US police fatally shoot nearly 1,000 civilians in 2015: Report

Washington, Dec 28, 2015, (IANS)

A total of 965 American civilians were shot and killed by the US police in 2015, and black unarmed men were six times as likely as whites to be shot dead by police, a report said on Sunday.
Among the victims of the police shootings, 564 were armed with a gun, 281 armed with less threatening weapons such as knives, toy weapons or cutting instruments, but 90 were unarmed, Xinhua quoted a Washington Post report.

Only nine percent of the shootings involved unarmed civilians, but they were disproportionately black, according to the Post's analysis.

Although black men make up only six percent of the US population, they account for 40 percent, or 36, of the unarmed men shot to death by police in 2015.

The Post also found that a hugely disproportionate number -- three in five -- of those killed after exhibiting less threatening behaviour were black or Hispanic.

In most cases, the police officers were not indicted for excessive use of force.

In 2015, only 18 officers were indicted as result of the killings, though it nearly tripled the number in the past decade, which averaged five per year. There were 47 such indictments in the years between 2005 to 2014.