(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Police killings of unarmed African-Americans have a deep psychological effect on the entire Black community, causing many who weren’t in the line of fire to feel psychically wounded, according to a study published by The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal.
Police killings of unarmed Black Americans add 1 to 7 additional poor-mental health days per person per year or 55 million excess poor mental-health days among Black Americans, resulting in their suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the report titled, “Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study.”
The report focused on the number of days in which the person questioned said his mental health suffered noticeably after learning of deadly police shooting of an unarmed Black person in their city or state. Police kill more than 300 Blacks each year and at least a quarter of them, or 75, are unarmed.The list of unarmed Black men killed by police is long and continues to grow. These victims include Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray and Stephon Clark.
Most recently, Antwon Rose, Jr., 17, was killed when Michael Rosfeld, an East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania police officer, shot him three times in the back as he ran from a traffic stop. In 2017, 25 percent of the people killed by police were Black although Blacks comprise only 13 percent of the nation’s population. Some were armed and some were not.
There were only 17 days in 2017 when the police did not kill someone. Following the police murder of Michael Brown, which set off days of civil unrest and demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, where the shooting occurred, researchers said Blacks reported suffering from high rates of depression. Dorian Johnson was walking with Brown when the teenager was shot to death by Darren Wilson, a police officer.
Johnson said he suffered from depression following the shooting.The study did not address how deadly police shooting in other parts of the country affected Blacks who read about them in the newspapers, hear about them on the radio, watched television news reports or read news stories about the deadly shooting online.The study also did not report how deadly shootings affected Blacks when police are assigned to desk duty but are later are acquitted of all the charges related to the killings.
The website Mapping Police Violence reported that in 2015 99 percent of cases have not resulted in involved officers being convicted of a crime.
Cases in which police officers were charged in shootings
(AP)–A White police officer, Michael Rosfeld, was charged June 27 with criminal homicide in the fatal shooting last week of an unarmed Black teenager who fled a traffic stop in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Some other high-profile cases in recent years in which police were charged with shootings of Black people:
— Chicago: Marco Proano was sentenced to five years in prison for using excessive force after shooting at a stolen car in 2013, injuring two Black teenagers.
— North Charleston, South Carolina: After killing 50-year-old Walter Scott in 2015, Officer Michael Slager pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in December 2017.
— Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Police Officer Raymond Tensing was tried twice for murder after killing Samuel DuBose, whom he pulled over for driving without a front license plate in 2015. The jury was hung both times, and the charges were dismissed. Tensing received $350,000 from the University of Cincinnati when he agreed to resign.
— Milwaukee: Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown was acquitted in June 2017 of first-degree reckless homicide after shooting Sylville Smith, 23, during a foot chase in August 2016.
— Falcon Heights, Minnesota: Officer Jeronimo Yanez was charged with second-degree manslaughter and other counts after shooting Philando Castile, 32, in 2016. He was acquitted on all charges in June 2017.
— Tulsa, Oklahoma: Officer Betty Shelby was acquitted of manslaughter after shooting a 40-year-old unarmed black man, Terence Crutcher, in September 2016. A neighboring sheriff’s office then announced Shelby, who resigned from the Tulsa Police Department, would join his team.
— Miami: Prosecutors charged Officer Jonathan Aledda with four felonies and misdemeanors, including attempted manslaughter, after he shot an unarmed behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey, in July 2016. Kinsey was supervising an patient with autism who was holding a silver toy truck, which a bystander mistook for a gun.
— Balch Springs, Texas: In April 2017, Officer Roy Oliver shot and killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, who was riding in a car with four other black teenagers. Oliver was indicted on a murder charge and is awaiting trial, scheduled for August.
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