Over four times more people were killed by police officers between 2001-2011 than those killed in criminal executions, and the gap appears to be growing. This is what Sean McElwee found using data culled from both the CDC and the Death Penalty Information Center, represented by the graph below.



The deaths represented above caused by police shootings are those which definitionally fall under an umbrella category termed " legal interventions ." These are shootings which occur during the context of arrests, police stops, the quelling of civil unrest and efforts to maintain order. Of course, some of these police shootings are only 'legal' in that they are perpetrated by law enforcement while in uniform.

The fact that we, as a country, execute between 50-100 people a year is abhorrent. That police officers every year kill over four times that amount while on the job?

That's terrifying, particularly as police forces continue to accumulate military-grade weapons and increasingly behave as though they are patrolling Fallujah, not American streets.

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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, recently published by Oneworld Publications.

Follow @David_EHG

