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Report: More Cops Charged Over Fatal Shootings in 2015 Than in Any of the Past 10 Years

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Report: More Cops Charged Over Fatal Shootings in 2015 Than in Any of the Past 10 Years

According to The Wall Street Journal, more police officers in America have been prosecuted over fatal on-duty shootings in 2015 than in any year going back a decade.

Citing research by Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip M. Stinson, the Journal reports that 12 officers have been charged with manslaughter or murder for on-duty shooting deaths in 2015 so far, more than twice the annual average of five officers a year since 2005.

However, not a single officer has been convicted of murder or manslaughter this year. From WSJ:

Police advocates [argue] that prosecutors are bending to political pressure by bringing questionable cases to trial. They say the outcome of recent cases proves their point.

“It’s a political response to media coverage in Ferguson and South Carolina and Staten Island,” said William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations.

Stinson, himself a former police officer, offered a different possible explanation for the lack of convictions earlier this year.

“You’ve got to really fuck up to get convicted as a cop, of anything at all,” Stinson told FiveThirtyEight in April. “We have dozens of police officers with qualifying crimes who’ve still got their job, carrying a gun every day.”

According to The Washington Post, 722 people—26 of them black and unarmed—have been shot to death by police in the United States in 2015.

[Image via Getty Images]


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