Data shows Latinos, Native Americans more likely to be killed by police
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Mourners in 2022 at a mural in memory of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, who was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer a year earlier. Photo: John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Latinos and Native Americans are more likely to be killed by police than white Americans and are much younger at the time of their deaths, according to newly released data.
The big picture: A mapping initiative by Campaign Zero, an organization that advocates against police violence, found that nearly 13,400 people have been killed by law enforcement in the U.S. since 2013, and Hispanics and Indigenous people account for around 22% of those deaths, probably more.
How it works: The database relies on media reports to track any incident in which a law enforcement officer, whether off-duty or on-duty, uses force resulting in someone's death.
- Campaign Zero executive director DeRay Mckesson tells Axios that researchers scour the internet daily for the latest police shootings and verify them to confirm details before including them in the database.
- If staff can't reasonably confirm a person's race or ethnicity, that person is classified as having an "unknown race," Mckesson said.
- The organization says its database has captured 92% of all police killings since 2013.
Zoom in: Native Americans are 3.2 times more likely and Latinos are 1.3 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans, Abdul Nasser Rad, Campaign Zero's managing director for research and data, tells Axios.
- More than 2,600 Latinos and about 220 Indigenous people have died at the hands of law enforcement since 2013, an Axios review of the data found.
- Both account for larger per capita deaths than their share of the population, the review found.
- The average age of a Hispanic person killed by law enforcement in the U.S. is 34, while it's 40 for a white person.
- The average age of a Native American person killed by police is 33.
Yes, but: Law enforcement agencies use widely different methods to track racial and ethnic data of Latinos — sometimes not tracking it at all — meaning the number of Latinos killed by police is probably much higher.
- An Axios review of the database, for example, found several people killed by police who had Spanish surnames but were classified as having an "unknown race."
- Two of those classified as having an "unknown race" were Randall Gamboa Jr., 16, of Carlsbad, New Mexico, and Johnny Vigil, 43, of Tularosa, New Mexico. Gamboa and Vigil are two common Hispanic names in the Southwest.
Zoom out: A detailed analysis of the data suggests neighborhoods that are majority Black, Latino or Native American have higher rates of police killings.
- Many of those neighborhoods experience aggressive or violent policing, says Derek Hyra, professor at the School of Public Affairs at American University.
The other side: Police have been facing concerns about aggressive policing, but Timothy Dimoff, a former law enforcement officer and national law enforcement expert, tells Axios "there has been a lot of progress made in the last five or 10 years."
- "There has been a lot more training for police officers across the nation in dealing with de-escalation in day-to-day activities."
- "Also, recruitment of minority people to supplement police departments in a stronger way has also been happening," Dimoff says.
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