The problem is that we haven’t, to date, had comprehensive statistics on the number of people, of whatever complexion, killed by cops. The FBI statistics are based on voluntary reporting by departments.
While the “official” statistics probably capture almost all such killings, that they are admittedly not complete allows people who want to stir up outrage to claim the “real numbers” are much higher.
Speaking of which, I was watching a Denzel Washington movie last night on Netflix. He played a professor in the 30s at a Texas college.
Boy was I surprised when, in class, he dredged up that old hoax about Willie Lynch’s lesson on how to keep black people down. Presented in the movie as fact.
A. Nobody has found a trace of the story prior to the 70s. So a professor in the 30s wouldn’t be discussing it.
B. Anybody who reads it with an eye to language can immediately see it’s late 20th century. No historian anywhere claims it’s an accurate record of a 1712 speech.
Yet here’s a major movie passing along lies about racist whites as if they’re the truth.
They also had his students witness a lynching, with the implication this was a routine occurrence for black people at the time. So I looked it up, and there were a grand total of 18 black people lynched in the USA in 1935. Which was high. The average for the 30s was about 10/year.
18 black people murdered is a routine holiday weekend in Chicago.
That's right.
www.killedbypolice.net seems to be a good effort to track the ARD data But personally I want federal government tables. Though not always 100-percent trustworthy nevertheless I tire of seeing columnists or "DoJ says" used as sources of data.
The BJS ARD data I posted are several years old but the yearly numbers approach (75% ?) what www.killedbypolice.net says were killed in one year. And the BJS specified that not all local police departments were included in the ARD data.