Richard Becker | GlobalResearch.ca

One area in which the U.S. is unquestionably exceptional is the level of state violence directed against African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and working and poor people of all nationalities. U.S. police killings outnumber those in other developed capitalist countries by as much as 100-1.

How many people are killed every year by the police in the U.S.? The exact number is not known.

There is no federal agency that keeps track.

The FBI compiles annual statistics for “justified homicides” by police—and all reported police killings are registered as “justified” by the FBI.

But participation in reporting homicides to the FBI by police and sheriff’s departments is voluntary.

Of approximately 18,000 police agencies, only about 800 provide statistics.

The murder of Eric Garner on Staten Island last summer will not be counted in the FBI statistics for 2014, because the notorious NYPD has chosen not to participate in reporting.

According to FBI statistics, there were 461 “justified homicides” by police in 2013.

However, the website KilledByPolice.net reported that U.S. non-military police killed 748 people in just the last eight months of 2013, and 1,100 in 2014.

The KilledByPolice numbers were compiled using mainstream media sources. Actual totals are undoubtedly higher, as not all police killings are reported, and it is virtually impossible to check all of the tens of thousands of media sources in the country.

By contrast, in England, also a capitalist country with a long history of racism, police reportedly fired guns three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities. Police do not carry guns on patrol in England.

From 2010 through 2014, there were five fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent of England’s, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same time period.

In 2011, the FBI reported 404 “justifiable homicides” by U.S. police. Based on the data collected by KilledByPolice for 2013 and 2014, the real number of police killings for 2011 was likely over 1,000. There were two reported police killings in England, meaning that the rate of killing by U.S. police was about 100 times that of English cops in 2011.

Want the truth about police brutality? Watch the eye-opening video below, The Largest Street Gang in America