(The Guardian) – Philadelphia police shot black people at about twice the rate of their occurrence in the general population, according to a new federal study.
Eighty-one percent of people shot by police officers in Philadelphia from 2007 to 2013 were African American, despite black people accounting for just more than 40% of the city’s population, the study found.
The shootings were concentrated in two precincts in North Philadelphia with high rates of violent crime, according to the study, which Philadelphia police commissioner Charles H Ramsey asked the justice department to carry out in 2013 following revelations that shootings by police were rising citywide despite a drop in crime.
The report, issued by the office of community-oriented policing services (Cops), presents an unusually detailed review of the use of fatal force by police officers, tracking fine-grain details of each shooting incident, such as number of shots fired, number of suspects involved, number of police involved, races and ages of police officers and suspects, whether the suspect had a gun and much more.