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Abusive police are seldom prosecuted and those prosecuted usually aren’t convicted. Police kill about 1,000 people each year, according to a Washington Post database, but few go to prison or lose their jobs.
Philip M. Stinson, a cop turned criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University, keeps the statistics. Since 2005, 121 officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter in nonfederal cases involving killings on-duty. Of the 95 cases that have concluded, fewer than half – 44 – resulted in convictions and then often to lesser charges.
Federal prosecutions and convictions for violating a citizen’s civil rights also are rare and unsuccessful because of a high burden of proof.
Between 1990 and 2019, federal prosecutors filed criminal civil rights charges against an average of 41 officers a year – even though they get referrals 10 times greater, reports the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
In 2019, the Justice Department filed 49 criminal civil rights cases against officers. That’s a thimbleful contrasted to the 69,000 cases for illegal border crossings.
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