Recent Survey Shows Cops Kill Civilians At Twice The Number Previously Believed

Seven Las Vegas Metro Police officers volleyed a combined 58 shots and killed an 18-year-old who was accused of multiple armed robberies in northwest Las Vegas.

The Thursday morning shooting occurred when a cop spotted Terrence Dewayne White Jr. Sleeping in a stolen Durano Thursday morning. The officer called for backup, White woke up and started to drive away.

“There’s nowhere for you to go. Stop now!” should a police officer. “You will be shot if you come this way.”

The cop fired three shotgun blasts. Another turned 14 rounds into the SUV. Five more fired up to 19 times — each.

All seven officers are on paid leave while the district attorney tries to sort it all out.

White, who died was the fourth victim of police shooting in 2018 and the eighth involving Las Vegas police.

Cop shootings are only under-counted. According to an analysis of the 50 largest local police departments in America show cops shot over twice as many Americans as thought.

The analysis, conducted by VICE News, show police in the surveyed departments shoot blacks at a higher rate than any previously released data has shown. Police shootings of unarmed persons is also far more common than known.

While recent efforts to bring reform have brought down police shootings, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is trashing those reforms. Sessions destructive patterns is leaving advocates, experts and even some local law enforcement officials dismayed.

In the study, both fatal and nonfatal shootings were reviewed. Cops in the 50 largest local departments, including Las Vegas, shot more than 3,600 people between 2010 and 2016. An additional 700 other times, cops fired at persons and missed. Two-thirds of the people cops shot at survived.

Police shootings are generally rare. Experts point out nonfatal shootings are just as vital to understanding police violence as are fatal encounters.

“We need to know how often it happens,” said Nicholas Wooldridge, a Las Vegas defense attorney. “If for no other reason than to understand the problem.”

Following the killing of Michael Brown in 2014, and other high-profile incidents, The Washington Post started to keep a tally of fatal incidents. Former-FBI Director James Comey cited the lack of federal data on police killings “embarrassing.” He committed the agency to new initiatives meant to collect data from local police departments. Only a handful made their data public. The Tampa Bay Times and the The Texas Tribune kept count of all police shootings in Florida and the big cities in Texas. Other than that, just 35 police departments participate in the initiative now.

35 of 18,000 American law enforcement agencies. Some of those departments don’t even have policies in place to trace shootings by their own officers.