Nearly 1,000 people in the US were allegedly killed in police encounters in the 11-months between the murder of George Floyd and the conviction of the officer, Derek Chauvin, who killed him, it has been reported.
An estimated 979 people died following an incident involving law enforcement between May 2020 and April 2021, according to data collected by the Mapping Police Violence website, including 181 Black people.
Of the total 1,127 deaths in 2020, which include some police staff, only 16 cases, amounting to 1.4%, resulted in criminal charges against officers, as reported by Newsweek.
The figures revealed that Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police in the US, making up 28% of the people whose deaths involved law enforcement in 2020, despite them making up 13% of the population of the US.
Mr Floyd, 46, died on 25 May last year in Minneapolis, after former officer Chauvin pinned his knee on the Black man’s neck for more than nine minutes.
His death, captured on video by a teenage bystander, sparked global Black Lives Matter protests.
Mr Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third degree murder and second degree manslaughter on 20 April, following a three-week trial.
Georgetown University professor, Rosa Brooks, said in a Newsweek published extract of her book, Tangled up in Blue, about her experience as a reserve police officer with the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department: “The chief lesson learned at the academy was this: Anyone can kill you at any time.
“The dead cops were all heroes. But, it was quietly intimated, they were also failures. Mostly, we were told, they died because they weren’t prepared.”
The data also revealed that US police had reportedly killed more than 100 children since 2015, including Adam Toledo in Chicago and Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio, this year.
On 29 March, Adam Toledo, a Latino 13-year-old, was fatally shot by Chicago police. Ms Bryant, 16, who is Black, died less than one hour before Mr Chauvin’s verdict, on 20, was announced, after being shot by police during a conflict on the street.
