Police Killing Data Filled With Many Unknowns

This IS something Obama and Loretta Lynch (newly appointed AG) CAN (and should) do. Require accurate reporting to the Dept. of Justice of all officer-involved killings, brutality and abuse of citizens.

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Police Killing Data Filled With Many Unknowns
AP* By ALLEN G. BREED * 12/07/2014

Ferguson, Missouri. Cleveland, Ohio. Staten Island, New York. Eutawville, South Carolina.

In each place, individuals — all unarmed except for a child carrying a pellet gun — died at the hands of police officers. All of the dead were black. The officers involved, white.

To many Americans, it feels like a national tidal wave. And yet, no firm statistics can say whether this spate of officer-involved deaths is a growing trend or simply a series of coincidences generating a deafening buzz in news reports and social media.

"We have a huge scandal in that we don't have an accurate count of the number of people who die in police custody," says Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a leading scholar on policing and civil liberties. "That's outrageous."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/07/police-killings_n_6284358.html