[News] ‘Hunted’: one in three people killed by US police were fleeing, data reveals

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theguardian.com
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/28/hunted-one-in-three-people-killed-by-us-police-were-fleeing-data-reveals>
‘Hunted’:
one in three people killed by US police were fleeing, data reveals
Sam Levin - July 28, 2022

Two recent cases have sparked national outrage and protests. In Akron,
Ohio, on 27 June, officers fired dozens of rounds at Jayland Walker
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/04/jayland-walker-shooting-body-cam-video-outrage>,
who was unarmed and running when he was killed. And last week, an officer
in San Bernardino, California, exited an unmarked car and immediately fired
at Robert Adams
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/19/police-killed-robert-adams-black-man-running-san-bernardino-california>
as he ran in the opposite direction.

Despite a decades-long push to hold officers accountable for killing
civilians, prosecution remains exceedingly rare, the data shows. Of the
2,500 people killed while fleeing since 2015, only 50 or 2% have resulted
in criminal charges. The majority of those charges were either dismissed or
resulted in acquittals. Only nine officers were convicted, representing
0.35% of cases.

The data, advocates and experts say, highlights how the US legal system
allows officers to kill with impunity and how reform efforts have not
addressed fundamental flaws in police departments.

“In 2014 and 2015, at the beginning of this national conversation about
racism in policing, the idea was, ‘There are bad apples in police
departments, and if we just charged or fired those particularly bad
officers, we could save lives and stop police violence,’” said Samuel
Sinyangwe, a data scientist and policy analyst who founded Mapping Police
Violence, but “this data shows that this is much bigger than any individual
officer.”
‘Hunted down’

US police kill more people in days
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries>
than many countries do in years, with roughly 1,100 fatalities a year since
2013. The numbers haven’t changed since the start of the Black Lives Matter
movement, and they haven’t budged since George Floyd’s murder
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/30/us-police-killing-people-high-rates>
inspired international protests in 2020.
[image: People wearing yellow t-shirts marching. Some of them are holding
placards.]
People in Newark, New Jersey, march demanding justice for Jayland Walker in
July 2022. Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images

The law has for years allowed police to kill civilians in a wide variety of
circumstances. In 1985, the US supreme court ruled
<https://apnews.com/article/fires-pittsburgh-us-news-il-state-wire-shootings-fb33a7eb824b47c492f01130c73878eb>
that officers can use lethal force against a fleeing person only if they
reasonably believed that person was an imminent threat. But the court later
said that an officer’s state of mind and fear in the moment was relevant to
determining whether the shooting was warranted. That means a killing could
be considered justified if the officer claimed he feared the person was
armed or saw them gesturing toward their waistband – even if it turned out
the victim was unarmed and the threat was nonexistent.

As a result, very few police officers get charged. Adante Pointer, a civil
rights lawyer, said it was not hard for officers to prevail when the case
boiled down to what was going through the minds of the officer and victim
in the moment: “The only person left to tell the story is the cop.”

In 2022 through mid-July, officers have killed 633 people, including 202
who were fleeing. In 2021, 368 victims were fleeing (32% of all killings);
in 2020, 380 were fleeing (33%); and in 2019, 325 were fleeing (30%),
according to Mapping Police Violence. The data is based on media reports of
people who were trying to escape when they were killed, and it is
considered incomplete. In roughly 10% to 20% of all cases each year, the
circumstances surrounding the shootings are unclear.

Black Americans are disproportionately affected, making up 32% of
individuals killed by police while fleeing, but only accounting for 13% of
the US population. Black victims were even more overrepresented in cases
involving people fleeing on foot, making up 35% to 54% of those fatalities.

“If a person is running away, there is no reason to chase them, hunt them
down like an animal and shoot and kill them,” said Paula McGowan, whose son,
Ronell Foster
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/07/vallejo-police-shooting-bike-ronell-foster-willie-mccoy>,
was killed while fleeing in Vallejo, California, in February 2018. The
officer, Ryan McMahon, said he was trying to stop Foster, a 33-year-old
father of two, because he was riding his bike without a light. Within
roughly one minute of trying to stop him, the officer engaged in a struggle
and shot Foster in the back of the head. Officials later claimed that the
unarmed man had grabbed his flashlight and presented it “in a threatening
manner”.

“These officers are too amped up and ready to shoot,” said McGowan, who for
years advocated that the officer be fired and prosecuted. Instead, the
officer went on to shoot another Black man, Willie McCoy
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/01/the-life-and-death-of-rapper-willie-mccoy-executed-by-police>,
one year later; he was one of six officers who fatally shot the 20-year-old
who had been sleeping in his car. The officer was terminated in 2020 – not
for killing McCoy or Foster, but because the department said he put other
officers in danger during the shooting of McCoy.

The city paid Foster’s family $5.7m in a civil settlement
<https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/5-7-million-settlement-reached-in-2018-vallejo-police-shooting-death-of-ronell-foster/>
in 2020, but did not admit wrongdoing. A lawyer for McMahon previously said
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/19/us-police-shootings-george-floyd-press-releases-reports>
the officer was attempting to “simply talk to Mr Foster” when he fled,
adding that McMahon “believed his actions were reasonable under the
circumstances”. Vallejo police did not respond to a request for comment.

“Not only do these officers get away with it, they get to move on to bigger
and better jobs while we’re left shattered and are still trying to pick up
the pieces,” said Miguel Minjares, whose niece, 16-year-old Elena “Ebbie”
Mondragon, was killed by Fremont, California, police.
[image: Selfie of a woman pouting into the camera.]
Elena “Ebbie” Mondragon was killed by Fremont police in March 2017.
Photograph: courtesy of Miguel Minjares

In March 2017, undercover officers fired at a car that was fleeing,
striking Mondragon, who was a passenger and pregnant at the time. The
officers faced no criminal consequences. One sergeant went on to work as a
sniper for the department, though has since retired, and another involved
in the operation continued working as a training officer, records show.

“You shoot into a moving car, which you shouldn’t have done, and you
weren’t even close to hitting the person you were trying to target. And now
you’re a sniper?” said Minjares. “When I hear sniper, I think of precision.
It boggles my mind. It shows the entitlement of officers and the police
department – they just put people where they want them, it doesn’t matter
what they did. It’s confusing and it’s heart wrenching.”

In June, five years after the killing, the family won $21m in a civil
trial, but it’s unclear if Fremont has changed any of its policies or
practices.

A Fremont spokesperson declined to comment on the Mondragon case and did
not respond to questions about its policies.
The push to prevent the killings

In the rare cases when prosecutors do file criminal charges against police
who killed fleeing people, the process often takes years and typically
concludes with victory for the officer, either with judges or prosecutors
themselves dismissing the charges with or jury acquittals.
[image: A young man wearing dark blue graduation robes poses on the street.]
Robert Adams, 23, was fatally shot by police as he ran away. Photograph:
Courtesy of family

In one Florida case where an officer was investigating a shoplifting and
fatally shot a man fleeing in a van, prosecutors filed charges and then dropped
the case
<https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2019/09/12/orlando-police-release-statement-after-manslaughter-charge-dropped-against-officer/>
a week later, saying that after a review of evidence, it “became apparent
it would be incredibly difficult to obtain a conviction”. In a Hawaii case
where officers killed a 16-year-old in a car, a judge last year rejected
<https://www.npr.org/2021/08/20/1029620496/3-honolulu-police-officers-fatally-shot-teen-trial-iremamber-sykap>
all charges and prevented the case from going to trial.

For the nine fleeing cases where officers were found guilty or signed a
plea deal, the conviction and sentence were much lighter than in typical
homicides. A Georgia officer who killed an unarmed man fleeing on foot
was acquitted
of manslaughter
<https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2019/10/19/ex-kingsland-ga-police-officer-sentenced-to-year-in-prison-4-years-probation-for-killing-unarmed-man/2492480007/>
in 2019, for example, but found guilty of violating his oath and given one
year in prison. A San Diego sheriff’s deputy pleaded guilty earlier this
year to voluntary manslaughter after he killed a fleeing man, but he
avoided state prison, instead getting one year in jail
<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-07/former-san-diego-deputy-sentenced-to-probation-jail-in-killing-of-fleeing-man>.
And a Tennessee deputy, found guilty
<https://newschannel9.com/news/local/trial-underway-for-former-grundy-county-deputy-in-womans-2017-death?6ea9ab1baa0efb9e19094440c317e21b>
of criminally negligent homicide after shooting at a fleeing car and
killing the passenger, a 20-year-old woman, was sentenced to community
service.

With the criminal system deeming nearly all these killings lawful,
advocates have argued that cities should reduce the unnecessary police
encounters that can turn deadly, with measures such as ending traffic stops
for minor violations and removing police from mental health calls. There
has also been a growing effort to ban officers from shooting at moving cars.

California passed a law in 2019 meant to restrict use of deadly force
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/19/california-use-of-force-law-stephon-clark>
to cases when it was “necessary” to defend human life, not just
“reasonable”. The law stated that an officer can kill a fleeing person only
if they believe that person is going to imminently harm someone. The new
law also dictated that prosecutors must consider the officer’s actions
leading up to the killing, which police groups had argued were irrelevant
under the previous standards.

But after its passage, police departments across the state refused to
comply and update their policies, said Adrienna Wong, senior staff attorney
at the ACLU of southern California, which backed the bill. That’s only now
starting to change after years of legal disputes.

“I think we’re going to start to see prosecutors consider all the elements
of the new law, but I’m frankly not holding my breath based on the track
record of prosecutors in the state. We never thought this law was going to
be a full solution.”
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