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Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(108,135 posts)
Sat Mar 16, 2019, 08:17 PM Mar 2019

Police convictions for fatal shootings are the exception, not the rule

In Florida, a grieving family and activists interested in greater police accountability called an all-white jury's decision to convict a former police officer in the shooting death of a black motorist a victory for justice.

The officer's conviction can also be described as something else: extremely rare.

Each year in the United States, somewhere between 900 and 1,000 people are shot and killed by police, said Philip Stinson, an associate professor at Bowling Green State University's criminal justice program. Stinson leads the university's Police Integrity Research Group in gathering data and looking for patterns in police shootings, police arrests and how juries, prosecutors and judges respond.

"None of these cases, cases involving police shootings, is ever easy or exactly the same," Stinson told NBC BLK. "But today, an officer gets on the stand and says 'I feared for my life,' and that's usually all she wrote. No conviction, more often than that, no charges at all."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/police-convictions-for-fatal-shootings-are-the-exception-not-the-rule/ar-BBUJcX4?li=BBnb7Kz

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