Fatalities in police encounters - a study

[robkelk]

More than 460 people have died in encounters with police in Canada since 2000

CBC News has done the investigative journalism, crunched the numbers, and come up with a picture of fatalities in police encounters in Canada that appears to agree with what everybody is saying is happening in the USA... and it's been happening for the last two decades.

The rate at which Canadians die in encounters with police has nearly doubled in the last 20 years.

Yes, occasionally there's a death by misadventure (e.g., there's a reported case in the Ottawa results of a person falling off a bicycle while trying to escape and landing under the wheels of the pursuing police cruiser), but those are rare.

The number of people who struggle with mental health and die in these encounters is steadily climbing at a similar rate.

"Oh, it's definitely getting worse," said Jennifer Lavoie, a criminologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford, Ont. Lavoie said the dissolution of traditional large-scale residential care facilities and a lack of resources for the mentally ill has contributed to the rise in incidents between police and those in emotional distress.

Lavoie believes the stigma of mental illness contributes to the use of lethal force in these cases.

"I think officers likely have the same kinds of attitudes towards people with mental illness that the public does, which is the attitude that people with mental illness tend to be more unpredictable, more dangerous than the general population," Lavoie said.

The overall article doesn't mention race. The article about Ottawa indicates race doesn't appear to be a major factor, except that Asians appear to be less likely to die during police encounters than whites or blacks.

Is there anything comparable for other countries?

[hazard]

Not in the Netherlands that I'm aware of.