downas

the headlines are everywhere: the guardian (“'It never stops': killings by US police reach record high in 2022”), bloomberg (“Police Killed 1176 People in 2022, Most Ever in the US”), the washington post (“Fatal police shootings in 2021 set record since The Post began tracking, despite public outcry”). the numbers cited vary: 1176 victims in the first 2 articles mentioned above, 1055 in the third. mapping police violence, a liberal NGO which claims to publish “the most comprehensive and up-to-date data on police violence in America”, recorded 1186 victims.

none of these totals, however, would make 2022 the most lethal year on record for victims of u.s. fascism's domestic footsoldiers. before it was shut down due to what its creator described as a lack of support, the volunteer-run killedbypolice.net[1] (KBP) recorded 1194 victims in 2017 & 1222 victims in 2015. it seems more likely that the slaughter has been steady, unchanging, rendered banal – possibly since at least the 20th century.

the point here is not so much about the details of the numbers, though those are important for statistical analysis, but the systematic erasure of 'grassroots' research by the imperialist, cop-loyalist anglo media establishment. despite their vastly greater resources, they are doing a worse job than KBP of the same task, effectively producing systematic undercounts[2] & working to enshrine them as authoritative. now, 'radical' activists are repeating these headlines as undisputed fact, when the reality of contemporary oppression – of which a constant barrage of police executions worldwide is just one aspect – is even worse than they will admit.

[1] since 2018, the URL has been taken over by others, presumably unaffiliated with the original KBP project. [2] while there must be methodological differences behind the varying numbers produced by anglo mass media, mapping police violence, & KBP, all of them are problematic. among these problems is the fact that they make no attempt to count killings by police in most of the u.s.-occupied overseas colonies, which are generally forgotten, ignored, or deliberately overlooked by both the general population & establishment resistance within the 50 states & d.c.