The newspapers and other media in the United States have said they could not keep track of the number of police killings in the United States. It's obvious that it's just something they don't want to do, because the British newspaper, The Guardian, is doing it. They have a special page that keeps a running total of police killings. And the total so far this year is 470.
Now I don't mean to infer that all of these killings were unjustified -- some were and other weren't. But it is a rather frightening number. What other country has had 466 people killed by police in just the first five months of the year? Probably none. This is a statistic that should embarrass all Americans.
Why are so many Americans being killed by police. I believe it is a combination of factors -- racism, a lack of competent leadership in many police departments, and (like it or not) too many guns on the street and in the hands of dangerous people. All of these things are fixable, but we just don't seem to have the political will to do it.
Here are the states with the most total police killings:
1. California (74)
2. Texas (47)
3. Florida (29)
4. Arizona (25)
5. Oklahoma (22)
6. Georgia (16)
7. New York (14)
8. Colorado (12)
9. Washington (11)
10. New Jersey (11)
11. Illinois (11)
12. Louisiana (11)
And here are the states with the most per capita police killings:
1. Oklahoma
2. Arizona
3. Nebraska
4. Hawaii
5. Alaska
6. Idaho
7. New Mexico
8. Louisiana
9. Colorado
10. Delaware
judas priest
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