US police killings remain high
Black people are two and a half to three times more likely than white people to be killed by the police, the non-profit Mapping Police Violence says.
The New York Times reported that the number of people killed by US police officers has not decreased since George Floyd and Daunte Wright's murders in 2020, knowing that many US police violence cases go unreported or misclassified in official records.
Although ex-officers Derek Chauvin and Kimberly Potter were convicted for the killings of Floyd and Wright respectively, "accountability for officers who kill remains elusive," the newspaper said.
Over 1,600 people or an average of three people per day were killed by police since Floyd's death in May 2020, the paper revealed.
Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit that tracks people killed by the police, said Black people are two and a half to three times more likely than white people to be killed by the police.
While a study conducted by the University of Washington showed that Black people were 3.5 times more likely than white people to be killed by officers.
The university researchers concluded that "systemic and direct racism, manifested in laws and policies, as well as personal implicit biases, result in Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic Americans being the targets of police violence."
In 2021, murder charges against police officers have significantly increased, but criminal charges and convictions are still rare, the newspaper indicated.
The New York Times quoted Philip Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green University, as saying that compared to last year's 16 officers, 21 police officers were charged with murder and manslaughter in 2021, which is the highest number since 2005.