One man is tracking every officer-involved killing in the US.
nbcnews.com/news/us-news/f… (1/6) #NBCNewsThreads
nbcnews.com/news/us-news/f… (1/6) #NBCNewsThreads
D. Brian Burghart has dedicated 8 years to doing what federal agencies have not done: Track every known law enforcement officer-involved killing in the US. The result is Fatal Encounters, a national database that shines a light into the darkest corners of policing. (2/6)
As of July 10, Fatal Encounters lists more than 28,400 deaths dating to Jan. 1, 2000. The entries include both headline-making cases and thousands of lesser-known deaths. Burghart uses what’s known as open-source information to chronicle each reported killing. (3/6)
Burghart channeled his interest in data to begin the task of figuring out just how many people die each year during interactions with law enforcement. He started with the official counts. “I always feel like the numbers are the truth,” he said. (4/6)
Last month Harvard researchers used his data in publishing a study that mapped fatal police violence encounters across U.S. cities from 2013 to 2017. They found that police were six-and-a-half times more likely to kill Blacks than whites in Chicago and its western suburbs. (5/6)
Some cases never leave him. He still thinks about the death of Daniel Shaver, an Arizona man shot by police after crawling on the floor of a Mesa hotel and sobbing for his life. “Even when I'm done with this, it will be a part of me forever,” Burghart said. (6/6)
