US police killed
more than 1,150 in 2016
By Gabriel Black
At least 1,152 people were killed by police in
the United States in 2016 according to the tracking site killedbypolice.net.
While the total number of killings documented is slightly down from 2015’s
total of 1,208, police continued to kill at the rate of three people every day.
The number of people killed by police every year
in the United States far dwarfs those killed by police in every other major
advanced capitalist country. In 2015, for example, US cops killed 100 times
more people than German police, despite the US having only about four times
Germany’s population. Meanwhile in the UK only 14 people were killed by police
in 2014.
Paul Hirschfield, a sociologist at Rutgers
University, found that the US police shot and killed at a ratio of 3.42 people
per million inhabitants per year. In contrast, Denmark had a ratio of 0.187;
France, 0.17; Sweden, 0.133; Portugal, 0.125; Germany, 0.09; Norway, 0.06;
Netherlands, 0.06; Finland, 0.034; and England and Wales, 0.016.
The overwhelming and often deadly violence meted
out by American police is, among other things, an expression of the brutal and
tense state of class relations in the US. Large sections of the working class
live in or near poverty with basic needs like clean water, nutritious food, a
job, healthcare, a good place to live and an education beyond reach.
The state, in turn, has responded with brute
force, cutting access to basic social services and spending billions of dollars
upgrading and militarizing the nation’s police force. This has included the
mobilization of the National Guard and the imposition of states of emergencies
to quell protests against police violence in recent years.
The United States is a country where fraud,
bribery, deception and outright theft, all on a massive scale, are standard
business practices for the major banks and corporations. Meanwhile the working
class is held to an entirely different standard, in which execution without
trial by a police officer is an increasingly common punishment for the smallest
of misdemeanors.
The end of the year is an opportunity to assess
this mass loss of life and clarify the political issues at stake in this state
sanctioned murder.
According to the Washington
Post, which runs its own database on the amount of people shot and killed by police (not just
killed), 24 percent of the victims of police shootings and killings were black
in 2016. That is 232 people out of 957 total shot and killed. In 2016 African
Americans were shot at a rate double their percentage share of the total
population.
While the media discussion around police
killings and the protests by the Black Lives Matter organization has focused on
the disproportionate rate at which blacks are killed by police, the largest
share, 48 percent, are white.
As the World Socialist Web S ite has emphasized, “Blacks are killed by
police at a much higher rate than their proportion in the population, an
indication that racism plays a significant role, but the number of white
victims demonstrates that class, not race, is the more fundamental issue.”
The exclusive focus on race by the pseudo left
and the Democratic Party establishment conceals the most fundamental issue,
that of class.
While the Post does not track the class of those
killed going through each killing, though, case-by-case, one would be hard
pressed to find people from the upper classes, let alone better off sections of
workers and professionals, regardless of the color of their skin. Those who are
killed are often from the lowest sections of the working class, and often its
most vulnerable layers: the unemployed, the mentally ill, those living in the
poorest neighborhoods, both rural and urban, and the homeless.
For example, of the 957 killed, 240 had clear
discernible signs of mental illness—that is, 25 percent of the victims.
Of the victims, 441 were not armed with a gun,
46 percent of those killed. One-hundred seventy people were armed with a knife.
And, 44 had a toy weapon of some kind. Forty-seven were neither armed nor
driving a car in a way the police deemed dangerous.
Sixty-five were driving cars, causing the police
to categorize the vehicle as a weapon. However, in many instances there is no
evidence to show that a vehicle acted as a weapon. For example, Christian
Redwine, a 17-year-old white male, was shot after a car-chase in which Redwine
crashed. He was unarmed and was suspected of stealing the vehicle.
Another notable fact is that 329 of the victims
were fleeing, about 34 percent of the victims.
These cumulative statistics show the willingness
of police to quickly kill people who pose little to no threat to them.
Police killings should be considered in the
broader context of punishment for the most vulnerable and impoverished. In the
United States, over 2 million people are in federal or state prisons.
Furthermore, 4.75 million are on probation or parole. This means that about 7
million people, 3 percent of the adult population, have been or are in prison.
As in the case of police killings, many of these
people have been locked up for shoplifting, grand theft auto and robbery. Many
others are incarcerated for drug possession and use.
While millions of destitute and hopeless people
in the US are brutally punished for relatively minor infractions, the real
criminals, those in the Bush and Obama administrations responsible for wars of
aggression that have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands in the Middle
East, as well as the bankers who crashed the economy in 2008, have reaped the
benefits of their much more serious crimes.
No amount of police training, community
engagement or racial bias classes will end police killings. The deaths are
borne out of much more fundamental political and economic realities than what
this or that police officer feels and thinks. In 2017, amidst a worsening
political and economic crisis, the state will be even more ready to kill,
harass and imprison the poorest section of the population.
AMERICA: One paycheck
and two illegals away from homelessness.
"The economists found that the pre-tax share of
national income received by the bottom half of the US population has been cut nearly
in half since 1980, from 20 percent to 12 percent, while the income share of the
top one percent has nearly doubled, from 12 percent to 20 percent."
SOARING POVERTY IN AMERICA’S OPEN
BORDERS
TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH:
“In the US, the working class will confront a government unlike
any other in American history, which will continue and intensify a decades-long
social counterrevolution overseen by the Democrats and Republicans. The
incoming Trump administration is manned by billionaires, generals and arch
reactionaries. It is a government of, by and for the oligarchy, committed to
destroying every remaining gain won by workers over the past century.”
January 4, 2017
Addressing Chicago Violence
President
Obama will give his farewell
and good riddance speech on
January 10 in Chicago, the town where the community organizer-in-chief began
his political rise. He will attempt once again to cement his legacy by
recreating history in his image. He will make his speech against the background
of what is arguably the world’s most beautiful skyline and the world’s most
hideous violence.
Chicago,
one of the toughest gun control cities in the United States, ended 2016 with 762 homicides, the most in two decades
and more than Los Angeles and New York City combined. While President Obama has
addressed every mass shooting as another reason for stricter gun control, he
has little to say about the carnage in his hometown, and it is not likely he
will address it in his self-serving and narcissistic farewell speech.
President-elect Donald Trump has, tweeting on Monday night.
"Chicago murder rate is record setting -- 4,331 shooting victims with 762
murders in 2016,” Trump tweeted. “If Mayor can't do it he must ask for Federal
help!”
Chicago
does indeed need federal help, particularly in the area of federal prosecution
of gun crimes. As Investor’s
Business Daily has noted,
a recent study showed that despite rising murders and gang violence, Chicago
ranked dead last in federal gun crime prosecutions:
A murdered Chicago teen's mother attends the president's
speech on gun control, not knowing federal gun-crime prosecutions have in fact
dropped on his watch — with the Windy City bringing up the rear.
Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, the mother of murdered
15-year-old Chicago teen Hadiya Pendleton, was one of 20 mothers who lost
children to criminal violence who were at the White House last Thursday to hear
President Obama speak once again on the need for gun control.
Obama met with her and some of the others in a small group
before his formal remarks and told them "how serious this issue really is
and something needs to be done about it," she said.
But President Obama did not tell this group that Syracuse
University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows that the
Northern Illinois district ranked 90th out of 90 in prosecutions of federal
weapons crimes per capita.
David Burnham, co-director of TRAC, states their analysis
says that according to case-by-case U.S. Justice Department information
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, there were 52 federal gun
prosecutions in Illinois North (Chicago) in 2012, or 5.52 per million in
population.
By this measure, compared with the 90 federal judicial
districts in the U.S., the prosecution rate in Chicago was the lowest in the
country.
If
President Obama had a son, he might have looked like Amari Brown, the little
boy killed by a bullet intended for his gang-banger father on the streets of
President Obama’s Chicago in yet another bloody Windy City weekend. As theChicago Tribune reported, over the Fourth of July
weekend in 2015, Amari Brown was one of the ten that were killed among 55 that
were shot.:
Among
those killed was 7-year-old Amari Brown, shot in the chest as he watched
fireworks near his father's home in Humboldt Park late Saturday
night. Police say they believe the attack was aimed at the father, whom
they described as a ranking gang member.
Former
Chicago Police Superintendant Garry McCarthy got it right when he
observed that Amari Brown was another victim, not of police racism, but of gang
violence and a revolving door justice system:
Antonio Brown, who police say is a ranking member of the
Four Corner Hustlers street gang, has been arrested 45 times on charges ranging
from gun possession to burglary, and is not cooperating with detectives in
their investigation into the slaying of his son, Amari Brown, police said.
McCarthy said that the elder Brown's last arrest was in
April for gun possession after leading police on a vehicle pursuit. Brown was
later released on bail in that case, Cook County court records show.
"If Mr. Brown is in custody, his son is alive,"
McCarthy, flanked by several police officials and other officers, told a room
full of reporters at the Harrison District police station on the West Side on
Sunday afternoon. "That's not the case. Quite frankly, he shouldn't have
been on the street."
A lot
of criminals shouldn’t be out on the streets, particularly those convicted of
gun crimes. Many gun and gang crimes in Chicago are drug related President
Obama has commuted the sentences of many drug offenders, including those who possessed a gun during the commission of their crimes:
President Obama on Thursday commuted the sentences of
nearly 100 federal inmates doing hard time, and almost one in five were in jail
partially because of the illegal guns they carried…
Of those who had their terms commuted this week, 19 were behind bars on a
combination of drug charges that also involved firearms possession -- often
multiple counts -- usually by a prohibited possessor…
The President commuted 111 federal prisoners in late August, in which a number of
those with firearms charges were featured. Earlier the same month he did
likewise for 214 inmates including56 with gun felonies.
Current
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson recently pleaded for stricter penalties for repeat
gun offenders after a Chicago Police commander was gunned down:
Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson renewed his
call on Friday for stricter penalties for gun offenders after a police
commander was shot at while working on the South Side…
The violence hit close to home late Thursday when Noel
Sanchez, commander of the South Chicago police district, was shot at while
working the streets in the 8800 block of South Saginaw Avenue. The gunman fled
to a nearby home, touching off an hourslong standoff with a SWAT team before
five people were taken into custody early Friday. Multiple guns were also
recovered.
Johnson cited the incident as an example of how gang
members have become more emboldened, in part because of what the superintendent
considers lenient penalties for gun offenses…
Johnson spoke once again in favor of proposed legislation
in Springfield designed to make it harder for judges to impose light sentences
for repeat gun offenders. The goal of the legislation is to ensure that they
face several years in prison.
He singled out a 21-year-old man as an example of why the
legislation is needed. The man was arrested in February on a felony weapons
violation and sentenced to seven years in prison in April, police said. But he
was assigned to boot camp and was already out on parole Aug. 22 when he was
arrested again for gun possession in the West Side's Austin community.
Fear
not, Superintendant Johnson. There’s a new sheriff in town and help is on the
way. President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice will have your back and
that of your officers. Gun offenders will be prosecuted vigorously and Attorney
General Jeff Sessions will be looking to enforce the laws to put gun offenders
in jail, not blaming police for their racial insensitivity.
Trump
has also called for the deportation and incarceration of illegal alien
criminals, including those belonging to gangs like MS-13, who come into the
U.S. across an unsecured border, many becoming gang members in our urban areas. NBC5 Chicago reported Trump’s linkage of illegal
aliens and gang crimes in Chicago:
Donald Trump said he thinks a lot of “gang members” in
America, particularly in Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson, are illegal
immigrants and, if he becomes president, “they’re going to be gone.”
“A lot of the gangs that you see -- it doesn’t hopefully pertain
to you guys so much -- but when you look at Baltimore, when you look at Chicago
and Ferguson and a lot of areas, you know a lot of these gang members are
illegal immigrants,” he said during an interview with Mobile, Alabama radio
station FM Talk 1065. “They’re going to be gone. We are going to get them out
so fast, out of this country so fast.”
Lock
them up, Donald, lock them up. Obama and Rahm Emanuel haven’t
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer
whose pieces have appeared inInvestor’s
Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the ChicagoSun-Times among other publications.
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