More police officers have been charged over killings in 2015 than at any time in the last decade

stringer bell · September 2015

http://www.businessinsider.com/more-police-officers-charged-over-deadly-shootings-in-2015-2015-9

Twelve police officers have been charged with a crime this year stemming from fatal encounters with people while on duty.

That's a record that stretches back at least 10 years, according to research compiled by Bowling Green State University criminal justice professor, Philip Stinson — an ex-cop whose data was cited by the Wall Street Journal.

There was an average of about five prosecutions of law enforcement officers each year over the last decade.

There's little doubt about what may have contributed to this year's increase. Police killings have lately been the subject of intense media and political scrutiny.

And with civil rights groups pointing to one specific trend in these deaths — that they often involve unarmed people of color — it's not hard to understand why an increase in police prosecutions has occurred.

Protests following police-involved deaths in Ferguson, Mo., New York and Baltimore have also cracked the veneer of unimpeachable innocence often afforded by the police badge.

But more court trials do not necessarily lead to more convictions. Retired San Francisco Bay area district attorney Tom Orloff explained it this way in The Journal: "most jurors have the idea the cops are out to do the best job they can."

Put another way, the prevailing notion in these matters is often the same; if the police use deadly force while performing their duties, it was probably necessary.

Some have argued the opposite — asserting that police have been too quick to react with deadly force. That argument could perhaps be punctuated by the Washington Post's report on the several hundred people who have been shot dead by police this year alone.

Despite the increased number of police officers tried in court for on-duty killings, "no single officer has been convicted of murder or manslaughter this year," the WSJ reports.

Several high-profile police-involved deaths have been talked about of late, including the case of former Charleston, South Carolina police officer, Michael Slager, who was denied bond earlier this month as he waits for his murder trial to begin. Slager is accused of fatally shooting Walter Scott, an unarmed man who was running away from Slager during an encounter in April.

Six officers in Baltimore will face separate trials over the death of Freddie Gray, a man who suffered a medical emergency that severed his spine 80% at his neck while he was in police custody.

A handful of similar cases are pending.