re: This is why Black Americans dont trust the police

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image: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/cops-never-prosecuted.jpg

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Police in the United States managed to escape prosecution when facing allegations they violated civil rights an incredible 96 percent of the time. This is almost the exact opposite of the conviction rate for everyone else, as normal citizens are are prosecuted at a rate of 93 percent.

The investigation by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (the Trib), based on an analysis of nearly 3 million federal records, found that from 1995 through 2015, federal prosecutors overwhelmingly opted not to pursue prosecution. Indeed, the 96 percent refusal to press charges sharply contrasts with the rejection rate for all other complaints — just 23 percent.

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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.

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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.

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Even when officers are convicted, the charges are often minimal. For example, Coleman Brackney, a Bella Vista, Oklahoma, police officer who was convicted of misdemeanor negligent homicide in 2010 after shooting an unarmed teen to death while in custody in his cruiser, went on to rejoin the police and was recently appointed chief of police in Sulphur Springs, Oklahoma.

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As is the case with police shootingstatistics, comprehensive numbers on accusations of police misconduct are hard to come by. There is no national reporting requirement for such accusations; in fact, many places have laws to purposefully keep the details of misconduct investigations out of the public eye.

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Nevertheless, two nongovernmental sources stand out. A recent study out of Bowling Green State University — reported by TheWall Street Journal — identified 664 incidents from 2005 to 2011 in which police officers were arrested for having “pulled, pointed, held, or fired a gun and/or threatened someone with a gun.” These incidents resulted in 98 deaths. The most common “serious offenses” associated with these incidents are broken down below:


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Of the 71 arrests for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, just 31 came when officers were on duty. That’s about four a year during the study period. As a reminder, the best-available evidence from the Killed By Police Facebook page points to about1,000 deaths each year caused by officers acting in the line of duty.

More general numbers on police misconduct come from National Police Misconduct Reporting Project(NPMRP), which collects data based on credible media reports (see its feed here). It was established by researcher David Packman in 2009, and operation of the database was transferred to the Cato Institute in spring 2012. Although the NPMRP continues to collect incidents, the most comprehensive and cataloged data comes from Packman’s original work. His key findings are largely laid out in a 2010 report.

In 2010, Packman identified 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct in the U.S. involving 6,613 officers. Almost 10 out of every 1,000 American officers were accused of some type of misconduct. For context, the 2010 violent crime rate was four crimes per 1,000 residents, and the larceny-theft rate was 20.1 per 1,000. Here’s a breakdown of the accusations by type:

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Excessive force was by far the most common type of accusation, and 15 percent involved firearms. There were 127 excessive force incidents reported that resulted in fatalities, and the majority of these (71 percent) were shootings.

But, as was the case with Darren Wilson, most accusations of misconduct — combining all categories — did not result in criminal charges. Of the more than 8,300 misconduct accusations (involving almost 11,000 officers) in Packman’s database from April 2009 through the end of 2010, 3,238 resulted in legal action. The chart below outlines how often these charges resulted in convictions and incarcerations, compared with the rates for felony defendants in the general population (in the 75 largest U.S. counties) collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2006.

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