Brian Burkhardt: Cops Kill Someone Every 7.5 Hours in This Country

“I asked the FBI for the addresses for all the State and Local law enforcement agencies that contribute to the Uniform Crime Report and instead of just answering my request they lied to me a bunch of times.” – D. Brian Burkhardt, Shadow of Truth

The incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland have significantly elevated the awareness of police brutality in the United States. We should be especially concerned about unchecked police violence inflicted on citizens now that nationwide the local police departments are being converted into quasi-military forces. Many of these police departments are better armed with sophisticated military equipment than some entire countries. Miranda Rights per the Constitution seem to have been discarded along with each of the other Bill of Rights (1st ten Constitutional Amendments)

“The nation’s leading law enforcement agency [FBI] collects vast amounts of information on crime nationwide, but missing from this clearinghouse are statistics on where, how often, and under what circumstances police use deadly force. In fact, no one anywhere comprehensively tracks the most significant act police can do in the line of duty: take a life.” – Brian Burkhardt, FatalEncounters.com

Brian is the editor of the Reno News & Review and decided to assemble a comprehensive national database of people who are killed through interactions with police started with a simple question: “How often does that happen?” As it turns out, what he thought was 2-3 police-related murders per day, in some cases, is as high as 5-6. The national average now is roughly one person killed by cop every 7.5 hours.

Furthermore, the racial bias is not clear. The deadliest jurisdictions in this order are: 1) New Mexico 2) Washington DC 3) Arizona 4) Nevada 5) Oklahoma.

You can hear about Brian’s project and the stonewalling he’s encountered in attempting to assemble a comprehensive database of cop-related killings in this country:

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): Request Denied

It’s very refreshing to hear from someone who is energetically trying to make a positive difference in our system by trying to get the truth out about police brutality – specifically cop-related murders. However, after a decade and a half of observing, researching, and living in a country in which the Government has become increasingly less willing to let the public see what is going on – one in which the political system is sliding into complete totalitarian control – both Rory and I have a fundamental disagreement with Brian’s assessment about whether or not the Government, FBI, and local police departments are withholding cop-killing information from the public.

Brian’s altruism and his default position of giving the Government the benefit of the doubt is quite admirable. However, by Brian’s own admission, the exceptions of the Freedom of Information Act essentially give the Government the ability to deny any information request. If you read through the exceptions as listed on Brian’s website, you’ll see that the exceptions synthesize down to a boilerplate rubber stamp “Request Denied.”

Essentially if the Government decides they don’t want to honor your FOIA, they’re not going to.