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 Public outrage over the deaths of black men at the hands of police
in New York, Missouri and elsewhere have spurred prosecutions.
Police body cameras and bystanders' videos also have helped bring
cases, but even with the upturn, only a small percentage of police
killings result in charges, lawyers and analysts say.
A dozen officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter this
year resulting from shootings, up from an average of about five a
year from 2005 to 2014, said Philip Stinson, an associate professor
of criminology at Ohio's Bowling Green State University. He sifted
court records and media reports as part of research for the Justice
Department on police crimes and arrests.
The 2015 number does not include six Baltimore officers facing trial
for the death of Freddie Gray. The 25-year-old black man died in
April from a spinal injury after he was arrested and bundled in a
transport van. Four of the officers face murder or manslaughter
charges.
None of the officers has been convicted, and over the previous
decade just one in five officers charged was found guilty, said
Stinson, a former police officer.
 Stinson, attorneys and criminologists say it is too early to tell if
the upturn indicates a permanent change or is a statistical fluke.
"We can tell for one year, but is that just an anomaly or is it a
trend?" said Stinson.
The prosecutions represent only a small fraction of the killings by
U.S. police. A Washington Post database last week showed 796 fatal
police shootings this year, and one maintained by the Guardian
newspaper recorded 927 deaths from all causes.
FEW STATISTICS
The United States has lacked official numbers on police-related
deaths, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch said this month that the
Justice Department was trying to improve data on the use of force by
police. A study for the department said in March that less than half
of arrest-related deaths had been reported under two programs.
At least two states, California and Texas, and several local
jurisdictions, including Houston, Dallas and Fairfax County,
Virginia, have started public databases on police-related shootings
or deaths.
Ezekiel Edwards, director of the criminal law reform project at the
American Civil Liberties Union, said mayors, prosecutors and
lawmakers were under increasing public pressure to act when a
questionable police shooting occurred.
"It's not that there has been this massive uptick in civilian
deaths. It's just that there has been this massive uptick in
scrutiny and protests," he said.
Widespread protests over police brutality exploded over the August
2014 shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by
an officer in Ferguson, Missouri. A grand jury declined to indict
the officer, Darren Wilson, and the Justice Department cleared him
of civil rights violations.
Besides the Baltimore police, the officers charged this year
include:
-- Michael Slager, a former North Charleston, South Carolina,
patrolman facing trial over the death of a black man who ran from a
traffic stop and was shot in the back. A bystander caught the
incident on video.
-- Ray Tensing, an ex-University of Cincinnati officer, charged with
murder for the July death of an unarmed black motorist during an
off-campus traffic stop. Tensing's body camera showed the stop and
the shooting.
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-- Stephen Rankin, a former Portsmouth, Virginia, officer, faces a
first-degree murder charge for the April shooting of a black
teenager in a Walmart parking lot.
ASK QUESTIONS LATER
Lawrence Grandpre, with the Baltimore think tank Leaders of a
Beautiful Struggle, which organized protests over Gray's death, said
prosecutions alone were not enough.
Police departments resolve most brutality allegations internally,
and officers in Maryland and many other states are shielded by
special legal protections, he said.
"Cops are going to have a massive incentive to, when in doubt, punch
first, hit first, shoot first, and ask questions later," said
Grandpre, whose father was a Baltimore police officer.
Stuart Slotnick, a former state prosecutor in New York, said getting
a conviction in cases involving police is difficult since officers
are empowered to use weapons.
Police cases generally involve split-second decisions made during
interactions with civilians that go tragically wrong, he said. That
can make prosecutors reluctant to bring charges and judges and
juries to appear to second-guess officers.
"Most of the cases are not clear-cut incidents where a police
officer goes totally rogue and commits a clear-cut crime," said
Slotnick, a partner with Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney.
Stinson, the Bowling Green professor, said 11 of the 47 officers
charged from 2005 to 2014 had been convicted.
Former Eutawville, South Carolina, Police Chief Richard Combs is the
most recent officer to be convicted. He pleaded guilty in September
to misconduct in the 2011 death of a black man over a traffic
ticket.
Prosecutors dropped a murder charge against Combs after two
mistrials. He received a suspended sentence of 10 years in prison,
with one year of home detention and five years of probation.
James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police,
the biggest police union, said officers face unjustified criticism
as they carry out a crucial job.
"The important and telling statistic is the conviction rate," he
said.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Scott Malone and Dan Grebler)
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