Throughout the Trial for George Floyd’s Death, Police Killings Increased
Since March 29, when testimony in Derek Chauvin’s trial began, more than three people have died at the hands of law enforcement each day.
Just seven hours before prosecutors filed charges against Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in the death of George Floyd, a Chicago officer pursued a 13-year-old boy through a West Side alley and fatally shot him as he turned with his hands up.
One day later, officers fatally shot a 32-year-old man at a hotel in Jacksonville, Fla., after he allegedly took one of their Tasers. The next day, as an eyewitness to Mr. Floyd’s death sobbed in a Minneapolis courtroom as he recounted what he saw, a 40-year-old mentally ill man who claimed to be abused by voices was killed in a shootout with state police in Claremont, N.H.
Each day thereafter, before the conclusion of testimony, another individual was killed by police in the United States.
The trial has compelled a traumatized nation to relive Mr. Floyd’s heinous death under Mr. Chauvin’s knee. However, as Americans continue to process the case — and await a verdict with bated breath — new cases of people killed by police continue to accumulate unabated.
Since March 29, at least 64 people have died at the hands of law enforcement around the country, with Black and Latino people accounting for more than half of the fatalities. As of Saturday, there were more than three homicides a day on average.
The killings, which The New York Times culled from gun abuse databases, news media accounts, and law enforcement announcements, provide a window into contemporary policing in America. They bear witness not only to the risk and desperation that police officers face on a regular basis, but also to the split-second decisions and errors made by law enforcement officers that can escalate routine arrests into fatalities.
They occur as a result of domestic violence calls, improper traffic stops, standoffs, and pursuits. The victims often act erratically, some of them suffering from mental illness, and the mere sight of something resembling a firearm rapidly escalates the situation.
And their aftermath has been heartbreakingly familiar, from the gruesome images that frequently surface to the demonstrations that frequently devolve into brawls between law enforcement and protesters on tear gas-filled streets. And when one group is confronted with one murder, another occurs.
Across the board, from community leaders to law enforcement officers, there is emotional and mental fatigue — and a sense that the country is incapable of getting this right.
“How many more casualties do we have to lament?” Miski Noor, co-executive director of the Minneapolis-based advocacy organization Black Visions, issued a statement following the death of Daunte Wright, 20, during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minn.
The statement added, “The pain of George Floyd’s death is still scarred into our hearts, and yet history continues to repeat itself.” “Our culture has hit a point of no return.”
This week, Chicago’s mayor urged residents to remain calm following the publication of “excruciating” body camera video from the police shooting death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. The blurry video depicts a police officer reacting to a report of shots fired pursuing a boy with what appears to be a pistol down an alley in a predominantly Latino neighborhood at night.
“Stop immediately!” the officer yells, swearing. “Hands,” Present your hands to me. Put it down. Put it down.” The boy is killed by a single shot as he turns and lifts his hands.
Other recent instances of lethal force have shook societies large and small: Michael Leon Hughes, 32, a Black man shot to death on March 30 after allegedly using a Taser on a Jacksonville police officer responding to a domestic dispute in a motel; Iremamber Sykap, 16, a Pacific Islander killed on April 5 while fleeing Honolulu police in a stolen Honda Civic; and Anthony Thompson Jr., 17, a Black teenager shot to death by police in Knoxville, Tenn., on April 12.
All of those killings and many others happened during the course of the Minneapolis trial, but some garnered as much media coverage as Mr. Wright’s shooting less than ten miles from the courthouse where Mr. Chauvin faced trial. Protests erupted in Brooklyn Center following the fatal shooting of Mr. Wright by a veteran police officer who said she mistook her pistol for her Taser when he tried to escape during a traffic stop.
Abigail Cerra, a civil rights attorney in Minneapolis and a member of the Minneapolis Police Conduct Oversight Commission, said it was unclear why the officers arrested him for an expired license, which was a problem for many drivers in the state during the coronavirus pandemic.
However, she said, two aspects of the case were infuriatingly familiar: Mr. Wright was Black, and the police charged with safely transporting him to the courts, where legal crimes are meant to be adjudicated, essentially delivered a death sentence.
“This is yet another instance of a non-lethal crime being elevated to lethality,” Ms. Cerra said.
While many of these killings have a common ring to them, it is unjust to pin them all on law enforcement, according to Patrick Yoes, a former sheriff’s captain and president of the national Fraternal Order of Police.
“It has to do with people feeling hopeless in a lot of cities,” he said. “Poverty is the result of a failed educational system. All of these factors contribute significantly to a community’s stability.”
This uncertainty often puts officers in positions where they must deal with potentially dangerous and noncompliant persons, he explained. One reason society has been unable to avoid lethal interactions between law enforcement and the community is that certain citizens are unable to address the specific problems of crime that officers occasionally face, he explained.
“There are just so many reasons that people have already formed an opinion and believe that law enforcement is focused on race,” Mr. Yoes, who is white, said.
According to federal and state law, officers are justified in using deadly force if they have a “reasonable” fear of “imminent” injury or death to themselves or another person. Additionally, jurors seldom second-guess what constitutes “fair” force in the moment.
At least 42 of the 64 deadly encounters compiled by The Times during the last three weeks included individuals suspected of gun use. About a dozen included confrontations with mentally unstable or in the throes of a breakdown individuals. And at least ten occurred as a result of police response to domestic violence incidents.
Some argue that risk, rather than prejudice, is more likely to motivate a police officer’s behavior.
“What I see at times is a different brutality in these interactions with people of color,” said Ron Johnson, a former Missouri State Highway Patrol captain who oversaw the police response in Ferguson, Mo., following the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014.
“This adrenaline begins pumping through the roof,” Mr. Johnson, who is Black, continued. “However, why? That is because we lack these perceptions and understandings of one another. And in some instances, it is a matter of humanity. We do not perceive them as human beings in the same way that we see ourselves.”
Since at least 2013, with a small dip due to the pandemic, approximately 1,100 people have been killed by law enforcement officers each year, according to databases collected by Mapping Police Violence, a study and advocacy organization that investigates all such killings, including those not involving firearms, such as Mr. Floyd’s. The Washington Post, which reports only on police killings, also shows a similarly flat trend line.
Since March 29, almost all victims have been men, with Black or Latino people significantly overrepresented — a trend consistent with wider criminal justice studies. And the majority were under the age of 30. Four were adolescents.
The most striking feature of the data on lethal police force, according to Philip Stinson, a professor in Bowling Green State University’s criminal justice program who studies civilian shootings by members of law enforcement, is how little the figures have improved in the decade or two since researchers started tracking them comprehensively.
Despite the fact that cellphone videos and body cameras make it more difficult for law enforcement to conceal human error and authority violations — and despite the fact that social media amplifies public outrage — only about 1.1 percent of officers who kill civilians face charges of murder or manslaughter, Dr. Stinson stated.
Since the start of 2005, he said, 140 nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers — including police officers, deputy sheriffs, and state troopers — have been charged with murder or death in connection with an on-duty shooting. 44 have been convicted of a felony as a result of the incident, in the majority of cases for a lesser offense.
That may be because many of the killings are legally justified, or, as Dr. Stinson claims, because the justice system and laws are too reliant on the police. This deference, he said, safeguards the status quo in the country’s more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies.
“All law enforcement is neighborhood-based,” he said. “As the adage goes, culture eats policy, and we have a police subculture whose main elements include a mistrust of Black people in many places.”
Dr. Stinson cited the now-famous traffic arrest of a uniformed Army medic in Windsor, Va., a small town near Norfolk. The medic was held at gunpoint and pepper sprayed by police. The encounter, which happened in December, came to light this month as a result of a federal lawsuit filed by Caron Nazario, a second lieutenant in the United States Army Medical Corps.
Officers from the Windsor Police Department threaten and assault Lieutenant Nazario, who is Black and Latino, after stopping him for not yet installing permanent license plates on his new Chevrolet Tahoe.
The video demonstrates the degree to which much of the country’s police culture has defied reform, Dr. Stinson said.
“We know about this one only because he has a lawyer, they filed a civil case, and they obtained recordings that could be released,” he said.
However, for many victims of police brutality and their families, video documentation is unavailable.
On April 7, police officers in Daly City, Calif., were not wearing body cameras when they engaged in a struggle with Roger Allen, 44, as he sat in an idled car with a flat tire. According to the police, Mr. Allen appeared to have a gun on his lap, according to San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen M. Wagstaffe, who is investigating the case. While it was determined to be a pellet gun, an officer shot a fatal bullet into Mr. Allen’s chest during the altercation.
Talika Fletcher, 30, said she was still coming to terms with the fact that her older brother, who served as a father figure to her, had been added to the grim tally of Black men killed by law enforcement.
“I never imagined my brother would be a hashtag in a million years,” she said.
She has little confidence in the future relationship between Black men and law enforcement until her 14-month-old son, Prince, matures.
“The loop will not change,” she said.
