It’s a start.
160 of them weren’t shot and the article doesn’t differentiate between those who were run over, those who had negative responses to Tasers or pepper spray, or those who died of suicide or natural causes while in custody.
Of the remaining 965, 875 were armed when they were shot.
We’re left with a grand total of 90 unarmed people who were shot by police and which might possibly be unjustified.
Why are you excluding those who weren’t shot? Freddie Gray wasn’t shot.
Freddie Gray wasn’t “killed by police”, either.
That has yet to be determined (legally speaking).
This part is awesome:
6: The age of the youngest victim of a fatal police shooting this year. Jeremy Mardis, an autistic boy, was shot by Louisiana police in November.
…
The shooting drew attention to a small-town police force that has been plagued by problem officers, including Stafford and Greenhouse, who had both been named in a number of civil complaints. Other reports suggested there was an escalating turf war between two law enforcement departments in Marksville, and that the two officers may have been given more leeway to patrol the town and issue citations as a result.
“Turf war”? Turf fucking war? That is just wrong.
Well, his spine was crushed while in police custody.
SOP in Baltimore.
Did he commit suicide? Or was it just a natural death from old age? What, exactly, killed him?
The Post has a story on the Grand Jury:
The Tamir Rice case shows how prosecutors twist grand juries to protect police
Yes, the bit about Baltimore paying out $5.7 million in police misconduct cases is telling. The article also states that they paid about the same amount defending the cops. I’m sure the people of Baltimore love that triple dip.
He refused to stop resisting so that he could be restrained in the back of the police van and suffered fatal injuries as a result.
Suicide by cop, really.
Says who?
And that doesn’t count because why?
Police are not mandated to assist people with suicide, are they? Maybe a new term is in order, Policide.
No, “suicide by cop” involves deliberate intent to make the police kill you. Freddie Gray fled from the police and demonstrated that he intended to evade them. The officers them caught him and beat him up real good for no obvious reason other than that he ran away. The beating and the rough ride resulted in Gray’s death, which would not have happened at all if the officers had not appeared on the scene in the first place. That qualifies as homicide.
Funny how nobody ever wants to talk about why Gray, who surely was an upstanding member of the community that never did nothing to no one, responded to seeing some police in the vicinity by deciding to run for his life.
It has not been proven that a “rough ride” occurred, and to the contrary the evidence asserts that Gray was injured because he refused to let the cops buckle him in.
Really? You have not been paying attention? Because it definitely has been discussed. The general consensus among the a-Smaptians is that he had probably experienced sufficient random harassment from the police that he assumed that they would habitually choose to harass him on sight, so he fled, in order to avoid harassment.
You are just like every other asshole who says things like “if you’re innocent, why are you perspiring?” Running away from the police does not count as evidence of guilt.
First, the video I saw showed him being loaded into the van in a cudgelent condition, far from being realistically able to refuse to be buckled in. But, more importantly, the injury to his spine appears to have been caused by a bolt inside the van: buckling him in would not have prevented or even reduced that injury, possibly might have made it worse.
Then he ought to have known that the best way to avoid being harassed was to not make himself noticeable. It’s far more likely that he was engaged in criminal acts at the time and ran because he feared getting caught.
Innocent people don’t run from the police.
Then you’re acknowledging that his death would have occurred regardless of what the police did, and therefore they cannot be held responsible for it.
Do police ever harass innocent people?
He was trying to make himself not noticeable by making himself elsewhere. Yes he had been in trouble in the past, as I understand it. The police are certainly not above fucking with people because they can. There seems to be some indication that Freddie Gray was one of the people they liked to fuck with. He tried to depart in order to avoid that.
Whatever. You are so full of shit.
The police could have avoided killing Freddie Gray by not arresting him pro se. They could have chosen to not beat the crap out of him in the process of arresting him. They could have transported him in some way different than one would transport a side of beef. They could have had a supervising officer in the back of the vehicle.
There are several ways that they are responsible. Or more accurately, irresponsible.