US police kill nearly 500 people in 2016: Report
A new survey reveals that 491 people were killed by police in the United States during the first six months of 2016, showing an increase from 465 victims in the same period last year.
According to the survey published by the Washington Post on Thursday, this year has also seen more officers shot to death in the line of duty and more officers put on trial for questionable shootings.
"Blacks continued to be shot at 2.5 times the rate of whites. About half of those killed were white and about half were minorities. Fewer than 10 percent of all those killed were unarmed. One-quarter were mentally ill," the paper said.
The results of the study come at a time when the American nation is deeply shocked by two graphic videos shot in the states of Louisiana and Minnesota this week, which shows the deaths of two African American at the hands of police officers.
Philando Castile, 32, was killed during a traffic stop Wednesday night in bear Saint Paul, Minnesota. He was shot inside his car as he was reportedly trying to reach for his driver’s license. His girlfriend posted live a video of the bloody scene minutes after he was shot.
Castile’s death happened within a day of another fatal shooting by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Alton Sterling, 37, was pinned to the ground and shot in the chest outside a convenience store on Tuesday, following an altercation with police. A graphic video of the shooting recorded by a bystander shows an officer shooting Sterling five times at close range.
On Thursday, protesters in Chicago, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, St. Paul and other cities took to the streets to slam the killings.
Data compiled by an activist group that runs the Mapping Police Violence project shows that police in the US killed over 1,150 people in 2015, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African Americans.
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