The crisis of US police shootings has been increasingly well-documented by advocates and journalists, with data now suggesting officers fatally shoot an average of more than three people every day.
Since George Floyd’s murder four years ago, there has been growing scrutiny of a more hidden epidemic of police violence: deaths at the hands of officers who did not use guns. An Associated Press investigation in March found that more than 1,000 people died in US police custody from 2012 to 2021 after officers used “less lethal” tactics, including pinning victims face down and stunning them with Tasers. In hundreds of those cases, medical officials deemed the deaths “accidents” or “natural” despite officers’ use of force.
