Relatives of Those Killed by Police Speak Out

By Guardian UK

02 June 15

 

ALSO SEE: US Senators Call for Mandatory Reporting of Police Killings

An updating list of reaction from relatives, campaign groups, activists and authorities many of whom argue that a national standard is a prerequisite for an informed public discussion about the use of force by police

he US government does not keep a comprehensive record of people killed by law enforcement, often leaving families, politicians and advocates powerless to quantify and analyse the size of the issue at hand.

The lack of data has been glaring amid the protests, riots and the national debate set in motion by the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown last summer in Ferguson, Missouri.

“We lack the ability right now to comprehensively track the number of incidents,” the outgoing US attorney general Eric Holder said before stepping down earlier this year. “Fixing this is an idea that we should all be able to unite behind.”

The Guardian has begun an investigative project, The Counted, to record the deaths of people at the hands of US police.

When informed of the comprehensive reporting project, which will also be crowdsourced, the families of those whose deaths led to international attention called The Counted a breakthrough.

Here is an updating list of reaction from relatives, campaign groups, activists and authorities – many of whom argue that a national standard of mandatory accounting is a prerequisite for an informed public discussion about the use of force by police.

Erica Garner-Snipes, daughter of Eric Garner

Giving this kind of data to the public is a big thing. Other incidents like murders and robberies are collected, so why not police-involved killings? With better records, we can look at what is happening and what might need to change.

Brittany Packnett, member of Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing

It is incredibly important to have this data. Anyone who’s been paying attention can see that without data to corroborate the stories unfortunately people do not always believe the lived realities of black and brown people in the US. And so we do need the numbers to back up what we are saying.

At the very least the function of government should serve that, but until that happens we’re going to have to take that kind of work into our own hands.

Anthony Scott, brother of Walter Scott

More information needs to be put out there. It came as a surprise to me when my brother died how little is made public about these incidents. I was not informed, I was not aware, I just had an idea these situations were happening in the United States.

I definitely think the public need to know what is happening and it would make it more informed. With them being more informed they would be able to react differently, in a positive way, to make changes, to make sure some of these things don’t happen again.

We have to make these officers accountable for these situations. One way to do this is not have officers’ shootings be investigated by their own police department. Have outside agencies come in to ensure there is no bias there.

Laurie Robinson, co-chair of Obama’s policing taskforce

I think it’s very helpful in light of the fact that the federal government has not been able to collect this data, to have this kind of research undertaken.

I think that there aspects of this [data] that certainly are troubling, but it’s also troubling that we have no official data from the federal government.

The reason why it’s essential for the federal government to collect these statistics is because of the solidity of federal data – in the same way we have the National Criminal Victimisation Survey or uniform crime reports, to have a uniformity nationally, so that there can be a reliability about the data and people can feel some sense of a reliability and consistency about it.

I think work like this can help contribute to our knowledge about the magnitude of the problem.

Leslie McSpadden, uncle of Michael Brown

Leslie McSpadden. (photo: Adam Gabbatt / The Guardian )

I’m all for it. Whatever it takes to allow people to have the information they need. I didn’t know the government didn’t count them, which is crazy.

In my opinion the reaction from people will be a 50/50 thing. Some people will know the full story and still go about their everyday living. But it could spark some people’s minds and make a change. People have to come together as one.

My son was somebody that already knew it seemed like younger black men were being targeted by the police. But I never paid attention to it until it happened to him. I can see how the rest of America isn’t paying attention because it’s not them.

But now we can see how much this is happening and just how often. Sometimes people don’t take the gravity of what’s going on as seriously as they would if they could see it in a physical form – in numbers.

I think the reason the federal government is not looking at statistics is because they’re trying to turn their head, trying to pretend that’s not what’s going on. If they started collecting the data, they would have to acknowledge that that is something that’s taking place.

Steven Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA

I think that it’s an undeniable service, the kind of investigative journalism that is vital to sparking the national conversation and for debate about the lack of federal record-keeping.

Right now there is no baseline, there is no baseline at all to determine how bad the problem is, the extent of it, and then how to take steps to ameliorate so that one can see from one year to the next or over a 10-year period, some significant change.