User:LUOF

Test of table

Month	Number of killings in list
January	29

Non‑Break‑Hyphen

Key Phrases for List of Killings

Google automatically stems root words (eg, kill returns kills) but not the reverse (kills does not return kill)

LEO = officer|police|deputy|trooper

"police kill"

"police shoot, kill"

"fatally shot by * LEO"

"fatal LEO shooting"

"killed by * police|deputy|trooper|agent"

"killed by LEO"

"fatally shot by officer|police|deputy|trooper|agent"

"officer|police|deputy|trooper-involved shooting" (killed|died|fatal)

"police shooting" (gunman|armed) (killed|died|fatal)

List of wrongful death suits following killings by law enforcement officers in the United States

Person Killed	State (City)	Status of suit	Description
Cuevas, Jonathan	California (Los Angeles)	Filed
Diaz, Manuel	California (Anaheim)	Filed
Flores	Texas (Amarillo)	Filled
Henry, DJ	New York (New York)	Filed
McDade, Kendrec	California (Pasadena	Filed
McGrath, Anthony	Massachusetts (Plymouth)	Dismissed
Trujillo, Claudio	Texas (Amarillo)	Settled for $760k

Deaths during police chases

If a police officer dies in a vehicle crash while chasing a suspect, the suspect can be charged with murder for that death (for example: [1]) What is the legal logic behind that homicide charge?

When a suspect dies in a vehicle crash while being chased by police, is it suicide or justifiable homicide?

Here's an example where the family of the deceased sues the police department when a suspect kills a third party while the suspect flees police: [2][3]

Date	Person Killed	State (City)	Description
2012-10-12	Kotsiopoulos, Maryanne (49)	Massachusetts (Brockton)

Cases of Police Brutality

Removed by anonymous editor 12/18/12. Restore once case proceeds Texas

• December 6, 2012: An off-duty sheriff's deputy working security at a department store confronted a group of women regarding shoplifting. One of the women struck the officer with her purse and all the women fled. The deputy chased the woman who hit him to her car and opened her door. She drove off, dragging the deputy with her. The deputy shot and injured her as she drove away. She was found dying at a nearby apartment complex and paramedics pronounced her dead.

She was passanger: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2245074/Walmart-security-guard-shoots-shoplifting-mother-dead-parking-lot-tries-escape-young-children.html

Outside line of duty

Hayslip [4]

Methodology draft

Search methodology

Search terms

Many search engines and newspaper websites allow a Boolean search that can be used to return more relevant results than would a simple search. Searching for articles relevant to this list involves at least two groups of search terms. One set involves the killing of a person, the other set involves the involvement of a law enforcement officer.

• The killing of a person can be described by any one or more of the following terms:
  • died
  • dead
  • death
  • fatal
  • fatally
  • homicide
  • kill
  • killed
  • killing
  • lethal
  • manslaughter

• The involvement of law enforcement can be described by any one or more of the following terms:
  • agent
  • constable
  • custody
  • deputy
  • detective
  • investigator
  • officer
  • police
  • sheriff
  • "special operations"
  • SWAT
  • trooper
  • warden

Google's Advanced Search can be accessed at http://www.google.com/advanced_search or by typing specific syntax into the standard Google search. Terms which are synonyms are separated by an OR and sets of terms that much each be included are separated by an AND. A search phrase that requires one or more terms from both sets of search terms described above looks like this:

(died OR dead OR death OR fatal OR fatally OR homicide OR kill OR killed OR killing OR lethal OR manslaughter) AND (agent OR constable OR custody OR deputy OR detective OR investigator OR officer OR police OR sheriff OR "special operations" OR SWAT OR trooper OR warden)

A general Google search for the above terms seems to return results that are judged by Google to be the most interesting to a general audience. Such a search captures the most sensational occurrences, but does a poor job of returning all occurrences. For that reason it is better to search the websites of individual news sources such newspapers and TV news stations. While many news sites allow Boolean searches using their search capabilities, not all sites use the same syntax. For that reason it is probably easier to use Google's search of a site using the syntax site:site_name such as site:denverpost.com.

A search of a news website often returns results which include the search terms but the topic is in regards to an event in another country, or in a movie or book, or within blog or editorial entries. If the newspaper's website is structured to differentiate between the types of articles within the site's URL, then it is possible to refine the search without sacrificing completeness of results. For example, the Denver Post places news articles about the Denver area and the Western United States in the subdirectory /news. Therefore, a search with the term site:denverpost.com/news will return the relevant articles while eliminating many irrelevant articles. For smaller news sites, narrowing of the search to subdirectories is often not possible or may eliminate relevant articles.

The AND term is Google's default, and so is optional. A combined search of all the above concepts of the Denver Post looks like this:

site:denverpost.com/news (died OR dead OR death OR fatal OR fatally OR homicide OR kill OR killed OR killing OR lethal OR manslaughter) (agent OR constable OR custody OR deputy OR detective OR investigator OR officer OR police OR sheriff OR "special operations" OR SWAT OR trooper OR warden)

Geographic range

Two pilot studies were conducted by LUOF to assess the degree to which relevant occurrences are covered by news sources outside of the immediate region. The first study used the following relatively narrow search terms: police shot (killed OR lethal OR died). The websites of newspapers in four major cities (Chicago, Miami, Memphis, Seattle) in different parts of the country were searched in October 2011. Multiple relevant articles were found in each city, but none of the four newspapers included any articles on the occurrences located in the other three cities. Only the most nationally sensational occurrences were covered outside of the local region. This first limited study was sufficient to determine that it would not be possible to use use one or a few major newspapers to identify all occurrences relevant to this list.

The second study, conducted by LUOF in November 2011, used the following, more comprehensive, search terms: (died OR dead OR death OR killed OR lethal OR manslaughter) AND (agent OR constable OR custody OR deputy OR detective OR investigator OR officer OR police OR sheriff OR "special operations" OR SWAT OR trooper). The state of Colorado was chose for being medium-sized, having a large centrally located city, having several medium-sized cities and including large rural areas. The Table of United States Metropolitan Statistical Areas and Table of United States Micropolitan Statistical Areas were used to determine which regions to search. The Statistical Areas were searched from largest to smallest. In each case a website of a longstanding print newspaper was searched. Considering only the occurrences in 2011, the results indicate a local focus. The Denver Post search produced nine occurrences in the Denver MSA and one in Colorado Springs. The Colorado Springs Gazette search produced two additional local occurrences and two previously discovered occurrences in the Denver MSA. The search of the Fort Collins Coloradoan produced one result, which was new. The search of the Pueblo Chieftain produced two results, which were new. Searches of the other nine Metro- and Micropolitan Statistical Areas did not produce any other occurrences for 2011. The Denver Post was searched again for all five names of persons killed in other cities who were not found in the initial search. Two of the occurrences were discovered on that subsequent search. One was apparently missed due to operator error and the other was missed due to the article and Google not highlighting officer involvement in the summary. Three occurrences in other parts of the state were not listed in the Denver Post, even when searching the site just for the person's name and city. The pre-2011 results showed a similar pattern in terms of coverage. During that time period the seven Micropolitan areas did produce one relevant occurrence which had not been discovered in the searches of the Metropolitan areas, but that one occurrence was found on a subsequent search of the Denver Post by deceased name and city.

In conclusion, a comprehensive listing of relevant occurrences, at a minimum, will require individual searches of reliable news sources for each of the 367 Metropolitan Statistical Areas. At this point it is unclear whether it is necessary to additionally search news sources in each of the 576 Micopolitan Statistical Areas.

Search Methodology Discussion

The above sections on Search Terms and Geographic Reach are intended to be edited by contributing editors. It may be beneficial to discuss some changes to the above in this Discussion section.--LUOF (talk) 20:25, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Time commitment

Once the newspaper website for a Statistical Area is determined, the time to find and document occurrences is not great. Searching a large newspaper's results requires, on average, about 15 minutes to discover and document an occurrence. Searching results from small newspaper's results requires about five minutes to determine that there were no relevant occurrences, and about another five minutes to document each occurrence that is found. Searching the big cities takes longer because there are many more deaths from all causes that need to sifted through. Searching the Micropolitan Statistical Areas may not be necessary if the Metropolitan areas are searched carefully at least twice a year. If the often published estimate of around 400 occurrences per year is accurate, total time to discover and document them all would be about 100 hours. Spread out over a year and with several people contributing, that, in my opinion, is not a great amount of time.--LUOF (talk) 20:25, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Table edits

I'm a little late to this conversation. Late last year I ran a pilot study to try to determine what the total annual national count might be. I came up with a figure of around 1200 killings per year. That is not a highly reliable figure because my selection was not random. I arbitrarily selected four states that were geographically diverse and not too big because I wanted to complete a comprehensive search for every incident in those states. Also, I did the search in Nov and December, so the year had not completed. Here's what I came up with:

State	Killings in 2011 (A)	State's % of US Population (B)	Projected national killings (A / B)
Colorado	16	1.61%	994
Georgia	35	3.10%	1129
Maine	4	0.42%	952
Washington	34	2.15%	1581
Sum	89	7.28%	1223

In July Michellecornelison, and by August also Suprcel, began making a tremendous contribution to these lists. Summing the killings in those two months (Aug 69 and July 78) and multiplying by 6 gives a figure of 882. This would also not be a highly reliable figure because the incident rate could be seasonal.

The last sentence of the Background on the main page states: "A study of killings by police from 1999 to 2002 in the Central Florida region found that the national databases included only one-fourth of the number of persons killed by police as reported in the local news media." If the underreporting is similar for the entire country, that study's results imply an annual incident rate of 1600.

Whichever figure is accurate, I think you've made a good decision to break the article into sub-articles. If the list does become truly comprehensive, years may need to be subdivided into seasons.

When I did the searches, I found that the reporting of killings was highly local. For example, not all killings in Colorado Springs were reported in nearby Denver and almost none from Pueblo, on the other side of the rockies, were reported in Denver. The method I used, of a Google search of local paper's websites, was very labor intensive. I'm curious about the search methods that Michellecornelison and Suprcel are using. I'm hoping that there is a better way than the methods I had used. If you care to answer that, please answer in a new topic. --LUOF (talk) 12:06, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Date	Name	State	Description
2011-01-23	Martinez, Anthony	Washington (Port Orchard)	Shot after shooting at and wounding two deputies. The deputies were responding to report of suspicious man with a gun outside a store. Astrid Valdivia died from gunshot wound received in crossfire between deputies and Martinez. All three deputies and Martinez were firing a .40 caliber Glock. Later forensics determined that Martinez killed Valdivia and then himself.
2011-05-13	Bueno, Manuel	Florida (Miami-Dade)	Shot after brandishing a knife.
2011-05-11	Wilson, Jeff	Illinois (Chicago)	Shot during armed robbery of store and after shooting at police.
2011-04-18	Williams, Jerome	Illinois (Chicago)	Shot during armed robbery of store and after shooting at police.
2011-04-07	Denton, Albert	Maryland (Glenn Dale)	Shot after lunging at officers with axe. Police were responding to report of disturbance at child daycare facility.
2011-05-05	Guerena, Jose	Arizona (Tucson)	Shot by SWAT team conducting forced entry search of home involving a drug probe. See Jose Guerena shooting.

Works in progress

Within the limits set by the US Supreme Court in Tennessee v. Garner, authority to use deadly force in the line of duty is granted by state law to state and local law enforcement agencies. Individual agencies set policies and procedures regarding when and how to use deadly force. When deadly force is used within the prescribed manner, the killing is deemed a justifiable homicide. Some law enforcement agencies routinely investigate all uses of deadly force while others investigate only cases involving extenuating circumstances. Other causes of death to suspects include accidents and police brutality. When the circumstances surrounding a death are questionable, a state and/or federal agency may investigate.

Through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the US Congress mandated the Attorney General to collect data on the use of excessive force by police and to publish an annual report from the data. Two national systems collect data which include homicides committed by law enforcement officers in the line of duty. The National Center for Health Statistics maintains the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) which aggregates data from locally filed death certificates. State laws require that death certificates be filed with local registrars, but the certificates do not systematically document whether a killing was legally justified nor whether a law enforcement officer was involved. The FBI maintains the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) which relies on the voluntary participation of state and local law enforcement agencies in submitting reports about crimes. A study of the years 1976 to 1998 found that both national systems underreport justifiable homicides by police officers, but for different reasons. Records in the NVSS did not consistently include documentation of police officer involvement. The UCR database did not receive reports of all applicable incidents. The authors concluded that "reliable estimates of the number of justifiable homicides committed by police officers in the United States do not exist." A study of killings by police from 1999 to 2002 in the Central Florida region found that the national databases included only one-fourth of the number of persons killed by police as reported in the local news media.

Response

You raise several issues with this article. I will address them individually:

• Poorly sourced. In the Proposed Deletion tag you flagged the list as poorly sourced. Every entry includes either a link to a WP article on the incident or a direct reference to the online version of a reputable print newspaper or TV news station. The list of references takes up more screen space than the list itself. Can we agree that it is well sourced?
• Provocation to wrongdoing. If someone is going to be provoked to retaliate, it will not be because of this listing. Any aggrieved relations to the deceased will have known of the incidences through reports in local media. It is the incident, not a list, that may provoke people to wrongdoing. It is my hope that a listing such as this one will result in less wrongdoing (see "value of the list" below).
• Inflammatory article title. In every one of the entries, the cause of death is not in question. An aspect of law enforcement is the possibility that a life may need to be taken. Police are trained for such situations and the police departments report the incidents to the public through the media. When a newspaper article title reads "Police fatally shoot robbery suspect," there is no implication as to what happened. The causal chain is explicit. The police officer is the direct result of the persons death. There are probably many other indirect causes, such as the fact that the person was involved in an armed robbery, but the listing addresses only direct causes of death.
• Guilt of officers involved. The introduction to the article states that the listings are without regard to justification. Inclusion in the list does not imply guilt or innocence by either the deceased or the officer. I have added two sentences to the intro to make this more clear. In the vast majority of the cases, the incident is determined to be a justifiable homicide and the officer was found to not be guilty of anything involving the incident. In those few cases where the officer is guilty of a crime, the incident deserves an entry in the List of cases of police brutality in the United States and a full paragraph description in that article.
• Notability. It is true that most entries in the list are not sufficiently notable to justify an entire article on the incident. Howerever, almost all entries are sufficiently notable, with multiple articles available through the media, to justify a paragraph in an article. Given their external, highly reliable sources, all of the entries are certainly sufficiently notable to justify a single phrase inclusion in a list.
• Identifiability of persons killed. This is a list of person's killed, not a list of names of persons killed. Whether or not their name was published, the reference makes clear that a person was killed. In those few cases were the name of the deceased was not published in the media, sufficient information is supplied to make the incident uniquely identifiable and therefor not confused with any other similar incident. For example, unless two men in wheelchairs where fatally shot by police in Arizona on Oct 15, 2011, the individual killed is uniquely identified. If the person's name is ever published, the descriptive phrase could be replaced by the name.
• Value of the list. The US Congress considers such a list to be of such high value that they required the Justice Department to maintain such a list through Police Accountability Act. The act didn't give the JD authority to require local police departments to report incidents to the JD, so the list is incomplete. The authors of the study cited in the intro state that many public insurrections are sparked by perceived excessive use of force by law enforcement. If the frequency of incidents can be made clear to policy makers, it is possible that police could develop means of subduing some persons without putting the officers lives at risk and without resorting to lethal force. The eventual result should be less provocation and incitement to violence, not more

Draft topics

List of Military Humanitarian Missions

Peace Operations Training Institute: http://www.peaceopstraining.org/poti/

Humanitarian Hawk

List of countries by number of UN peacekeepers Ranking of UN Peacekeeping contributors http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/contributors_archive.shtml

At Vassar she was class president and graduated Magna Cum Laude. She was the first Japanese woman to be awarded a Bachelar's of Arts Degree.

During the bombardment of her family's castle, at the age of eight, she covered unexploded cannon ordinance with futon mattresses to prevent the spread of fire.

Hunger Plan

Add fact of American clearing of land of Native Americans was Hilter's inspiration for the Hunger Plan as per the Bloodlands book.