According to the count of Washington Post, 1,055 people were shot and killed by law enforcement in 2021. This is the highest number in six years that the newspaper has collected data on the subject. The annual total, however, is fairly stable, suggesting that the police approach has not changed, despite scandals and attempts at reform.
American police “shot and killed at least 1 055 people nationwide last year,” underlines the Washington Post. This is the highest number of deaths since the newspaper began compiling statistics on the subject in 2015, despite protests and “the outcry of recent years over the issue of police brutality and the number of people killed annually by the police”.
The daily newspaper of the American federal capital observes that this number of 1,055 people killed by the police in 2021 is an increase compared to the data for 2020, which reported 1,021 victims, and to those of 2019, the year when the Washington Post counted 999 people killed by US police across the country.
Very young victims
However, the newspaper also reports that, since it began to compile these statistics, the annual average is invariably around 1,000 deaths. From which to deduce that the “American police have not changed their approach or tactics” despite attempts at reform in recent years.
the Washington Post also indicates that 1% of people killed by the police in 2021 were minors and cites in particular the case of Fanta Bility. This eight-year-old child died at the exit of a football match, in Pennsylvania, under the bullets of police officers who thought that the passengers of the car in which she was traveling were armed. Another case is that of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old teenager killed in April 2021 in Chicago because the police mistakenly thought he was armed.