Patricia Mendoza

Mrs. Thomas

UWRT 1103-1004

Annotated Bibliographies

Annotated Bibliography 7

Kelly, Kimberly Kindy Kimbriell. "Thousands Dead Few Prosecuted." The Washington Post. N.p., 12

Apr. 2015. Web. 9 Apr. 2017. <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-37845856.html?refid=easy_hf>.

Kimberly Kindy and Kimbriell Kelly are both investigative reporters at The Washington Post.

This article discussed the number of police officers that were actually charged for fatal shootings.

The article claims that since 2005, only 54 police officers have ever been charged and that most

have been acquitted in cases that were solved, according to an analysis by The Washington Post

and researchers at Bowling Green State University. In an overwhelming majority of the cases

where an officer was charged, the person killed was unarmed. The article claims that only in rare

cases do prosecutors and grand juries decide that the killing cannot be justified. Also, often after

these officer commit these shootings and are acquitted of their charge, they remain serving in

their departments. Not only that but those who are charged tend to serve short sentences, the

article gives the following example: Two Atlanta plainclothes officers opened fire and killed a

92-year-old woman during a mistaken drug raid on her home. As they pried the bars off her front

door, she fired a single warning shot with an old revolver. The police responded by smashing the

door down and shooting at her 39 times. One of the officers tried to disguise their error by

planting bags of marijuana in her basement. The two officers pleaded guilty and received
unusually stiff sentences of six and 10 years in a federal prison. Others could serve only

months. Race is a huge factor when it comes down to police shootings, among the officers

charged since 2005 for fatal shootings, more than three-quarters were white. Two-thirds of their

victims were minorities, all but two of them black. Finally, the article then goes on to say that

most of the time, prosecutors dont press charges against police even if there are strong

suspicions that an officer has committed a crime.

Other quotes:

In half the criminal cases identified by The Post and researchers at Bowling

Green, prosecutors cited forensics and autopsy reports that showed this very thing:

unarmed suspects who had been shot in the back.

They are used to giving commands and people obeying, said Stinson, who

previously worked as a police officer. They dont like it when people dont listen to

them, and things can quickly become violent when people dont follow their orders.
Society has put it into our heads that the officer is always right, she said. That

has to change.

Analysis:

I chose to include this article as one of my annotated bibliographies because I wanted to point

out in my thesis paper the injustice of police shootings. The reason why riots break out among

the public is not just because someone innocent was killed but because no justice was had. I

believe that it is a major problem that some police officers walk around with the mindset that

they can do anything they want just because they carry a badge. This is the reason civilians dont
trust police in the first place, because we never know which cop is corrupt and we never know

whats to come from interactions with cops.