The Government Won’t Track Police Killings, So This 24-Year-Old Took the Lead


The Government Won’t Track Police Killings, So This 24-Year-Old Took the Lead


Like many Americans, Sam Sinyangwe had a lot of unanswered questions after black teen Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer by a white police officer. The 24-year-old knew unarmed black people were being killed by police across the country, but he didn’t know how many, or where it happened the most.

There is no comprehensive national database of police killings. As a data scientist and activist, Sinyangwe wondered how advocates and policy makers could engage in any sort of meaningful conversation without those basic facts. On top of professional curiosity, Brown’s death hit home for Sinyangwe, who kicked around soccer balls growing up in the Florida neighborhood where Trayvon Martin was killed by gunfire.

“As a young black man, I felt unsafe,” Sinyangwe told TakePart. “This was happening everywhere—not just in Ferguson. Yet we didn’t really have the data to show how widespread this issue was, and how black people in particular are being targeted by police violence.”

Sinyangwe turned to the numbers that did exist. As a policy analyst at PolicyLink in Oakland, California, a research institute that works to advance economic and social justice, he is no stranger to data sets. He started with deaths tracked by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI but found that they significantly undercounted the victims, excluded location, and didn’t always include race. He overlaid the two data sets and then turned to crowdsourced databases created by journalists and advocates who were disturbed by the lack of data collected by the government, such as Fatal Encounters and Killed by Police. While existing sites offered a richer variety of information than government sources, they didn’t encompass as many incidents as Sinyangwe hoped to track, and some of the sites weren’t coded by race.

So he and fellow activists DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, whom he met on Twitter, took on the task of sifting through the combined records to recheck and code every entry. After a few months, Mapping Police Violence was born. The project covers “90 percent of the universe of police killings according to the best research available out there,” Sinyangwe said, including whether or not the victim was armed or unarmed. Last year, the project found, 304 black people were killed by the police; 101 of them were unarmed.


(Infographic: Courtesy MappingPoliceViolence.org)
Americans have become familiar with many names of unarmed black people who died at the hands of police in recent months—from Eric Garner to Tanisha Anderson and Walter Scott—but the project shows there are other deaths that get little attention. In Detroit, for example, the police department doesn’t release the names of victims of police killings. The same goes for Houston. Sinyangwe and his collaborators were left to rely on media reports, which they believe resulted in an undercount of victims. Their hope is that people on the ground in these areas will reach out and help them fill in the blanks.

The numbers they do have paint a grim picture. Black people nationwide are three times more likely to be killed by police, but the odds vary by location. In St. Louis, a black person is five times more likely to be killed by police than in New York. In Oklahoma, if you’re black, you’re 10 times more likely to be killed by police than if you live in Virginia. Sinyangwe plans to reach out to state coordinators that submit this data to the FBI to tell them what they’ve missed.

“Place matters,” Sinyangwe told TakePart. “A black person in St. Louis is more likely to be killed by police than by dying in a traffic accident. This is the level of violence that folks are experiencing, and they have every reason to be afraid.”

The project has already garnered the attention of data experts like those led by elections expert Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, and Sinyangwe has appeared on CNN to share his team’s work. They plan to collect and map data back to 2011, with data broken down by city and eventually zip code for a more focused analysis. By highlighting the difference in rates of police violence in certain locations, they hope to motivate elected officials and others to work for measurable change.

Sinyangwe hopes the project will spur a discussion about why the government didn’t collect the data in the first place.

“If I could do this in several months, why haven’t they collected this data?” he said. “This is more than a question of legislation; this is a question of political will.”

Screen Shot 2015-04-19 at 12.39.27 AM

Views: 64

Comment

You need to be a member of 12160 Social Network to add comments!

Join 12160 Social Network

"Destroying the New World Order"

TOP CONTENT THIS WEEK

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING THE SITE!

mobile page

12160.info/m

12160 Administrators

 

Latest Activity

cheeki kea commented on cheeki kea's photo
Thumbnail

$ Paid Annual Leave $

"Now is the Time for American Workers to Unite! Take back the squandered taxes and demand time off…"
yesterday
cheeki kea posted a photo
yesterday
Burbia commented on Burbia's blog post Mystery illness strikes Russia with fever, blood symptoms, and no cure in sight.
yesterday
Burbia posted a blog post

Mystery illness strikes Russia with fever, blood symptoms, and no cure in sight.

I guess releasing this bio-weapon upon Israeli neighbors would be hitting too close to home. I…See More
yesterday
tjdavis posted videos
yesterday
tjdavis posted a video

The Electric State | Final Trailer | Netflix

Together, robots & humans can take the whole system down. THE ELECTRIC STATE starring Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt and directed by the Russo Brothers, onl...
Sunday
Less Prone favorited Sandy's video
Saturday
Doc Vega's 7 blog posts were featured
Saturday
tjdavis's blog post was featured
Saturday
Sandy posted a video

"Mommy Tells Me I'm a Girl"-Jeff Younger

Soft White Underbelly interview and portrait of Jeff Younger, a father who is fighting to protect his son from transitioning into a girl. Get 40% off access ...
Saturday
tjdavis posted a video

MindWar: Full Spectrum Cognitive Dominance [Michael Aquino Analysis]

This is my analysis and my thoughts on Michael Aquino's "MindWar". This document is a must-read if you are looking to understand the psyop tactics and cognit...
Saturday
Doc Vega posted a blog post

A Horrid Murder at Land Between the Lakes (Sasquatch?)

 Most of us hear that Sasquatch-Bigfoot are intelligent yet reclusive creatures that are closely…See More
Friday
Doc Vega posted blog posts
Thursday
cheeki kea commented on cheeki kea's video
Thumbnail

Metropolis (1927) Full Movie | 4K Color Remastered: 2023 Colorized with Gottfried Huppertz Score

"Hey thanks for the thumbs up guys. I was blown away (like a leaf in a tornado) when I watched this…"
Thursday
tjdavis favorited cheeki kea's video
Thursday
tjdavis posted a video

Did you know this? I was SHOCKED!

Wounder how many people know what they do to baby chicks? Wounder if they know what the are doing to Salmon? What about the lettuce and tomatoes? This will n...
Thursday
cheeki kea posted a photo
Thursday
Less Prone posted a video

Pine Tree Riots - We'll Have Our Home Again

NOW ON SPOTIFY (and everywhere else)!https://open.spotify.com/album/1gWcRqHD7TSbAA2UzYOLWlEvery people deserves a Homeland.Sung by no one in particular.Origi...
Mar 25
Less Prone favorited cheeki kea's video
Mar 24
cheeki kea posted a video

Metropolis (1927) Full Movie | 4K Color Remastered: 2023 Colorized with Gottfried Huppertz Score

🎉🎬 AT LAST❗❗ Metropolis is the FIRST film we colorized using our newly developed AI colorization software, and we are proud to bring it to you now with the...
Mar 24

© 2025   Created by truth.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service

content and site copyright 12160.info 2007-2019 - all rights reserved. unless otherwise noted