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    Re: Miracles will never cease. Archived Message

    Posted by Raskolnikov on October 3, 2019, 10:14 am, in reply to "Miracles will never cease."

    https://www.dumptheguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/02/amber-guyger-sentenced-prison-murder-botham-jean

    So she got ten years which is pretty lenient for murder, especially in the U.S. and even more espcially in sodding Texas.

    There were some extraordinary scenes in the courtroom with the judge giving her a bible and a hug and the victim's brother also hugging her and saying he forgave her. I'm not sure what to make of it all. In recent times the only police that was seriously hammered by the courts for killing a civilian was the Somali-American who killed an Aussie tourist; he got twelve and a half years. I'm sure someone has put the numbers together but I can't find them at the moment.

    This article has these numbers, which are bad enough:

    https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/police-shooting-convictions_us_5695968ce4b086bc1cd5d0da?ri18n=true

    That point is clearly reflected in the number of police officers who were convicted on murder or manslaughter charges last year for fatally shooting a civilian in the line of duty.

    In 2015, that number was zero.

    And that's not unusual. No officers were convicted on such charges in 2014 either.

    In fact, since 2005, there have only been 13 officers convicted of murder or manslaughter in fatal on-duty shootings, according to data provided to The Huffington Post by Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminology at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University. Stinson's data doesn't include cases in which civilians died in police custody or were killed by other means, or those in which officers only faced lesser charges.

    I will have a dig around for some detailed stats.

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