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More from @samswey

Samuel Sinyangwe

@samswey

Aug 28

The Mapping Police Violence organization just released a new data platform documenting over 1,000,000 cases of police use of force nationwide across 58% of the U.S. This is the largest public database of its kind, explore the data at . Here’s what the data tells us about police violence in America🧵…policedata.org

To build a database tracking all reported police use of force, we filed thousands of public records requests to police agencies in all 50 states asking for detailed data specifying how many use of force incidents they reported in total from 2017-2022, what types of force they used and the demographics of the people they used force against. We also obtained available state use of force databases. We then worked to standardizing the data according to what types of force were reported, how agencies documented force, etc. Here are the types of force the police agencies we obtained data from reported using in 2022.

What does this data tell us? For every person that police killed, police reported more than 300 non-fatal force incidents, suggesting an estimated 300,000+ people are impacted by police use of physical force each year. 80% or more of these people were reported *by police* to be unarmed. And disparities in overall force were even more extreme than in police killings, with Black people impacted at more than 3x the rate of white people.

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Samuel Sinyangwe

@samswey

Jan 31, 2023

Mapping Police Violence documented nearly 1,200 killings by police in 2022, a record year for police violence nationwide. Here’s what the data tells us about rising levels of police violence. (1/x) policeviolencereport.org

1. Killings by police have increased, but these changes haven’t been uniform. GA, NM, OH, TX reported record highs in 2022. CA and MD reported record lows for the decade. Within states, *County Sheriffs Depts* are increasing killings, but most local PDs are not.

2. The increase among sheriffs departments in notable, in part, because these are usually elected positions. Are sheriffs doubling down on aggressive policing to appear “tough on crime” to some voters? Will voters have enough info to hold these sheriffs accountable next election?

Read 11 tweets

Samuel Sinyangwe

@samswey

Nov 4, 2022

PAY ATTENTION TO COUNTY SHERIFF ELECTIONS. This is one of the biggest ways you can help combat police violence and mass incarceration this year. Let me break it down…

Sheriffs control most local jails and have also been responsible for a growing share of the nation’s deadly police violence. 1 in every 3 people killed by law enforcement is killed by a sheriff’s department. *Half of those sheriffs are on the ballot in this election.*

Sheriffs are elected positions, policing communities with little oversight, no mayor to fire them and every incentive to be perceived as “tough on crime” to more rural/conservative constituencies. To hold them accountable, they need to be voted out of office.

Read 6 tweets

Samuel Sinyangwe

@samswey

Sep 22, 2022

https://twitter.com/EthanSCorey/status/1572287628250353665

Since October 2019, the DOJ missed:
18% of deaths in state prisons
39% of deaths in local jails
62-71% of deaths in police custody

Meanwhile, media orgs and nonprofits like mappingpoliceviolence.us are doing a far better job than the federal government at collecting this info.

https://twitter.com/EthanSCorey/status/1572287628250353665

Now projects that *have* done a good job tracking these deaths are gone/at risk. Some state databases have been shut down (ex: Colorado’s police shootings database). Non-governmental databases by The Guardian, HuffPo Jail Deaths tracker & Killedbypolice.net no longer exist.

Other projects tracking police killings like Fatal Encounters haven’t been updated in a year. And since deray/Campaign Zero tried to forcibly take over mappingpoliceviolence.org earlier this year they’ve mismanaged it & failed to keep that URL up-to-date or methodologically sound.

Read 5 tweets

Samuel Sinyangwe

@samswey

Aug 30, 2022

The research indicates Biden’s plan to hire another 100,000 police officers WILL increase arrests, incarceration and police violence ESPECIALLY for petty non-violent issues. Research also indicates these harms WILL be concentrated in Black communities. That much is crystal clear.

Study: “low-level arrest rates declined most in places that reduced police expenditure and personnel…findings suggest increasing police budgets or police force size will likely be accompanied by increases in misdemeanor arrests and their attendant harms.” academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-ar…

Here’s a description of that study and it’s findings/implications from one of the co-authors: slate.com/news-and-polit…

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Samuel Sinyangwe

@samswey

Aug 30, 2022

https://twitter.com/FolaAk/status/1564608137537126407

Low level arrests have been declining in almost every major city, with New York City cutting these arrests by more than 2/3rds since 2014. This spared hundreds of thousands of people from arrest, criminalization and police violence. Now that progress is being actively reversed.

https://twitter.com/FolaAk/status/1564608137537126407

From 2013-2020, the nation’s largest cities saw overall arrests decline by 46% and low level arrests (which make up 2/3rds of all arrests) were cut by more than half. This has outpaced other parts of the country and accelerated during the pandemic. AND… policescorecard.org/findings

These declines in low level arrests are associated with declines in police shootings and killings in cities. And while cities were changing their approach to low level non-violent issues, arrests/enforcement of violent crime remained relatively unchanged. fivethirtyeight.com/features/polic…

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