Well this is good news! The number of police men charged with murders and manslaughter has tripled in 2015. Experts believe that video evidence is the cause of this outstanding change. More video surveillance can definitely help keep track of these dirty cops.
In the past years, the annual number of policeman charged was fewer than 5. Now, the number has skyrocketed to 15. 10 of those 15 included video surveillance. Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University says,
“If you take the cases with the video away, you are left with what we would expect to see over the past 10 years – about five cases. You have to wonder if there would have been charges if there wasn’t video evidence.”
Last week there was footage released of a young boy being shot 16 times by a cop who claims his life was in danger. Jason Van Dyke was charged with first degree murder. He is the 15th officer to be charged with murder in 2015.
Joseph Tacopina is a New York defense attorney and former prosecutor of many police officers. He has released a statement about this case saying,
“This had all the trappings of a life-threatening situation for a law-enforcement officer – PCP-laced juvenile who had been wreaking havoc on cars with a knife, except you have the video that shows a straight-out execution.”
Statistics show that there has been over 1000 fatal shootings each year by police. Hopefully this madness stops and the number of killings in teens by police stops drastically.
Source:HuffingtonPost
