The number of people killed by the police in the United States — consistently about 1,000 a year — is far higher than in other developed countries. A disproportionate number of the shootings are by white police officers against people of color, as in the cases of Adam Toledo, Ma’Khia Bryant and Tyrell Wilson. And many experts say the split-second standard is partly to blame for that death toll.
“I am convinced that is the No. 1 cause,” said Lawrence W. Sherman, an American criminologist with experience in the police departments of New York and Minneapolis who is now an emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge.
“It puts the United States into an extreme exceptionalism in allowing killings that would be prosecuted as murder elsewhere, like the U.K.,” he added.
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