92 killed, 170 wounded in Chicago Police shooting in 2010-2015: report

Chicago police officers killed 92 people and wounded 170 others in a six-year span from 2010 to 2015, according to the newly released data.

A Chicago police officer on average fired shots at someone every five days, data compiled by Chicago Tribune after tracking and analyzing every Chicago police shooting in the 2010-2015 show.

The data show that during the six-year time span, police officers fired at least 2,623 bullets in the 435 shootings, with 262 people shot; about four out of every five people shot by police were African-American males; about half of the officers involved in the shootings were African-American or Hispanic; and the number of shooting by police has declined from more than 107 in 2011 to 44 in 2015.

But despite the decline, Chicago still outpaces other major cities, say Los Angeles, New York, Houston and Philadelphia in terms of police-involved shooting.

The data also show a wide racial disparity in terms of who is shot: 80 percent of the 262 people shot by Chicago police were African-American; 35 or 14 percent were Hispanics; and only 14 or less than 6 percent that were shot were white.

Chicago Tribune' s analysis finds that the shootings occurred all over the city of Chicago but were more common on the South and West sides, where certain blocks have been plagued with drugs, gangs and unrelenting poverty for decades.

Few police officers that have fired shots were punished, the analysis finds, as the police union contract prevent the police department from identifying officers after a shooting unless a lawsuit has been filed.

Moreover, the Independent Police Review Authority's (IPRA) investigations of police-involved shootings usually had testimony and reports from other police officers who backed up one another's accounts, a phenomenon of "code of silence" that has been criticized for years.

Actually Chicago police are the only witnesses listed in most of the shootings, with civilian witnesses listed in just 83 of the incidents, the analysis finds.

In all but a few shootings the agency investigated in the six years, IPRA ruled police officers were justified in use of deadly force.

Chicago Tribune said it has battled for seven months and even threatened to sue under Freedom of Information Act before getting its hands on these data.

Source : XINHUA