February 18, 2010

Over 50% of People Shot by Tasers in Louisville are African American


Louisville began using tasers in 2005. The Louisville Police Department added tasers to their arsenal in response to protests over several controversial police shootings of Black men.

Louisville Police love them some tasers -- they've averaged one Taser incident every two days, and as many as 239 incidents in one year.

Local media analyzed 268 Taser incidents over 18 months in Louisville, and found that while African Americans only make up 18 percent of Louisville Metro's population, three times that number -- 54 percent of the people being shot with Tasers -- were African Americans.

Read the full article here.

The Louisville statistics are in line with the information that we've been tracking on this blog. Police are killing African Americans at a disproportionate rate with taser guns.

What are your thoughts on the taser student conducted in Louisville?

3 comments:

Hey Shae! said...

Those numbers are ridiculous. I'm happy to see someone is taking them to task in a taser death lawsuit.

Unknown said...

Shae - I've been having difficulty finding time to continuing tracking these taser-related deaths. I'm going to try to catch up over the next few days...

Divine Theatre said...

It makes sense. The majority of crime is committed by that demographic. It follows logically that they would be tasered as a result of criminal activity. No?