As a young man, I voraciously read George Orwell’s “1984”,  Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Alvin Toffler’s trilogy which included “Future Shock”’, “The Third Wave” and “Power Shift”. During the era of the Vietnam War, I wondered seriously about the future and how it was destined to unfold. Now being considerably older, I have the vantage point to reflect back on my early ruminations and expectations. Unfortunately, I am too old to alter the lessons that are now so painfully obvious. Instead, I pass the gauntlet to those who can understand and take action on what I have unavoidably come to expect for America.

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A Maine-based study found a lack of training and oversight and a system that justifies deadly use of force

An investigation by the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram has found that a disturbingly high percentage of individuals shot by police suffer from mental health problems. There are no federal statistics on police shootings of mentally ill people, but according to the investigation published this week, “a review of available reports indicates that at least half of the estimated 375 to 500 people shot and killed by police each year in this country have mental health problems.”

…In September, as I noted here, police in Houston shot dead a wheelchair-bound double-amputee diagnosed with severe mental health problems when officers saw him wave a shiny object (which turned out to be a pen) in the air.

…

The report notes a lack of police training in crisis intervention as fueling the problem, undergirded by a lack of oversight and accountability: “While the Justice Department counts every assault, robbery and drunk-driving arrest — as well as every police officer shot on duty — it gathers no numbers on mentally ill people shot by police,” the report stated. Meanwhile, the FBI does not quantify police shootings that are found “unjustified”: “the FBI tallies only police shootings that result in ‘justifiable’ homicides; 373 to 411 of these shootings occurred each year from 2006 through 2010. Unjustified police shootings are counted among all other homicides. The FBI doesn’t specifically count any incidents involving mentally ill people.”

Deadly force is rarely ruled unjustified — the investigation noted that in Maine, for example, the Attorney General’s Office has justified every single police shooting since 2000. Corroborating statistics in other states, although rarely collected, attest to the near-ubiquity of justification of use of deadly force. Colorines found that in Chicago between 2000 to 2007, only one police shooting out of 84 was considered to be “unjustified” (meaning no probable cause was found for believing a suspect to be a threat).

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Submitted by Jolly-Dolly

TOTAL CORRECTIONS POPULATION:

Total Incarcerated, Prison and Jail  2,253,705  

Prison Population  1,518,104 (497 per 100K of population)  

Jail Population 735,601 (per 100K of population)  

Probation Population  4,055,514   

Parole Population  840,676

Inmate ratios by gender:

• Male: 203,950 (93.5 %)
• Female: 14,157 (6.5 %) 

Inmates by race:

• White: 129,323 (59.3 %)
• Black: 81,343 (37.3 %)
• Native American: 3,976 (1.8 %)
• Asian: 3,465 (1.6 %)

Types of Offenses:

• Drug Offenses: 92,397 (47.8 %)
• Weapons, Explosives, Arson: 30,855 (16.0 %)
• Immigration: 23,191 (12.0 %)
• Robbery: 8,140 (4.2 %)
• Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses: 7,506 (3.9 %)
• Extortion, Fraud, Bribery: 10,840 (5.6 %)
• Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses: 5,660 (2.9 %)
• Miscellaneous: 1,644 (0.9 %)
• Sex Offenses: 10,873 (5.6 %)
• Banking and Insurance, Counterfeit, Embezzlement: 870 (0.5 %)
• Courts or Corrections: 639 (0.3 %)
• Continuing Criminal Enterprise: 498 (0.3 %)
• National Security: 88 (0.0 %)