Eight Fatal Shootings by Police in MA Contribute to Already Record High in U.S.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Patrick Sargent, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

It's only July, but the number of fatal shootings already in 2015 exceeds any year before it since 1976. Since then, the FBI has never reported more than 460 justified fatal shootings by police officers in a single year. This year already exceeds the previous record by more than 60 justified fatal shootings.

For the past few years, the idea of justifiable shootings by police officers has come under major scrutiny by the media and the general public - with much of the scrutiny as a response to the shooting deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, OH.

SEE SLIDES BELOW: 8 Fatal Shootings by Police Officers in MA This Year

There have been 524 fatal shootings by police in the United States already this year. According to the Washington Post, at least 80 people have been shot and killed in the past 30 days by police.

By the end of June, the Washington Post had recorded 463 fatal shootings. In the month of July, on average there are two fatal shootings each day - including 31 in the first week, with eight shootings coming on Tuesday July 7, marking the most in a single day this year.

Fatal Shootings in the Bay State

The state of Massachusetts accounts for eight of the 524 justified fatal shootings so far this year. GoLocalWorcester has taken Washington Post's data and have listed the eight fatalities in MA below.

The most recent in Massachusetts was the death of Rafael Suazo early last week. Suazo counts as the 513th fatal shooting by police officers in the country.

According to reports, Suazo, a 23-year-old Hispanic man from Boston, drove his SUV into a Lynn police officer who was conducting an undercover drug operation. After being struck by Suazo's Ford Escape, the officer fired a single bullet into the windshield that struck Suazo in the head killing him.

Suazo is alleged to have sold heroin to a couple from Peabody.

The Post's Methodology and What 'Justified' Means

From 2008 to 2012, according to FBI data, there were no more than 411 fatal shootings by police officers. An on average every year, the number of shootings is almost always around 400.

When the FBI reports justifiable fatal shootings, it only gathers data from a small fraction of self-reporting agencies of the more than 18,000 state and local police departments. Therefore, there numbers are flawed or limited at best.

Tom Foley, former Superintendent of Massachusetts State Police, told GoLocalWorcester, "We look at these numbers to see how things are trending. It's hard to look at those stats in a vacuum. There are certain events that go on and in comparison to what's going on in the rest of the country, police chiefs can see how their towns measure up. In Massachusetts, the police chiefs know what's going on in their communities."

When state and local departments report on justifiable shootings, they don't report on every time an officer kills someone and only report a number of justifiable homicides each year. In fact, the FBI's Uniform Crime Report only categorizes an officer-involved homicide if the police officer killed a felon in the line of duty.

Foley said, "What the Feds try to do is get you to make sure you submit your stats. A lot of times that's tied into any kind of federal funding your town might be getting. There's a lot of towns that don't submit their stats for a number of reasons including the town is too small and they don't have the money to do a report, or the police chief looks at the numbers and says 'these aren't going to make me look good.'"

Victim: Rafael Suazo

City/Town: Lynn

Suazo, a 23-year-old Hispanic man, was shot by police when he drove his SUV into a Lynn police officer who was conducting an undercover drug operation.

Source: The Washington Post