The recent exoneration of the Anaheim and Bakersfield, California police officers, respectively, who killed Adalid Flores, who was carrying a cell phone, and 73-year-old Francisco Serna, who was carrying a crucifix, drives home the mantra of “no convictions” that has been made by criminal justice activists. In three recent high-profile trials involving the officers who killed Philando Castile, Terrence Crutcher and Sylville Smith, all officers have walked.
The Washington Post recently reported that at the rate of police killings (492 deaths) for the first six months of this year, police will have killed close to 1,000 civilians for the third year in a row by the end of 2017. Despite the staggering numbers, that is probably an undercount, based on the following information.
Killedbypolice.net, which has been tracking these same deaths since mid-2013, reports close to 600 killings for 2017 as of July 1. They report that on average 1,100 people have been killed by law enforcement for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016.
While these numbers of deaths have become “normalized,” this new nationwide mantra is also the historic, and I suspect, unless there is a radical intervention, it will be the future mantra.
Truthfully, most officers who kill civilians never get prosecuted by compliant district attorneys, and if they are and do get convicted, there is a virtual guarantee that an officer will never do serious prison time, if at all.
Similarly, they also rarely lose civil cases, but if they do, the money never comes from their own or their department’s pockets, instead, from insurance companies. The worst that happens, in especially egregious cases, is that they will get fired, and then get rehired in another jurisdiction.
