25 May 2023; AA: George Floyd’s 2020 killing at the hands of a white police officer sparked protests across the US in the hopes of racial justice and an end to police brutality.
The viral image of Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, pinned to the ground by an officer rekindled the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and abroad.
But three years after his death, the situation for the Black community in the US is no different, data suggests.
Figures compiled by Anadolu from Mapping Police Violence, a prominent non-profit database, indicate that killings of Black people by American law enforcement officers have climbed every year since Floyd’s murder.
In 2020, the year Floyd was killed, around 1,159 people lost their lives in encounters with the police. Among them, 287 were Black.
The following year saw even more Black Americans killed by police – 305 out of 1,147.
In 2022, US police killed more people than they had in a decade, around 1,197. Black people accounted for 26%, or 313, of those killed.
This year, 61 of the 363 killed by police so far have been Black people.
Police off the hook
The conviction rate of police officers remains exceptionally low, with no officers charged in 98.1% of killings between 2013-2022, data shows.
From 2020 to 2023, officers were only charged and convicted in three killings of Black people, including those involved in holding Floyd down, handcuffing him, and pinning him to the ground for over nine minutes as he struggled to breathe.
In 2022, only three of the over 300 killings of Black people by police resulted in charges being pressed, with the cases now pending.
A year earlier, officers involved in just 10 of the 305 killings of Black people were charged.
The year Floyd was killed, 2020, saw officers get off scot-free in 270 killings of Black people. Only those involved in 13 cases were charged.
Black people most likely to be killed by police
Black individuals are three times more likely to be killed by police than those of other races, according to the 10-year data by Mapping Police Violence.
Over the past decade, an average 7.18 Black people were killed by police for every 1 million individuals, higher than any other race. Around 16.5% of Black people killed in the last 10 years by police were unarmed.
The data reveals around 95% of America’s major city police departments kill Black people at higher rates than white people.
Black and brown people are also more likely to be killed while fleeing, running away or by driving.
From 2013 to 2023, police in Chicago killed Black individuals at a rate that was 26 times higher than white people per population.
In Boston and Minneapolis, the state where Floyd was killed three years ago, the figure is 28 times higher, according to the organization.
