WASHINGTON (The Guardian/Sputnik) – More people were killed by U.S. police in 2022 than in any other year, databases tracking deadly interactions with law enforcement revealed this week.
Mapping Police Violence, a database set up in 2015, recorded at least 1,176 killings last year — an increase from 1,145 in 2021 and 1,152 in 2020.
The Washington Post’s database tracking fatal police shootings also showed a record number of deaths in 2022 at 1,096, an increase from 1,048 in 2021 and 1,019 in 2020.
Both databases showed that people of color were disproportionately affected by police violence: 24 percent of killings were of black Americans, who represent only 13 percent of the U.S. population.
Native American and Pacific Islander populations were also disproportionately affected by police violence.
In May 2022, on the second anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, President Joe Biden signed an executive order addressing police accountability. It included new policies on chokeholds and anti-bias training to fight racism in law enforcement.
Mapping Police Violence found that 98.1 percent of police killings since 2013 have resulted in no police accountability.
The database also examined the situations surrounding each killing, with at least a third occurring when the person did not present a threat to police.
“One in every three people killed by police was running away, driving away or otherwise trying to flee,” the Mapping Police Violence review stated.
“Black and brown people were more likely to be killed while fleeing.”
In another report, the Gun Violence Archive announced on Friday that more than 250 people were killed in gun violence across the United States over the New Year’s holiday week with almost 400 more using guns to commit suicide.
The death toll from all recorded murders or homicides and unintentional shootings was 255, the organization announced in its table of casualties.
That figure included 12 mass shootings, the report said.
Another 396 people used guns to commit suicide, Gun Violence Archive said. Another 550 people were injured by gun use during the same period, the report said.
The death toll included seven children aged up to 11 and teenagers from age 12 to age 17, the report added.
In a latest incident of gun violence, a six-year-old student shot and wounded a teacher in Virginia during an altercation inside a first-grade classroom, police and school officials in the city of Newport News said.
No students were injured in the shooting on Friday at Richneck Elementary School, police said. The teacher – a woman in her 30s – suffered life-threatening injuries.
Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew told reporters her condition had improved somewhat by late afternoon.
Police said the child had a handgun in the classroom and that they took that student into custody.
“We did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting,” Drew told reporters. “We have a situation in one particular location where a gunshot was fired.”
The shooting was not an accident, he said.
Investigators were trying to figure out where the child obtained the gun.