corrupt, badly trained, trigger happy or just scared and or inept are making things bad for decent officers and everyone else as well. Something has to give and more dialogue has to start happening or we will simply be doomed to more of the same. If things ever get so bad that this country finds its citizens facing off against any branch of law enforcement, hopefully those in uniform will realize in time that, they are us, just as we are them. Here's to hoping that true healing can begin and that the abuse and brutality will rapidly become a thing of the past.

Commentary By Mai Nowlin
Sources:

police brutality

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Police Brutality and Abuse of Power the New Norm? [Graphic Video] · Guardian Liberty Voice

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Not a day goes by without news of another case of police brutality or the abuse of power by officers, which begs the question: is this the new norm? There was a time when it was not so common to hear about abuse by the police, let alone see actual footage of the abuse taking ...

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By: Dre Evans
4/21
CRAAP Score--45

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Tim Kaine Gets Candid With Pusha T On Police Brutality And Racism

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Tim Kaine Gets Candid With Pusha T On Police Brutality And Racism

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By: Dre Evans
4/21
CRAAP Score-- 47

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With this year's presidential election less than two weeks away, Pusha T is continuing his political involvement on Hillary Clinton's campaign trail.

In a new Hillary for America campaign clip, the rapper held a candid conversation ― which took place after a Oct. 15 block festival in Liberty City, Miami ― with Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine to discuss some of the most pressing issues at stake in this year's election.

Among the Bronx rapper's biggest concerns were America's broken criminal justice system. It's an issue that needs improvement, according to Kaine.

"There's a lot of reforms that are necessary. There's policing reforms, to make sure that we have communities where everybody respects the law," Kaine said. "But people have to be respected by the law, too. That's really important. In some of our communities that's not the case."

As a solution to ending gun violence in America, the Virginia senator suggested the government keep a better record of the number of citizens that were killed in interactions with the police ― similar to the data that's stored on the number of policemen that were killed in the line of duty.

"We haven't been keeping that data about citizens, but if we keep that data, too, we can manage to improve deaths to gun violence," he said.

In addition to resolving police relations, Kaine went on to highlight some areas that are affected by systematic racism in America.

"There is [racism] in housing," he said. "There is [racism] in employment. There is [racism] in the criminal justice system. There is [racism] in voting rights. So there's more progress to achieve, but we keep moving forward."

Check out more of Senator Kaine and Pusha T's conversation in the clip above.

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Tim Kaine Gets Candid With Pusha T On Police Brutality And Racism

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With this year's presidential election less than two weeks away, Pusha T is continuing his political involvement on Hillary Clinton's campaign trail. In a new Hillary for America campaign clip, the rapper held a candid conversation ― which took place after a Oct.

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How to Sustain a False Police Shooting Crisis 

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How to Sustain a False Police Shooting Crisis 

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By: Dre Evans
4/21
CRAAP Score--49

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The facts are a mere inconvenience for progressives stoking racial conflict.

It's hard to recall a political movement built on more verifiable lies and misinformation than Black Lives Matter, which exists to advance that notion that America is in the midst of a race-motivated epidemic of police shootings. From " hands up, don't shoot" to the extraordinary claim that it's " open season" on young black men, America is awash in rhetoric and fury that is already proving to be deadly to police and deadly to black communities across the United States.

Even worse, the rhetoric persists in spite of the facts: Individual stories of police misconduct are often far more complex than activists portray, and the accumulated data shows that black men are not, in fact, facing a wave of racist police killings. For a summary of the available evidence, Heather Mac Donald's video is outstanding:

Yet the narrative has been fixed. The crisis must be sustained, evidence be damned.

Vox has an interesting feature called a "card stack," a site dedicated to a single issue, allowing you to quickly click through specific links and educate yourself. They created a card stack about police brutality - and it is a textbook example of how the sophisticated progressive looks at racial issues. This is how the Left sustains a false racial crisis:

Step One - Begin with the misleading use of statistics.

After some throat-clearing about how American police use force more than police in many other countries - conveniently ignoring the fact that we also have much higher rates of violent crime than those nations - Vox gets right to the heart of leftist thinking about race: "There are huge racial disparities in how U.S. police use force." The proof for that statement? Black people are a mere 13 percent of the population but comprise a whopping 31 percent of all people killed by police.

The narrative has been fixed. The crisis must be sustained, evidence be damned.

Case closed, right? If police forces were truly colorblind, they'd kill black people at the exact same rate as people from all other races, correct? Not so fast. Vox could have just as easily led with the statement that "there are huge racial disparities in violent-crime rates." The numbers are staggering. As Mac Donald relates, blacks "commit homicide at close to eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined." In 2014 - the last full year for which statistics are available - black Americans made up a of those arrested for murder, robbery, and aggravated assault.

Vox barely mentions these inconvenient facts, noting in passing that "black Americans are much more likely to commit crime than their white counterparts," before immediately blaming the problem on "poverty, unemployment, segregation," and - you guessed it - the police. Under this reading, if the police aren't actually killing black Americans at rates out of proportion to their criminality, then it's only because the police helped create their criminality in the first place. Even exculpatory evidence indicts the police!

Step Two - Ignore recent, contrary evidence.

To make its case for police bias, Vox cites a study that purports to show that racial differences in police shootings are "not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates," ignoring the other studies that directly contradict this conclusion. A recent, widely reported study by Harvard's Roland G. Fryer found no racial bias in police shootings in ten major U.S. cities:

In shootings in these 10 cities involving officers, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both results undercut the idea of racial bias in police use of lethal force.

It is infinitely easier to make a case when you cite only the evidence that supports your position.

#share#

Step Three - Throw in a dash of complete and utter nonsense.

In addition to focusing on race, Vox explains the frequency of police shootings by reference to the legal rules of engagement governing the use of force. "Legally, what most matters in these shootings is whether police officers reasonably believed that their or others' lives were in danger," they write. "Not whether the shooting victim actually posed a threat."

Think about that statement. How, pray tell, is a police officer supposed to discern whether a shooting victim "actually" poses a threat other than through their "objectively reasonable" beliefs? How can anyone tell?
RELATED: Black Lives Matter Puts Feelings First, Evidence Last
Imagine that you are a few feet away from a man brandishing a knife. Your training tells you that he might lunge toward you and close the distance, perhaps before you could even hit him with a single shot. He refuses to put the knife down. He keeps refusing. He's threatening to kill you.

Is he an "actual" threat?

Legally and in the real world, yes he is. He's carrying a deadly weapon. He's refused commands to drop the weapon. At any moment he might inflict death or serious injury on a police officer. Only God knows if he will actually lunge, and the police officer isn't God.
RELATED: Black Lives Matter Is Pushing Our Cities Back to the Brink
Reformers often urge cops to focus not on what's "legal," but rather on what's "preventable." Unfortunately, since the vast majority of police shootings involve a police officer under attack or defending someone who is, one cop's caution could mean another cop's (or innocent civilian's) death. At the end of the day, the officer is still going to have the right to defend himself and members of the public, and so long as he retains that right, there will be no appreciable difference in police shootings. Self-preservation is a powerful motivator.

#related#There is not a rational person alive who disputes the notion that there are some racist police officers. (Indeed, the very study that undercuts the claim of racial bias in the use of lethal force also supports claims of racial bias in the use of lesser degrees of force, a finding that is deeply concerning.) Nor is there a single rational person who believes that every use of deadly force by a police officer is justified. But it's more than a few steps too far from those realities to an entire movement built on the notion that the police - as a class - are targeting and killing black men merely because they are black.

If true, this would constitute a national crisis, one worth addressing at the highest levels of American cultural and political life. But to make the claim is not to prove the claim, and no amount of leftist "allyship" is worth torturing facts and logic to sustain a movement that increasingly seems to be based mainly on fear, deception, and media manipulation.

Lives are at stake. Yet given the choice between explaining the news and sustaining the crisis, too many journalists choose the crisis.

- David French is an attorney, and a staff writer at National Review

David French - David French is a senior writer forNational Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. @DavidAFrench

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How to Sustain a False Police Shooting Crisis | National Review

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The facts are a mere inconvenience for progressives stoking racial conflict. It's hard to recall a political movement built on more verifiable lies and misinformation than Black Lives Matter, which exists to advance that notion that America is in the midst of a race-motivated epidemic of police shootings.

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Special Effects: Police Brutality and the Media

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Special Effects: Police Brutality and the Media

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By: Dre Evans
4/20
CRAAP Score--44

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Special Effects: Police Brutality and the Media

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After 7-year-old Aiyana Jones was shot and killed by police during a raid filmed for a cable show, experts are asking whether the officers responded to the cameras with violence. This past Sunday, May 16, police raided Jones's Detroit home, searching for a suspect of a murder that had ...

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By: Daniel Ross
4/20
CRAAP Score--46

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Since the 1960s, the national conversation on firearms in both political and academic circles has revolved around one main question: Do guns increase crime or reduce it? Are guns tools of escalation or deterrence?

Lately, however, social science researchers have become interested in a different question - not the relationship between guns and crime but the relationship between guns and people.

A new generation of sociologists takes as its point of departure the sheer preponderance of guns: an estimated 300 million firearms in the hands of civilians, and more than 11 million concealed carriers. We want to understand why Americans do not just own but also carry guns. To us, cultural politics matter at least as much as instrumental value.

Gun-carry culture is actually a relatively recent phenomenon. Many cite Florida's 1987 "shall-issue" law as the turning point. Now states as diverse as Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon and Pennsylvania have laws on the books that make it relatively easy for residents with clean criminal records to obtain a license to carry a concealed weapon.

I set out to Michigan - an unlikely pro-gun state given its reputation as a politically liberal place - to interview gun carriers. I spent time on shooting ranges, at "open carry" picnics, at activist events and firearm instructional seminars.

Carrying a gun has become normalized in Michigan; it's a way of life for hundreds of thousands of residents, partly conditioned by the idea that crime could happen anytime, anyplace.

One man with a concealed-carry permit likened his gun to a wallet: "You know, anytime you're without, you never know when you're going to need [a gun]. So it's best practice to have it at all times.... Just like carrying a wallet." Others told me they felt "naked" without a gun.

Crime has dropped in much of the United States, but this decline has been uneven. Although Michigan does not rank among the 10 most violent states, Detroit and Flint still top lists of "most violent cities." In 2012, Detroit had its highest homicide rate since the early 1990s. For those who live in these cities, crime is an everyday reality; for those who live outside them, crime is a highly charged - if often abstract - concern.

But the appeal of guns is hardly reducible to fear of crime, whether rational or irrational. I found that men - the vast majority of gun owners are men - may also carry weapons as a reaction to broader socioeconomic decline.

When I asked Corey, a Flint resident, why he carried a gun, he said, "Before, it was all blue collar, shop workers and a little bit of welfare. Now it's all welfare, and things are different."

The men I interviewed discussed Michigan's past nostalgically, not only as a place that promised safe neighborhoods but as one in which their fathers had clear, vital roles to play. Men were entrusted with supporting their families; they made happy suburban home life possible.

Corey and others suggested that breadwinning now is harder than it used to be. Indeed, men's participation in the labor force has been on a steady decline since the 1970s. Well-paying manufacturing jobs have dried up.

Frankie, a retired Detroiter, told me that in the 1970s he "got a job at General Motors, and they were hiring people off the street with zero education, and they could work 20 years, and they could make a living. You can't do that now."

As men doubt their ability to provide, their desire to protect becomes all the more important. They see carrying a gun as a masculine duty and the gun itself as a vehicle for a hardened kind of care-work - caring for others by shielding them from danger, with the threat of lethal force.

Brad, another Flint resident, told me, "The child's born. Mortgage, marriage. I have a kid. I'm paying for all this stuff on a truck driver's wage.... I wanted to protect them all, so then a firearm comes along."

My interview subjects cast themselves as "good guys with guns" tasked with assisting the vulnerable among us. As they practiced shooting their firearms, they imagined scenarios in which women and children might need their help: a man with a rifle in a schoolyard full of kids; a woman being raped in an alley; an armed robber targeting a diner waitress.

The gun carriers I met did not frequently attempt to stop crimes, but when they did, they tended to play the role of hero, defending a damsel in distress. Two gun carriers told me they had intervened in domestic disputes, both relying on their firearms to persuade the assailant to desist.

We tend to get mired in public policy debates that isolate the impact of guns on violence, and nothing more. We wonder to what degree they contribute to suicide rates or homicide rates. But firearms have a larger purpose in our postindustrial society. In Michigan and other places hit hard by the economic downturn, men's guns can address social insecurities far beyond crime.

The gun rights platform is not just about guns. It's also about a crisis of confidence in the American dream. And this is one reason gun control efforts ignite such intense backlashes: Restrictions are received as a personal affront to men who find in guns a sense of duty, relevance and even dignity.
Jennifer Carlson is the author of "Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline."

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Since the 1960s, the national conversation on firearms in both political and academic circles has revolved around one main question: Do guns increase crime or reduce it? Are guns tools of escalation or deterrence? Lately, however, social science researchers have become interested in a different...

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What could actually work to fix gun violence in america and what doesn't?

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What could actually work to fix gun violence in america and what doesn't?

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By:Troy Hightower
4/20
CRAAP Score-- 40

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Another shooting. Another set of grieving families. Confronted with America's dramatic rates of gun violence, most people agree that something must be done. It's agreeing on that "something" which can prove elusive. Is there anything that works to reduce gun deaths in a country in which civilian gun ownership is a fundamental right?

The first step is to move beyond some of the immediate, outraged proposals brought forward after each high-profile shooting. A ban on military-style assault weapons might save a small number of lives, but is unlikely to make a larger difference. America's gun violence problem is so much bigger than mass shootings, whose victims represent only a tiny percentage of the overall toll of gun murders each year.

What can be done to address this much larger toll of gun violence, which leaves nearly 100,000 Americans killed or wounded each year?

The problem here, for the most part, isn't faulty guns or insufficient training. It's dangerous people using guns effectively. The best approach to violence prevention is to zero in on that small number of high-risk people who are using guns to harm themselves or other people, and look at what might be done to prevent them.

Many of most promising strategies are not the ones you're most likely to hear about on the news - or the ones your member of Congress may be talking about right now.

Want to do something about the enormous toll of urban violence? Universal background checks might help. But community advocates have also been pushing for more funding for local programs that have been shown to reduce gang-related murders by 25% to 40%.

Worried about mass shootings? If you're concerned about military-style weapons, experts suggest, it may be more effective to focus simply on limiting ammunition capacity, rather than on banning the guns. And investing in threat assessment and intervention programs is probably more valuable than trying to fortify your local elementary school or hiring armed guards.

Want to do something about the intersection of mental health and guns? New York state passed a law after Sandy Hook requiring mental health professionals to report people who might be dangerous to themselves or others to a state database. Both gun rights and mental health professionals argued that this was a terrible idea that might make people less willing to seek mental health treatment. A better option: recognize that mental health is a serious factor in gun suicide, and policies that target suicide might be more effective than government databases.

That's not to say that straightforward gun laws can't be effective. There's good research to suggest that tougher state laws focused on domestic abusers are effective, good news as tougher state domestic violence laws have continued to advance across the country.

Here's a brief introduction to a few of these promising strategies.

Urban, gang-related violence: the Boston ceasefire strategy

Chicago, Oakland, New Orleans, Detroit: decades of gun violence have had a devastating impact on some of the country's economically struggling neighborhoods.

The violence, rooted in segregation, unemployment, mass incarceration, and the "war on drugs", can seem like a hopeless and intractable problem. But decades of justice department-funded research has identified several promising strategies for reducing gun violence - not over the long term, but immediately, in a matter of months.

Cities that have done in-depth analyses of their gun violence problem have found something surprising: the majority of violence is driven by a very small number of young men. In Oakland, for instance, just 1,000 members of a few active street groups were responsible for most of the city's homicides. The violence was not fueled by turf wars or drug business, for the most part, but by long-running feuds and arguments among loose groups of young men engaged in other illegal activities.

Communicating directly with these young men - and offering both assistance and intense law enforcement attention - led to an immediate drop in violence. This "ceasefire" or "focused deterrence" strategy, first launched in Boston in 1996, requires coordination between police departments, prosecutors and community members in the neighborhoods most affected by violence.

These are not easy partnerships to form, and they often require addressing police departments' legacies of racism and failed violence prevention strategies. But in Boston, the ceasefire collaboration led to a 63% reduction in monthly youth homicides - a sudden drop in violence dubbed "the Boston miracle". The strategy has been replicated across the country, but has often struggled to sustain itself as police chiefs and mayors change - or as old funding sources dry up. The strategy's typical results, according to sociologist Kenneth Rand, are "a reduction in the range of 15% to 35% in total homicides and 25% to 40% in gang or group-involved homicides." This is a dramatic impact for a local program.

How long cities can maintain these results, though, is unclear. The program's effectiveness has mostly been studied over the short term. At least one ceasefire site, in Kansas City, saw a clear drop in homicides in 2014, and then saw violence go up again, even though the strategy continues to be implemented. But Oakland and New Orleans have both seen dramatic drops in murder after implementing the ceasefire strategy - and, even as violence spiked in cities across the country last year, both cities have been able to maintain their lower levels of violence.

Domestic violence: tougher state gun laws work

Each year, an average of at least 760 Americans are killed with guns by their husbands, wives, ex-spouses, or dating partners, according to an Associated Press analysis of FBI data. Most of the victims are women, often the current wives or current girlfriends of the person who killed them.

Sometimes these domestic violence shootings are murder-suicides that end the life of both partners. Domestic violence also plays a role in mass shootings - a New York Times analysis found that some 10% of mass shootings were related to domestic violence. It also found that most of the victims and perpetrators were white.

Laws that target domestic abusers have been found to have widespread modest effects.Three studies found that states with laws that restricted gun access for people under domestic violence restraining orders reduced the number of gun murders. One 2006 study found that these tougher laws - which go beyond the federal ban on some domestic abusers - were associated with two fewer domestic gun homicides per state each year.

Suicide: the Gun Shop Project

Two-thirds of gun deaths in the US - roughly 20,000 each year - are gun suicides, and states where gun ownership is higher see dramatically higher gun suicide rates. Many of the victims are older white men.

In rural, gun-loving states like New Hampshire and Vermont, it's gun dealers and gun rights advocates who are leading the charge to prevent these kinds of deaths.

"This is not an anti-gun or a veiled anti-gun campaign - this is strictly us helping ourselves," said Chris Bradley, president of Vermont's state NRA group.

For many people, suicide can be an impulsive act, and easy access to a firearm in a moment of crisis can be deadly. The Gun Shop Project's strategy is to use friends, not law enforcement, to address that risk. It's like the "friends don't let friends drive drunk" campaign. In a moment of crisis,"we can hold their guns for them, talk to them, get them counseling, and once it's over and done with, we'll give them their guns back and there won't be stigma attached," said Eddie Cutler, the president of Gun Owners of Vermont. "Gun owners trust gun owners," he said.

There's no research yet that evaluates how well the gun shop strategy is working. But participants are optimistic - and proud of an approach that has brought people together across the normal partisan lines.

Mass shootings: threat assessment and high-capacity magazine limits

Mass shootings are comparatively rare, which makes them hard to predict. Many perpetrators fit a common profile - an alienated, disturbed, angry, mentally ill young man - but thousands like them never commit broader acts of violence, which makes writing a law to prevent mass shootings very troubling.

Mark Follman, a Mother Jones reporter who has led a project on mass shootings, has examined a different approach: threat assessment. Analysis shows there are often several missed chances to intervene before a mass shooting and researchers found the "weeks, months, or even years when a would-be killer is escalating toward violence are a window of opportunity in which he can be detected and thwarted".

Law enforcement, mental health professions, and schools can help "connect the dots" about risky behavior and get help for young men in crisis. Sandy Hook Promise, founded by families of the Newtown school shooting victims, have worked to train schools and students to be aware of potential threats of violence and to say something - at least one school shooting appears to have been prevented because a student acted on the training.

A ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines might also make some difference to the lethality of mass shootings. The best rough estimate for a long-term impact of the ban, researcher Chris Koper suggested, might be a 1% reduction in shootings, or 650 fewer people shot per year. That effect would only begin to be seen after many years, once the US's existing stock of large capacity magazines is used up. From a public health perspective, even a marginal reduction could be worth it, Koper argued, since the medical and social cost of a single gunshot injury is substantial.

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What could actually work to fix gun violence in America - and what doesn't

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Another shooting. Another set of grieving families. Confronted with America's dramatic rates of gun violence, most people agree that something must be done. It's agreeing on that "something" which can prove elusive. Is there anything that works to reduce gun deaths in a country in which civilian gun ownership is a fundamental right?

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By:Troy Hightower
4/20
CRAAP Score--42

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The mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., has reignited a national debate on gun control. As elected leaders begin the dialogue, some facts are clear - there has been a massive increase in gun sales. Some things are not so clear - such as whether there is causation between more guns and more violent crimes. And some are contrary to the general impression - for example, the rate of gun murders is down, not up.

We have decided to look at some of the rhetoric and how it squares with the facts, while offering some broader context to inform the debate.

Rep. Louie Gohmert said that "every time ... conceal-carry [gun laws] have been allowed the crime rate has gone down." But that is far from a settled issue in academia.

Dan Gross, head of the Brady Campaign used the number of daily gun murders as proof that "gun violence rates are not" going down. But the rate of gun murder is at its lowest point since at least 1981: 3.6 per 100,000 people in 2010. The high point was 7 in 1993. However, non-fatal gun injuries from assaults increased last year for the third straight year, and that rate is the highest since 2008.

Federal data also show violent crimes committed with guns - including murders, aggravated assaults and robberies - have declined for three straight years.

Rep. Donna Edwards said that "since Columbine, there have been 181 of these school shootings." That's an inflated figure. She used a list of "major school shootings" supplied by the Brady Campaign that included incidents that were neither shootings nor at schools. By our count, the list shows 130 school shootings since Columbine that resulted in at least one student or school official being killed or injured - still unacceptably high, but about a quarter fewer than claimed.

Here are some other facts. The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world - by far. And it has the highest rate of homicides among advanced countries. And yet, gun crime has been declining in the U.S. Firearm murders are down, as is overall gun violence - even as gun ownership increases. Read our Analysis for more insight on what these statistics mean.

On Dec. 14, on the afternoon of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and after a spate of public mass shootings, President Obama said that "we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics." He didn't say "gun control," but there was little doubt that's what he meant.

Five days later, Obama announced in a press conference that he had tapped Vice President Joe Biden to lead a team to "come up with a set of concrete proposals" to "reduce the epidemic of gun violence that plagues this country." Obama talked about the need to make it easier to access mental health care as well as the need to "look more closely at a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence." But Obama also talked about polls that show majority support for "banning the sale of military-style assault weapons," "banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips" and "laws requiring background checks before all gun purchases."

On cable news and other media outlets, gun rights advocates have begun to push back. Both sides offer statistics that appear to back their arguments, and so we have attempted to add some factual accuracy to the debate.

Do Concealed-Carry Laws Reduce Violent Crime?

Few gun rights advocates in Congress initially were willing to speak publicly in the wake of the mass shootings in Newtown, but Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas bucked that trend on Fox News, providing an against-the-tide opinion that the answer to tragedies like that was not fewer guns, but more guns. Had the principal been armed, he said, she might have killed shooter Adam Lanza before the rampage developed.

Gohmert, Dec. 16: Hearing the heroic stories of the principal, lunging, trying to protect ... I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn't have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.

While some politicians talked about the need for tighter gun control, Gohmert argued that violence is lower in places more permissive of concealed weapons.

Gohmert, Dec. 16: The facts are that every time guns have been allowed - conceal-carry (gun laws) have been allowed - the crime rate has gone down.

We read a bit of the large body of academic research on the issue and spoke to some of the leading academic voices about the accuracy of Gohmert's claim.

A sample:

"The answer is, the Congressman is factually correct," said Carlisle Moody, economics professor at William & Mary.

"That [Gohmert's comment] is just completely wrong," said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

Suffice to say there is academic disagreement on this issue.

Crime is down dramatically right now - even in states that have not passed such laws. To prove causation, which Gohmert's statement implies, would require that those doing the study discern what would have happened if not for the law, and that is almost impossible to model.

According to Gohmert's office, the congressman bases his claim largely on the controversial and hotly contested research of economist John Lott.

In the most recent 2010 edition of Lott's book, " More Guns Less Crime," Lott concludes that "[a]llowing citizens to carry concealed handguns reduces violent crimes, and the reductions coincide very closely with the number of concealed-handgun permits issued." (p. 20) Lott writes that the result of his research "clearly imply that nondiscretionary [concealed carry] laws coincide with fewer murders, aggravated assaults, and rapes" (p. 57). He contends that "[w]hen state concealed-handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by about 8 percent, rapes fell by 5 percent, and aggravated assaults fell by 7 percent" (p. 59).

More directly related to the Newtown incident, Lott co-wrote a 1999 study that concluded, "Deaths and injuries from mass public shootings fall dramatically after right-to-carry concealed handgun laws are enacted. Between 1977 and 1995, the average death rate from mass shootings plummeted by up to 91 percent after such laws went into effect, and injuries dropped by over 80 percent."

While Lott's work is often cited by gun rights advocates, his findings are strongly disputed by numerous academics. Most notably, in 2004 a committee of the National Research Council of the National Academies analyzed Lott's research and took issue with his findings, concluding that "it is impossible to draw strong conclusions from the existing literature on the causal impact of these laws" (See Chapter 6).

National Research Council, 2004: The initial model specification, when extended to new data, does not show evidence that passage of right-to-carry laws reduces crime. The estimated effects are highly sensitive to seemingly minor changes in the model specification and control variables. No link between right-to-carry laws and changes in crime is apparent in the raw data, even in the initial sample; it is only once numerous covariates are included that the negative results in the early data emerge. While the trend models show a reduction in the crime growth rate following the adoption of right-to-carry laws, these trend reductions occur long after law adoption, casting serious doubt on the proposition that the trend models estimated in the literature reflect effects of the law change. Finally, some of the point estimates are imprecise. Thus, the committee concludes that with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.

Lott adamantly defended his conclusions in a phone interview with FactCheck.org, and noted that there was one notable dissenter from 17 others on the committee, the late James Q. Wilson. Wilson argued (Appendix A) that he found Lott's analysis supported the conclusion that concealed-carry laws reduced the murder rate.

However, critics of Lott's work are many, perhaps none more vigorous than Stanford Law Professor John J. Donohue III. Together with Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, in 2003 the two authored a spirited rebuttal of Lott's work titled, " Shooting Down the More Guns, Less Crime."

Donohue and Ayres, 2003: We conclude that Lott and Mustard have made an important scholarly contribution in establishing that these laws have not led to the massive bloodbath of death and injury that some of their opponents feared. On the other hand, we find that the statistical evidence that these laws have reduced crime is limited, sporadic, and extraordinarily fragile.

... [T]heir results have not withstood the test of time. When we added five years of county data and seven years of state data, allowing us to test an additional fourteen jurisdictions that adopted shall-issue laws, the previous Lott and Mustard findings proved not to be robust. Importantly, we showed that the Lott and Mustard results collapse when the more complete county data is subjected to less-constrained jurisdiction-specific specifications or when the more-complete state data is tweaked in plausible ways. No longer can any plausible case be made on statistical grounds that shall-issue laws are likely to reduce crime for all or even most states.

More recently, Donohue co-authored a paper in 2012 that concluded "aggravated assault rises when RTC (right to carry) laws are adopted. For every other crime category, there is little or no indication of any consistent RTC impact on crime."

Indeed, a cottage industry of sorts has emerged to debate the issue. Some have found some benefit to concealed-carry laws, and other no benefit at all.

Gohmert's comment - that "every time ... conceal-carry (gun laws) have been allowed, the crime rate has gone down" - is somewhat a matter of semantics, said Moody, at William & Mary.

Gohmert is "factually correct," Moody said, because crime has indeed gone down in states with conceal-carry laws. "On the other hand, if you are implying - and I think he is - that concealed carry laws reduce crime, that's a more complicated question."

In fact, crime is down in states that have not passed concealed-carry laws. The impact of such legislation is debatable.

"My personal opinion is that it probably does cause crime to decline somewhat," Moody said. "Almost certainly, it does not harm on a net basis."

In 2008, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center reviewed the reams of scientific research on concealed gun-carrying laws and broadly concluded "the changes have neither been highly beneficial nor highly detrimental."

There are two reasons why the effects of CCW laws on crime are likely to be negligible, the authors wrote. First, only a tiny percentage of the population seeks to obtain a concealed weapon permit. And those who do tend to be from groups who are at relatively low risk for either crime perpetration or victimization. They are generally older, higher-income, rural whites.

Both sides accuse the other of personal bias on the issue. Indeed, there are two underlying schools of thought about concealed-carry laws. The first is that if there are more people carrying concealed weapons, criminals are less likely to commit crimes, because they fear someone may defend themselves with a gun. National Rifle Association CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre sums up the philosophy this way: "The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

The second is that more concealed guns mean more disputes resolved with guns, and that it leads to more violent crime.

Susan B. Sorenson, a professor of Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, is convinced the Lott data is weak (for example, she said, if you take the outlier Florida out of the mix, the results change remarkably). But more important, she said, is that there is simply a dearth of good data.

"We really don't have answers to a lot of the questions that we should have answers to," Sorenson.

In part, she said, that's because the gold standard for scientists - a randomly assigned study in which you gave one group of people guns, and another none - is simply not possible.

There is work the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could and should be doing, she said, but has not since the late 1990s. CDC has been wary of studying gun issues after NRA lobbyists convinced Congress to cut into its funding after a series of studies in the mid-1990s were viewed by the NRA as advocating for gun control.

What kind of study is CDC not doing? "The kind of information we need at the policy-making tables," Sorenson said.

The bottom line on Gohmert's statement is that the issue is much too unsettled for such a definitive claim.

There is, of course, a larger implication to Gohmert's statement: that more guns equals less crime. That is a different issue than simply concealed weapons laws.

More Guns = More Gun Homicides, Statistically Speaking

In 2008, we explored the issue of whether more gun ownership meant more or less gun violence. What we found, and it still holds true, was that some studies had shown a statistical relationship between those factors - areas with a higher prevalence of guns had higher prevalence of gun homicides and homicides in general. But studies haven't been able to show a causal relationship - that the mere presence of guns, as opposed to other factors, caused the higher rates of gun violence. It's doubtful, however, that a study could ever beyond-a-doubt prove a causal relationship.

As Sorenson explained, scientists can't conduct a random experiment. So, instead, researchers are left with statistical models, which are "very fragile," says Charles F. Wellford, who was chair of the committees that authored a lengthy 2004 report on this topic by the National Research Council of the National Academies. These models are subject to what control variables researchers use. "Everyone knows there's other things than guns that cause crime," says Wellford, a professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland. So these models become very complex and slight changes can cause very different results, he says.

The National Research Council review of the available research on guns and crime found that studies comparing similar geographic areas, such as urban areas to urban areas, known as "case-control studies," showed that "violence is positively associated with firearms ownership." But when looking at larger areas, such as countries, the National Research Council report found "contradictory evidence." Both types of studies, said the report, failed to address factors involved in buying a gun - it's not a random decision. And gun ownership data itself is lacking - it comes only from public opinion surveys.

Eighteen experts participated in the NRC report, including those in criminology, sociology, psychology, economics, public health and statistics. The NRC's conclusion: "In summary, the committee concludes that existing research studies and data include a wealth of descriptive information on homicide, suicide, and firearms, but, because of the limitations of existing data and methods, do not credibly demonstrate a causal relationship between the ownership of firearms and the causes or prevention of criminal violence or suicide."

Wellford says the new literature that has emerged since that 2004 review "doesn't change in any way the conclusions from our report."

Why can't a statistical relationship prove a causal one? There are many other factors besides the presence of guns. Adam Lanza, the shooter in the elementary school killings in Newtown, "had lots of things going on in his life and one of them was access to multiple weapons," says Wellford, himself a gun owner. "It's hard to parse out what the effect is of having the gun, but there's no question there's some effect." But is it 2 percent, 10 percent, 100 percent of the causal model? "We don't know."

Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, says he would "bet a lot of money" that the prevalence of guns increases homicide, all other things being equal. "I think the evidence is very consistent with the notion that more guns have made us less safe." But it's "almost impossible" to prove a causal relationship. "All the data are consistent with a causal relationship, but it's very hard to say anything is causal," he says.

Hemenway and coauthor Lisa M. Hepburn reviewed research from peer-reviewed journals and found that the evidence from studies of U.S. cities, states and regions "is quite consistent ... where there are higher levels of gun prevalence, homicide rates are substantially higher, primarily due to higher firearm homicide rates." But, again, the 2004 report said: "None of the studies can prove causation. They merely examine the statistical association between gun availability and homicide."

There's also a chicken-and-egg question when it comes to gun violence. Did the violence come first, and then the guns followed, or the other way around?

"I don't think any of us believe the arrow points in one direction," says Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis and an emergency room doctor. It's "probably true that rising crime leads to a perception of increased threat and, therefore, an increase in the prevalence of gun ownership." And it's "also the case that making firearms more available is followed by an increase in firearm crime."

A study by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence found that seven of the 10 states with the strongest gun laws - by its own definition - also had the lowest gun death rates. Of course, there's a chicken-and-egg issue with gun control laws, too - it's easier to pass gun control laws in areas that already had low gun ownership, and harder to pass them in areas with more gun owners.

One thing that is clear: Guns are effective lethal weapons. "If there were no guns, the lethality of crimes would be less," says Wellford. "You can't have a drive-by knifing."

In all cases of injury prevention, says Hemenway, the agent, or method, involved makes a difference. On Dec. 14, the day of the shooting in Newtown, another attack occurred at an elementary school in China. The attacker there had a knife, and injured 22 kids and one adult. But no one was killed. Why the stark difference in fatalities? "The answer is the type of weapon they had," Hemenway says.

The NRC report, like Sorenson, said that more research was needed. "The federal government has to invest some money in doing research on what role guns play in violence," Wellford says.

When we spoke with Wellford in 2008, he cautioned against drawing conclusions from statistics that didn't prove causation. "Work that knowingly reports findings that do not meet a causal test knowing they will be used as if they do can only produce confusion especially in such contentious issues," he said.

Moody, of William & Mary, makes a more general argument in favor of more guns tempering crime.

"We are awash in guns in the United States," Moody said. "There are more every year and yet crime seems to be going down and down and down and down."

It's true that gun ownership is up. The Small Arms Survey, a project of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, estimated in 2007 that there were 270 million civilian-owned firearms in the U.S. In 2001, there were an estimated 230 million. So there are more guns, but are there more gun owners?

Nobody knows for sure, Hemenway said. Gun owners do not need to register simply to purchase a gun. And so, researchers are left to rely on surveys. According to yearly data from the General Social Survey, the number of households with guns is declining.

Moody doesn't buy that. He thinks it's a cultural issue. People today are simply more likely to tell survey-takers they do not own a gun, he said, because it is less socially acceptable. Hemenway counters that the seemingly incongruous statistics - more guns, but fewer households reporting that they have a gun - is simply a reflection of fewer gun owners purchasing more guns.

Gun manufacturing has increased in recent years, most dramatically since Obama was elected. Figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show the total firearms produced in the U.S. (minus exports) at 3.5 million in 1998. That figure fluctuated, reaching 3.7 million in 2007. Then, it jumped drastically, rising 64 percent from 2007 to 2011, topping 6.1 million that year.

Background-check numbers show a similar trend. They went from 11 million background checks in 2007 to 16.8 million in 2012, with December's numbers not yet part of that tally, according to the FBI. Background checks are not an indication of sales, however, as they're not always required, for instance for personal sales at gun shows in some states, and one purchaser can buy more than one firearm.

On " Face the Nation " on Dec. 16, Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign, used the number of daily gun murders as proof that "gun violence rates are not" going down. But the rate of firearm homicides committed with the intent to kill or injure is at its lowest point since at least 1981: 3.6 per 100,000 people in 2010. The high point was 7 in 1993.

Gross, Dec. 16: ... every day in our country, 32 people are murdered by guns. So while violence rates might be going down, gun violence rates are not.

There are two issues here: gun violence in general and gun murders in particular. Let's first look at the number of murders committed with guns.

We called and emailed the Brady Campaign to ask about Gross' statement on gun violence but we did not receive a response.

However, the group's " gun violence facts" site lists "12,179 people murdered" as one of its facts - which would work out to 33 per day, supporting Gross' claim. But that figure is from 2008, according to a footnote. It comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control database. (Check the boxes for "homicide" and "firearms" and select 2008, and you will get 12,179 "Homicide Firearm Deaths.")

The CDC's most current data show there were 11,078 homicides committed with guns in 2010 - or about 30 per day. The CDC data also show gun homicides have declined each year since 2007, falling from 12,791 in 2006 to 11,078 in 2010, even as the nation's population grows. In fact, the homicide rate in 2010 (3.6 per 100,000 people) was the lowest since at least 1981 - which is as far back as the CDC's online database goes.

The FBI collects murder data, too, but academic researchers we consulted said the CDC data is the more accurate measure of gun murders. CDC gets its data from the National Vital Statistics System, which collects death certificates that are required to be filed in every state. But the FBI relies on the voluntary reporting of law enforcement agencies that results in under-reporting. (For the record, the FBI's 2011 Uniform Crime Report says there were 8,583 murders committed with firearms last year - that's about 24 per day.)

Even so, the CDC homicide data is not a perfect measurement of murders in the U.S., which suggests the number of gun murders is somewhere between 24 and 30 per day.

CDC homicide data, by its definition, is supposed to include only " injuries inflicted by another person with intent to injure or kill." But Catherine Barber, at the Harvard School of Public Health's Injury Control Research Center, said some local coroners and medical examiners "take a more literal definition of homicide," so some accidental shootings are included in the CDC data. Also, the CDC data, by definition, includes "justifiable homicides," which also are not murders. Barber said the CDC's reporting issues may overstate U.S. murder statistics by "a couple of hundred" - but its data are still "more reliable" than the FBI's voluntary system of reporting.

By either measure, the number of gun murders is going down.

The 2011 and 2006 FBI crime reports show that firearm murders have declined each year since 2006. There were 10,177 such murders in 2006 and 8,583 in 2011 - a drop of 1,594 or nearly 16 percent in five years, even as the nation's population continued to rise.

As for overall gun violence, the FBI tracks the use of firearms in three types of violent crimes (murder, robbery and aggravated assault), and the use of guns has declined in all three cases. From 2006 to 2011, robberies committed with guns declined 21 percent and aggravated assaults committed with guns declined 12.5 percent, according to the FBI reports. In both cases, the number of violent gun crimes dropped each year since 2008.

The number of reported gun injuries, however, is on the rise.

There were 55,544 non-fatal injuries in 2011 resulting from assaults involving guns - up from 53,738 in 2010 and 44,466 in 2009, the CDC's database shows. Since 2001, the rate of gun injuries is the second highest in 11 years when adjusted for population.

However, Barber said gun violence has "dropped precipitously" from the early 1990s - a trend criminologists chalked up to "changes in the crack cocaine market." Her observation is supported by crime data and surveys.

As we said earlier, the homicide rate since 1981 peaked in 1993 at 7 per 100,000. In addition, the Census Bureau's annual National Crime Victimization Survey collects data on nonfatal firearm-related violent crimes, including those not reported to police. That data set shows a dramatic decline in gun violence since the early 1990s.

The Department of Justice, which commissions the Census Bureau's victimization surveys, reports that there were more than 1 million firearm incidents and more than 1.2 million firearm victims in 1993 and again in 1994. But by 2009, the number of firearm incidents (326,090) and firearm victims (352,810) dropped by more than two-thirds.

181 School Shootings Since Columbine?

Rep. Donna Edwards on ABC's " This Week " said "since Columbine, there have been 181 of these school shootings." That's an exaggeration.

Her office said the Democratic congresswoman got her information from the Brady Campaign - which has a fact sheet on its website that lists 201 "major school shootings" since 1997 at colleges, universities, high schools and elementary schools. But that list is padded with incidents that could hardly be called "major school shootings" - including a dozen that didn't happen on school grounds and 16 that weren't shootings at all but either alleged plots to kill others or cases where a gun was brought to school but not fired.

By our count, there were 62 school shootings since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999, that resulted in more than one student, teacher or school employee being killed or injured - a description that could fit "major school shooting." There were another 68 where one student, teacher or school employee was killed (not counting suicides) or injured.

That's 130 school shootings since Columbine - a shocking high number, but about a quarter fewer than Edwards claimed.

An International Comparison

The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world - by far. And it has the highest rate of homicides with guns among advanced countries. But, again, those are statistics and not demonstrative of a causal relationship. The National Research Council of the National Academies concluded in its report that studies comparing large geographic areas, what it called "ecological studies," didn't show a distinct trend, and instead "provide[d] contradictory evidence on violence and firearms."

One problem in comparing various countries is the wealth of other factors, besides the mere presence of guns, that can affect whether a homicide occurs, such as the economy, general crime rates, and laws governing guns. Another issue is that the data isn't all that great. Gun ownership numbers are largely based on public opinion surveys, and the reliability of numbers can vary widely from country to country. "We don't have good data on the prevalence of ownership on all the countries we'd want to have it on," says Wintemute.

The numbers in the chart above are from the Small Arms Survey. The project gives high and low estimates, along with an average. We used the average numbers. They show the U.S. with 88.8 guns for every 100 people. That's No. 1 in the gun ownership rate in the world. Switzerland, with 45.7 guns per 100 people, is No. 3 in the world, with nearly half the rate of the U.S. Switzerland also requires military service. (Yemen is No. 2, with 54.8 guns per 100 people.)

Janet Rosenbaum, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center School, told the Washington Post that "Switzerland has also been moving away from having widespread guns," and moving away from having those in the army keep guns at home.

The Small Arms Survey acknowledges that its numbers are approximations and making these estimates is far from an exact science. In addition to surveys, it relies on gun registration, experts, other indicators such as firearm suicides, and comparisons to similar countries. It says: "All gun numbers-even those that seem most accurate-approximate reality or reveal only part of it. They should be used with caution."

The firearms homicide rate, and homicide rate overall, is also higher in the U.S. than other advanced countries, such as Canada, Australia and those in Europe, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The U.S. gun homicide rate was 3.2 per every 100,000 people in 2010, according to UNODC figures. The UNODC measures "intentional homicide," which is "an unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person."

The international data show that country-to-country comparisons are inherently difficult to make - and, as the NRC said, provide "contradictory evidence." For instance, Latin American countries with high levels of firearm homicide show low levels of gun ownership. Honduras has a gun ownership rate of 6.2 per 100 people and a gun homicide rate of 68.43 per 100,000 people, and Colombia has a gun rate of 5.9 and firearm homicide rate of 27.09, as shown in this chart produced by the Washington Post using the same data we have cited here.

But among advanced countries, the U.S. homicide rate stands out. "We seem to be an average country in terms of violence and aggression," says Harvard's Hemenway. "What we have is huge homicide rates compared to anybody else."

Says Wintemute: "The difference is that in this country violence involves firearms and firearms change the outcome."
Correction, Dec. 21: This article has been changed to say there have been 130 school shootings since Columbine that resulted in the death or injury of at least one student or school staffer - not including suicides - about a quarter fewer than claimed by Rep. Donna Edwards. The original story in some places contained a higher percentage and failed to note that the school shooting figures included those with gun injuries. - by Robert Farley, Lori Robertson and Eugene Kiely
Sources

Hepburn, Lisa M. and David Hemenway. "Firearm availability and homicide: A review of the literature." Aggression and Violent Behavior. Vol. 9, 2004: 417-440.

National Research Council of the National Academies, Committee on Law and Justice. " Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review." The National Academies Press: Washington, D.C., 2004.

Average civilian ownership data for 178 countries: Small Arms Survey 2007, Chapter 2, Annexe 4.

UNODC Homicide Statistics. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Annual Firearms Manufacturers And Export Report. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Report years 1998-2011.

Total NCIS Background Checks, Nov. 30, 1998 to Nov. 30, 2012. Federal Bureau of Investigations. accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Hemenway, David. Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 18 Dec 2012.

Wellford, Charles F. Professor, University of Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 18 Dec 2012.

Wintemute, Garen. Director of the Violence Prevention Research Program, University of California-Davis. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 18 Dec 2012.

Robertson, Lori. " Violent Crimes and Handgun Ownership." FactCheck.org. 6 Mar 2008.

Face the Nation. Transcript. CBS News. 16 Dec 2012.

" Facts: Gun Violence." Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Undated, accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Fatal Injury Reports, 1999-2010. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Undated accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Injury Mortality Reports, 1981-1998. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Undated accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Murder Victim, by Weapon. 2011 Uniform Crime Report. FBI. Undated, accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Definitions for WISQARS Fatal. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Undated accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Murder Victim, by Weapon. 2006 Uniform Crime Report. FBI. Undated, accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Table 15. Crime Trends: Additional Information About Selected Offenses. 2007 Uniform Crime Report. FBI. Undated, accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Table 15. Crime Trends: Additional Information About Selected Offenses. 2009 Uniform Crime Report. FBI. Undated, accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Table 15. Crime Trends: Additional Information About Selected Offenses. 2011 Uniform Crime Report. FBI. Undated, accessed 20 Dec 2012.

Nonfatal Injury Reports, 1999-2011. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Undated accessed 20 Dec 2012.

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Gun Rhetoric vs. Gun Facts - FactCheck.org

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The mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., has reignited a national debate on gun control. As elected leaders begin the dialogue, some facts are clear -- there has been a massive increase in gun sales. Some things are not so clear -- such as whether there is causation between more guns and more violent crimes.

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Connecticut again ranked second in the nation on strength of our gun law's

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Connecticut again ranked second in the nation on strength of our gun law's

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By:Troy Hightower
4/19
CRAAP Score -- 42

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The San Francisco based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has issued their annual rankings on the strength of states' gun laws, and again for the fourth straight year Connecticut has ranked second in the nation. Click here for results of all states.

For more than twenty years, CT Against Gun Violence has led the fight to strengthen Connecticut gun laws because we believe that smart gun laws work, that smart gun laws save lives. So we are very proud of this distinction.

We are often asked what the difference is between Connecticut's ability to do this while many other states and the U.S. Congress too often cannot. Our answer is simple: the difference is you.

Our supporters have been relentless and uncompromising in holding our elected officials accountable for passing legislation that helps keep our communities and families safe from gun violence; the most recent example being our Domestic Violence Temporary Restraining Order bill passed in the 2016 session that removes firearms from domestic abusers within 24 hours of service of a temporary restraining order.

So we are pleased to share this honor with you, and we extend our best wishes of the holiday season to all.

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The San Francisco based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has issued their annual rankings on the strength of states' gun laws, and again for the fourth straight year Connecticut has ranked second in the nation. Click here for results of all states.