April 20, 2021
The calls for police reform in the United States have grown louder since the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed in police custody last summer. Even after Tuesday’s conviction of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with the murder of Floyd, those calls are unlikely to fade.
The US has the highest rate of police killings among most wealthy countries
, according to a report from the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), a criminal justice think tank. The report found that the US has at least three times the number of police killings compared to peer countries. Just as the Chauvin verdict was announced, another police killing had reportedly occurred in Columbus, Ohio.
The Atlantic
The criminal-justice system alone cannot remedy a distinctly American pattern.
6:30 AM ET
Getty / The Atlantic
Aviation deaths once looked like an intractable problem. Then the federal government began probing every plane crash with an eye toward preventing future loss of life. Our skies got much safer as a result. A similar approach could reduce police killings. A federal agency should investigate every single killing and significant injury caused by American police officers, who have long killed people at higher rates than cops in many other wealthy democracies.
Police killings and protests against them have loomed large in United States politics for at least the past seven years. Right now the nation is focused most closely on the trial of Derek Chauvin, who infamously knelt on George Floyd’s neck, even as new protests erupt in Minneapolis over the killing of Daunte Wright, who was shot to death by a police officer who says she intended to discharge her taser.