Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?

[hue]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men

The killing in Ferguson was one of many such cases. Here's what the data reveals.

The killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, was no anomaly: As we reported yesterday, Brown is one of at least four unarmed black men who died at the hands of police in the last month alone. There are many more cases from years past. As Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Missouri chapter put it in a statement of condolence to Brown's family, "Unarmed African-American men are shot and killed by police at an alarming rate. This pattern must stop."

But quantifying that pattern is difficult. Federal databases that track police use of force or arrest-related deaths paint only a partial picture. Police department data is scattered and fragmented. No agency appears to track the number of police shootings or killings of unarmed victims in a systematic, comprehensive way.

Here's some of what we do know:

Previous attempts to analyze racial bias in police shootings have arrived at similar conclusions. In 2007, ColorLines and the Chicago Reporter investigated fatal police shootings in 10 major cities, and found that there were a disproportionately high number of African Americans among police shooting victims in every one, particularly in New York, San Diego, and Las Vegas.

More MoJo coverage of the Michael Brown police shooting

Ferguson Is 60 Percent Black. Virtually All Its Cops Are White.
"Hands Up, Don't Shoot:" Peaceful Protests Across the Country Last Night
4 Unarmed Black Men Have Been Killed By Police in the Last Month
A Few Horrifying Pictures From Ferguson Last Night
Anonymous Posts St. Louis Police Dispatch Tapes From Day of Ferguson Shooting
Incredibly Powerful Photo of Black Students at Howard University
The Ferguson Shooting and the Science of Race and Guns

"We need not look for individual racists to say that we have a culture of policing that is really rubbing salt into longstanding racial wounds," NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks told Mother Jones. It's a culture in which people suspected of minor crimes are met with "overwhelmingly major, often lethal, use of force," he says.