nichols call on the police department to disband the unit immediately. the chief of the memphis police ordered a review of that unit. but how much of this incident can be blamed on a single unit, and how different is that unit from how police act overall. joining us now is samuelson now a, founder of the mapping police violence database and the organization police score card, and radley felkel, rise of the warrior cough, the militarization of the americas police force. thank you for being with us. tonight i want to start with you, when we talk about this elite unit the scorpion unit do you think in many ways, it actually having a unit like that, leads to more police violence rather than the opposite of what it s intended to do? , so you see this having happening in cities across the country, new york city, they had this anti gun unit, the plainclothes unit that was disbanded and reinstated on
police according to our organization in public records request. articles from media, police statements. an information from state databases across the country. we found that nearly 1200 people were killed by police last year. more than three people every single day. and memphis police department, when you look over the past decade. memphis police department has had a rate of killing by the police slightly more than the national average. but there s police departments like albuquerque, like st. louis, that rates of police violence more than double that of memphis. so, there places across the country of hundreds of thousands of police departments that have the same or worse conduct them we re seeing in memphis. we can t just look at one case, were five officers in one unit. we need to look at the system as a whole. that continues year after year to kill more than 1100 people in this country. radley, to samuels point, when you talk about the system or the reforms some police departmen
single day. and memphis police department, when you look over the past decade. memphis police department has had a rate of killing by the police slightly more than the national average. but there s police departments like albuquerque, like st. louis, that rates of police violence more than double that of memphis. so, there places across the country of hundreds of thousands of police departments that have the same or worse conduct them we re seeing in memphis. we can t just look at one case, were five officers in one unit. we need to look at the system as a whole. that continues year after year to kill more than 1100 people in this country. radley, to samuels point, when you talk about the system or the reforms some police departments are undertaking, they don t seem to be working, memphis according to the reporting, and the last two years instituted a number of reforms meant conch down on incidents like this.