This is an interesting issue, and often a great example of using statistics to mislead. "Stop arbitrarily shooting people" is a tragic thing to have to ask a po

This is an interesting issue, and often a great example of using statistics to mislead. "Stop arbitrarily shooting people" is a tragic thing to have to ask a police force; any loss of life is tragic. But I find that many communications about the numbers involved to be somewhat manipulative. Chiefly, the numbers of people being shot (or choked or beaten to death or otherwise killed). A few sources put that number at around 1000 people per year in the US. Which is terrible [0]. However, filtering that data to just "unarmed" people reduces it to around 54 [1]. Filtering again by race shows 12 unarmed black men dead in 2019 by police killings. USA Today [2] reports that Mapping Police Violence records 25 such killings, but I couldn't find any way to filter their site by unarmed cases. These are still tragedies, certainly. The police should not cause any innocent to fear for their life. But compare these numbers with the homicide rate in Seattle alone [3]. There were as many murders per year there as there as total unjustified police killings in the entire country. Much of which, historically, has been black-on-black violence. It is in the top 90th percentile for crime in the USA. Those numbers actually climbed to 53 and 40 in 2020 and 2021 respectively according to the report in the GP's article! I am reminded of the polls going around, when Defund the Police was in full swing, that indicated that most people - even black people in high-crime areas who were most likely, statistically, to be shot - actually wanted greater police presence, not less. Because the issue with many high-crime areas is that when the police leave, violent crimes go up, not down. For illumination [4]: "In the end, the homicide rate in the CHAZ turned out to be 1,216 per 100,000—nearly 50 times greater than Chicago’s." Every victim there, let's not forget, was black. edit: removed a duplication in sources. [0]: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-shootings-2019/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police... [2]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fact-check-how-many-unarmed-black-men-did-police-kill-2019/5322455002 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac... [3]: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Seattle-Washington.html https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Seattle-Washington.htm... [4]: https://www.city-journal.org/end-of-chaz https://www.city-journal.org/end-of-chaz