Police in the US use force on at least 300,000 people each year, injuring an estimated 100,000 of them, according to a groundbreaking data analysis on law enforcement encounters.
Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group that tracks killings by US police, launched a new database on Wednesday cataloging non-fatal incidents of police use of force, including stun guns, chemical sprays, K9 dog attacks, neck restraints, beanbags and baton strikes.
The database features incidents from 2017 through 2022, compiled from public records requests in every state. The findings, the group says, suggest that despite widespread protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, overall use of force has remained steady since then – and in many jurisdictions, has increased.
Thank you for this. I was about to bring up that history is littered with societies who had things pretty well squared away and were doing just fine before the touch of colonialism reached them. Societies that don’t exist anymore because they stood in the way of “progress.” Societies whose people were either enslaved, genocided, or both
Maybe relatively small societies, but there has always been violence in any society of consistent size.