In Chicago, Black people are nearly 31 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement than white people, according to data released by Campaign Zero’s Mapping Police Violence Project.
Campaign Zero is “a research-based platform to move to an understanding of public safety beyond policing,” per its website. It was launched in 2015 after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson as well as other high-profile police shootings. In subsequent years, the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor also sparked an international protest movement against police brutality against Black people.
This year, attention was again drawn to police killings of Black Americans with the shooting of Sonya Massey, a Black woman from the Springfield, Ill., area. Body camera footage revealed that, after she called 911 to report a prowler outside of her home on July 6, Massey was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy, WBBM reported.
Data from Mapping Police Violence found that, at least 112 people in Chicago have been killed by law enforcement since 2013. While Black people only account for 29% of the city’s population, they account for 76% of people who were killed by police. Black people killed by police were also younger (30 years old on average) than white people (41 years old on average). The vast majority of people killed by police in Chicago (92%) have been male.
In the area of Cook County surrounding Chicago, at least 43 people have been killed by law enforcement since 2013.
“Despite Black people comprising only 16% of the population, 47% of people killed by law enforcement in Cook County were Black (excluding incidents where race is unknown),” said Mapping Police Violence. That means that Black people in Cook County were five times more likely to be killed by law enforcement.
These rates are higher than the nationwide rate. According to Mapping Police Violence, Black people in the U.S. are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people. As of this July, at least 809 people had been killed by police in the nation, 55 more than during the same time period last year.
“We believe the data represented in Mapping Police Violence is the most comprehensive accounting of people killed by police since 2013,” said the project website. “A report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated approximately 1,200 people were killed by police between June, 2015 and May, 2016. Our database identified 1,104 people killed by police over this time period. While there are undoubtedly police killings that are not included in our database (namely, those that go unreported by the media), these estimates suggest that our database captures 92% of the total number of police killings that have occurred since 2013. We hope these data will be used to provide greater transparency and accountability for police departments as part of the ongoing work to end police violence in America.”