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.
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