Cops in Utah Are Responsible for 15% of All Homicides
Police in Utah have killed more people in the last five years than gang members, drug dealers or child abusers have in the state—yet county prosecutors have deemed all but one of those fatal police shootings justified, according to an explosive new report.
The startling findings, revealed Sunday by the Salt Lake City Tribune, come as a nation anxiously awaits the grand jury verdict in the controversial death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. At the same time, several police-involved killings in Utah, which took place under questionable circumstances, continue to leave people outraged and demanding greater accountability.
Compiling media reports, crime statistics, and medical-examiner and court records, The Tribune reviewed nearly 300 homicides between January 2010 and October 2014. The paper found that law enforcement officers killed 45 people, a whopping 15 percent of all homicides during that period. The use of deadly force by police is the second most common way Utahns kill one another, topped only by intimate partner violence.
Yet despite a potentially alarming public safety crisis, nearly every fatal police shooting has been ruled defensible. Only one—the 2012 shooting of Danielle Willard by West Valley City police—was deemed unjustified. However, a judge threw out the criminal case against the officer last month.
http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/crime/police-shooitings-utah/