During a six-month span in 2014, four separate police killings of African-Americans grabbed the country’s attention. Eric Garner died after being put in a chokehold in New York, while Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Laquan McDonald in Chicago; and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland were all shot. |
The killings sparked a debate about how to reduce deaths caused by the police. In response, more police departments directed their officers to wear body cameras. Some introduced new training programs. Civil-rights activists and politicians began paying more attention to the issue. |
Six years later, however, there is no sign of meaningful change, at least on the national level. The number of police killings has hovered around 1,100 every year since 2013, according to Mapping Police Violence, a research and advocacy group. (A Washington Post database shows a similar pattern.) |
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Now the subject is back in the spotlight. |
On Monday night, a Minneapolis man named George Floyd died after a police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck while he lay on the ground. The case was the latest in which the official police report presented a different story from a cellphone video that later emerged. In the video, Floyd can be heard saying “I can’t breathe” again and again. |
Four officers involved in the arrest were fired yesterday. “Being black in America should not be a death sentence,” Minneapolis’s mayor, Jacob Frey, said. “For five minutes, we watched a white officer press his knee into a black man’s neck. Five minutes.” |
What, if anything, might finally succeed in reducing police killings? I thought it would be worth sharing a few suggestions from around the country that I found while trying to make sense of the latest case: |
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