3 years after Floyd’s death, police killings of Blacks continue unabated

WASHINGTON – Three years after the death of Goerge Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, the situation for the Black community in the U.S. remains frightening.

Images of a white police officer pinning Floyd to the ground in 2020 reignited the Black Lives Matter movement.

It had sparked protests across the U.S. demanding racial justice and an end to police brutality.

Figures compiled by Türkiye’s Anadolu news agency show that violence and discrimination against Blacks have not abated.

The number of killings of Blacks by American police officers has increased every year since Floyd’s murder.

In 2020, the year Floyd was murdered, some 1,159 people lost their lives in police encounters. Among them were 287 Black people.

In 2021, U.S. police killed 305 Blacks out of 1,147.

In 2022, U.S. police killed 313 Blacks out of 1,197 in encounters.

In 2022, Blacks accounted for 26% of those killed in clashes.

This is staggering considering that they make up just 14.2% of the country’s total population.

In 2023 so far, 61 of the 363 people killed by police have been identified as Blacks.

Even more concerning is the fact that the conviction rate of police officers has remained exceptionally low.

In 98.1% of homicide cases reported between 2013 and 2022, not a single officer was punished.

From 2020 to 2023, police officers were charged and convicted in only three Black homicide cases.

One of them included the one who had pinned Floyd down on the ground for over nine minutes while he gasped for air.

In 2022, only three of the more than 300 killings of Blacks by police have been charged.

Those cases are still ongoing.

In 2021, only in 10 of the 305 cases of killings of Blacks, police officers were charged.

In 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter Movement, only 13 officers were charged.

No fewer than 270 officers involved in the killing of Blacks walked free.

According to the last 10 years of data mapping police violence, Blacks are three times more likely to be killed by police than others.

 Over the past decade, an average of 7.18 Blacks per 1 million people were killed by police higher than any other race.

About 16.5% of Blacks killed by police in the last 10 years were unarmed.

The data show that in about 95% of America’s police departments in major cities, kill more Blacks than whites.

Black and brown people are also more likely to be killed while fleeing, running away, or in a car.

From 2013 to 2023, Chicago police killed blacks 26 times more often than whites.

In Boston and Minneapolis, the state where Floyd was killed three years ago, the number is 28 times higher.