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WILSON LIBRARY
N C COLLECTION
UNC-CH
CHAPEL. HILL. NO 27514
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 2015
VOLUME 94 - NUMBER 11
TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 30 CENTS
Counting the Victims of Police Violence
By Jazelle Hunt
NNPA Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA) - As Eric Holder ended his tenure as
I.S. Attorney General, he said, "The troubling reality is that we lack
ie ability right now to comprehensively track the number of inci-
ents of either uses of force directed at police officers, or uses of
irce by police,” he said, at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event. “This
rikes many - including me - as unacceptable.”
As it stands, both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the De-
artment of Justice compile information on police killings, as report-
jby police departments themselves. But there are challenges with
ie reliability with this data. By law, collecting and providing this
(formation to the government is mandatory only for police agencies
iat receive certain federal funds; police killings found to be unjusti-
ed are not included in the FB’s measures; and reporting guidelines
in vary from place to place, to name a few issues.
Over the past few years, citizens have attempted to step in where
ificial entities would not, creating well-regarded crowdsourced on-
ne databases such as KilledbyPolice.net, FatalEncounters.org and
ie U.S. Police Shootings Database (launched by Web sports blog,
eadspin).
MappingPoliceViolence.org is the newest addition to this effort,
lapping Police Violence builds on this tally by merging and cross-
lecking those first two databases. It compiles a month-by-month
ath toll for 2013 and 2014; and by combing through media reports
id other public data, the contributors have confirmed the race of
'ery victim in 2014.
Samuel Sinyangwe, a 24-year-old Ferguson protester and one of
e project’s directors, said that this detail is missing for approxi-
ately 60 percent of the victims in the source databases.
Though the project highlights the disproportionate killing of black
:ople, it includes all reported deaths by date, location, race, age,
:nder, cause of death, and medical condition (e.g. under the influ-
ice, mentally disabled, etc.). Additionally, users can compare police
apartments around the country by population, murder rate, and how
likely to threaten black life” they are.
I “When you compare white folks and black folks who were killed
by police, there are big differences, white folks tended to be more
likely to have a mental illness, to be armed, to be older - or to be
link or under the influence. So they were more likely to have some
ndition that made it more challenging for police to deal with them,”
nyangwe says.
.“However for black folks, they were less likely to do all of these
ings, and then they were still more likely to be killed. You can only
> that analysis if you looked at all races and were able to compare
id contrast.”
By Mapping Police Violence’s count, police killed at least 1,175
icple in 2014. Of these victims, 302 were black - a disproportion-
e rate of 26 percent - and 56 percent of these black victims were
larmed. Most victims were shot, but other causes of death included
ising, physical restraint, being hit by cars, and in one case in New
ork, falling from a window.
“What you can show quite plainly with this tool is that, in fact,
aces with the same amount of crime, the same demographics, have
ty different levels of police violence. So crime is not an excuse,”
nyangwe said. “We’re hoping to really help [communities and or-
mizers] make the case for why a given city or police department is
ally culpable for this and really needs to make a change.”
According to the data, Florida, Texas, and California had the high-
t number of black victims last year (each responsible for between
land 35 deaths). Police departments responsible for the most deaths
st year include Chicago Police Department (13 killed), followed by
os Angeles and New York (10 each), and Prince George’s County
slice Department in Maryland (five deaths).
Sinyangwe points out that for the city of St. Louis, if the current
end continues, black males 27 and younger will have a statistically
eater chance of being killed by police than dying in a car accident.
The data also shows a marked drop in police killings after Michael
town’s death and the start of the Ferguson protests. In August 2014,
)lice killed 140 people around the country, 43 of them black; the
st month, those numbers fell to 80 and 19, respectively. They still
we not returned .to their August 2014 levels, for any demographic.
MappingPoliceViolence.org is run by Ferguson protesters and or-
anizers, and is a project of the movement’s online hub, WethePro-
sters.org/. Volunteers around, the country contribute to, sort, and
arity the information.
“What I hope, and what DeRay [McKesson], [Johnetta Elzie], and
late building the capacity to do, is to use this tool to support groups
n the ground - to be able to really make the case, using the best data
railable, for long-term institutional change,” Sinyangwe says.
ATTY. LORETTA LYNCH
NC’s supporters of Loretta Lynch go to DC to lobby senators
RALEIGH (AP) - North Carolina residents unhappy with announcements by their two
U.S. senators that they’ll oppose the nomination of Greensboro native Loretta Lynch
as attorney general are heading to Washington to try to get them to change their minds.
The state NAACP chapter said a women’s coalition along with state president the
Rev. William Barber were slated to travel to Washington March 17 for a news confer
ence. The advocates also wanted to meet with Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis.
The two senators said late last month they wouldn’t support Lynch, the U.S. attorney
for eastern New York. They both cited in part pending elections-law litigation by the
Justice Department against the state that they believe will continue under Lynch if she’s
confirmed.
NC attorney general asks about hotel s tournament surcharge
CHARLOTTE (AP) - Attorney General Roy Cooper wants to know why a Charlotte hotel
imposed a 15 percent service charge to the bills of customers in its lounge during a basketball
tournament last month.
Customers at the hotel for the CIAA basketball tournament had a service charge added to
their bills. The hotel has apologized to those who were offended. The hotel said the charge
was not intended to single out any particular group.
The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association is the oldest African-American athletic
conference in the country.
Deputy Attorney General Harriet Worley has written to the hotel asking about the surcharge
and how it was disclosed to customers. The letter also asks if the hotel has imposed similar
charges at other events.
The hotel said it will respond to the letter.
President Barack Obama greets the 2015 Intel Science Talent Search finalists in
the Grand Foyer of the White House, March 11. (Official White House Photo by
Pete Souza)
Attempt to allay NCpolice-
citizen conflict is focus of bill
By Gary D. Robertson
RALEIGH (AP) - The chief sponsor of a measure de
signed to address potential discrimination by law enforce
ment in North Carolina says ethnic and racial profiling is
a tough issue but needs to be discussed by lawmakers,
police and the public.
Rep. Rodney Moore of Charlotte, other legislators and
civil rights advocates held a news conference to discuss
the bill Moore filed.
The measure would make clear “discriminatory profil
ing” is unlawful, require more homicide and traffic stop
data collection and give local governments the ability to
create citizen boards to investigate misconduct allega
tions.
Moore wants the bill to become law but hopes it will
start a dialogue in light of several black or multiracial
men who have died during incidents with police. Those
deaths occurred in Missouri, New York and most recently
Wisconsin.
California hopes to
ease path to his
torically black col
leges
By Lisa Leff
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)
- Leaders of California’s vast
community college system on
Tuesday approved a program
aimed at making it easier for stu
dents to transfer to historically
black colleges and universities
in other parts of the country at
a time when seats at the state’s
own public universities have
gotten harder to come by.
Under a deal brokered by
Chancellor Brice Harris’ staff
and approved by the system’s
governing board, nine historical
ly black schools in the South and
Midwest have promised to admit
all transfer students who have
completed certain prescribed
courses at California’s 112 two-
year colleges with a cumulative
grade point average of 2.5 or
higher.
The agreements, set to take
effect in the fall, are designed to
reduce the time it takes students
to accumulate enough course
credits to move to a four-year
school and then to earn their
baccalaureates by making sure
the work they do in California
is recognized by the historically
black institutions. Mismatches
between the content of. lower-
division courses at community
colleges and the same classes at
four-year schools often make it
hard for students to meet transfer
entrance requirements or cause
them to lose credits.
“This is very important for
our students,” Joseph Bielan-
ski Jr., a member of the systems
Board of Governors, said of the
agreements. “It’s a way of build
ing pathways that are clear to the
students so they can have a va
riety of opportunities now to get
their education.” .
Individual community col
leges throughout the U.S. have
created their own compacts with
historically black colleges, most
of which also have transfer pacts
with the two-year schools in
their home states. But Califor
nia’s arrangement is believed to
be the first of its kind between a
community college system and
multiple historically black insti
tutions of higher learning, Paige
Marlatt Dorr, a spokeswoman
for the chancellor, said.
“This may be a model that
can be used by other states in
the nation to look at HBCUs to
provide meaningful opportuni
ties for access and educational
attainment,” George Cooper,
executive director of the White
House Initiative on Historically
Black Colleges and Universi
ties, said at Tuesday’s meeting in
Sacramento. .
California’s community col
lege system is the nation’s larg
est. African-Americans make up
about 7 percent of the 2.3 mil
lion students enrolled. In 2011,
the last year for which statistics
. were available, less than half of
one percent of the 112,327 stu
dents who transferred from a
community college in Califor
nia to a four-year school opted
to complete their studies at one
of the nation’s ’105 historically
black colleges and universities,
some of which have been facing
declining enrollments.
Though the transfer agree
ments are with HBCUs, the pro
gram is open to students of all
races and ethnicities.
The nine schools are Philan
der Smith College in Little Rock,
Arkansas; Lincoln University in
Jefferson City, Missouri; Dil
lard University in New Orleans;
Bennett College in Greensboro,
North Carolina; Wiley College
in Marshall, Texas; Fisk Univer
sity in Nashville; and Stillman
College, Talladega College and
Tuskegee University, all located
in Alabama. With the exception
ofLincoln, all the institutions are
private schools with annual tu
itions ranging from about $9,300
to over $19,000.