Report: LAPD More Likely To Shoot Blacks and People With Mental Conditions
Black people only made up around nine percent of the population in the city of Los Angeles. But data recently released by the LAPD in an effort to be fully transparent revealed that 35 percent of the people they shot from 2011 to 2015 were black.
According to CBSNews, LAPD officers used force almost 2,000 times which resulted in 21 people being shot. To make matters more concerning, number of mentally ill people shot by officers almost tripled in a year, going from just four in 2014 to 14 un 2015.
While these numbers may be concerning, LAPD officials pointed out that, overall, the frequency of how often officers use force is still rare given that there were 1.5 million recorded interactions with civilians and only 1,924 cases of force in 2015. This means that only 0.13 percent of LAPD-civilian interactions lead to force being used.
Still, the number of deadly shootings by LAPD in 2015 was higher than Los Angeles County Sherrif’s Department (14) and the police departments in Houston (12) and Chicago (8).
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