Over the course of four days, two unarmed men were shot and killed by law enforcement officers in Texas.
According to reports from the Texas Attorney General’s Office, that brings this year’s total to ten civilian deaths, so far. According to the police reports, four of the civilians were unarmed when officers opened fire.
Six weeks into 2016 and the Washington Post reports 108 people have been shot and killed by police in the U.S.
The Texas AG began to track the number of officer involved shootings in the state in September of last year but the federal government does not compile that information from any states. No national research groups count how many people are killed by police each year,
The Washington Post uses media reports, public records, online databases and independent reporting to keep a nationwide tally.
The Post’s numbers show 990 people were killed by police in 2015 and close to 100 of those deaths were reported in Texas, the Washington Post reports.
“If 10% of officer involved shootings are in Texas that’s a huge problem, that’s a huge problem for Texas,” said attorney, Jim Harrington.
The founder and director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, Harrington said he believes a big part of the problem is that police aren’t held accountable.
“No matter how much we put training into the program, this stuff still goes on,” Harrington said.
On Monday, a 17-year-old was shot and killed by an Austin police officer on the North-side of the Capital City. APD was called to the area to respond to calls about a man acting erratic and aggressive.
Police say David Joseph ignored orders to stop and “charged” toward the officer and that’s when the officer fired.
When officers spotted the teen, Joseph was naked in the street and unarmed.
“I mean that tells you there is something wrong here—this isn’t a kid out robbing a store or committing a crime, this kid has an issue so you know that, you see he’s not armed,” Harrington said. “So how does he possibly end up dead? That’s unbelievable to me.”
Four days earlier, a 36-year-old Antronie Scott was fatally shot by an officer in San Antonio.
Police later determined the man had a cell phone in his hand, not a gun. Undercover officers were monitoring Scott, who had outstanding arrest warrants. According to police, Scott spun around quickly with something in his hand when he was approached by a uniformed officer.
“A cop has to be ready at any given moment to take a life or to give his or her life,” Kevin Lawrence said that was his mindset for the 22 years he served on the police force. “I was shot at a couple of times, I was stabbed once,” Lawrence said he’s lucky he never had to discharge his weapon on duty.
He is now the executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association, or TMPA. “If we’re going to be completely frank about it, show me another professional that polices their own as well as law enforcement,” Lawrence said police are held accountable. He does not think the laws or policies need to be changed.
“I think the issue is we are trying to apply unreasonable expectations to these human beings who are trying to do what’s becoming more and more a super human job,” said Lawrence.
The numbers reported by the Washington Post indicate nearly 80 percent of the civilians killed by police in 2015 were armed with a deadly weapon.
“I don’t know that we will ever stop it unless people stop breaking the law,” Lawrence said. “More and more of our citizens need to understand that if you think an officer is doing something wrong, comply and complain later because that officer has been trained to overcome resistance.”
Lawrence said police training could be improved, he thinks the current practices leave little room for common sense and he want police to use more of their own discretion.
“If x then y, if y then z, but what if it’s a 6-year-old, what if it’s an 85-year-old man? They don’t cover that in training,” Lawrence said.
The officers in Austin and San Antonio are now on paid administrative leave—that’s standard procedure after an officer involved shooting and both of those investigations are ongoing.
“Well, we got to try something else for sure—I’m mean what we are doing isn’t working. We’ve got to somewhere, tighten up, ratchet up the accountability,” Harrington said.
While ten civilian deaths have been reported in 2016, two law enforcement officers were injured during the time frame.
Nationwide the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty dropped in 2015.
But just in the last four days, five on-duty officers were killed—more than doubling the number of officers killed so far this year.
