police — CT Numbers — Connecticut by the Numbers

Between January 2013 and April 2016, the rate of individuals killed by police in Connecticut was the third lowest in the nation, according to the website mappingpoliceviolence.org The website indicates that during that period, there were 20 people killed by police in the state, for a rate of 5.60, based on the state’s population. The only states with lower rates were New York, at 5.26, and Rhode Island, at 3.80. stat 1 The highest rates were in New Mexico (31.5), D.C. (28.25), Oklahoma (24.52), Arizona (23.31), Nevada (21.85) and Wyoming (21.29).

Key findings highlighted on the website include:

28 percent of U.S. police killings between Jan 2013 - Apr 2016 were committed by police departments of the 100 largest U.S. cities.
Black people were 39 percent of people killed by these 100 police departments despite being only 21 percent of the population in their jurisdictions.
In only 3 of the 100 largest city police departments was there no one killed between January 2013 and April 2016 (Buffalo, Irvine, and Plano), according to the website.
The majority (51%) of unarmed people killed by the 100 largest city police departments were Black. These police departments killed unarmed Black people at a rate 4 times higher than unarmed White people, the data indicated.
Rates of violent crime in cities did not make it any more or less likely for police departments to kill people. For example, Buffalo and Newark police departments had low rates of police violence despite high crime rates while Spokane and Bakersfield had relatively low crime rates and high rates of police violence, the website points out.

The site is designed to “help hold state policy-makers accountable for police violence,” and highlight “how police violence disproportionately impacts black people in many states.” It offers a number of mapping tools to allow users to review and contrast data, and also offers a database of gathered information.

compare Looking at the rate at which Blacks were killed by police during the period January 2013 – April 2016, Connecticut was among the lowest, at 8.3, which reflects three deaths. In New Hampshire, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Idaho and South Dakota, largely reflecting the population in those states, there were no deaths of African Americans, according to the data.

In 2015, among the 100 largest police departments, there were 14 police departments in which 100 percent of the individuals killed were Black (St Louis, Atlanta, Kansas City, Cleveland, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Raleigh, Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia and Charlotte) and five departments in which all of those killed were White. Connecticut’s largest cities were not included in the list.

The research indicated that “while some have blamed violent crime for being responsible for police violence in some communities, data shows that high levels of violent crime in cities did not appear to make it any more or less likely for police departments to kill people.”

The report defines a “police killing” as “a case where a person dies as a result of being chased, beaten, arrested, restrained, shot, pepper sprayed, tasered, or otherwise harmed by police officers, whether on-duty or off-duty, intentional or accidental.”

The website Mapping Police Violence is a “research collaborative collecting comprehensive data on police killings nationwide to quantify the impact of police violence in communities,” as described by the website. The research team indicates that “the data represented on this site is the most comprehensive accounting of people killed by police since 2013.”