As TFTP reported this week, James Williams, 46, spent his last seconds on Earth wondering who shot him during their family’s celebration to bring in the New Year. It would later be determined that the person who shot him was a Canton police officer, who executed Williams as this father of six celebrated New Year’s Eve in his own back yard. Without identifying himself, the officer reportedly shot in the blind from the other side of Williams’ 6-foot-tall privacy fence. As he was killed just after midnight on New Year’s Eve in the Eastern time zone, Williams became the first person to be killed by police in 2022. He was innocent, a father of six, a loving husband, and he was executed in his own back yard.
Williams was the first of at least 1,000 people who will be killed in 2022 by America’s security force. He had harmed no one and his life was taken from him. Unfortunately, this will happen nearly every day as the year progresses.
According to a recent analysis of police killings in 2021, carried out by the folks at PoliceViolenceReport.org, the majority of police killings involve calls in which there was no crime or that the suspect is only suspected of a non-violent offense.
“Most killings began with police responding to suspected non-violent offenses or cases where no crime was reported,” the report states.
It gets worse.
According to a comprehensive database of all American mass shootings that have taken place since 2018, constructed by Mother Jones, there have been exactly 202 deaths attributed to mass shootings that have taken place on American soil.
As Mother Jones notes, in their database, they exclude shootings stemming from more conventional crimes such as armed robbery or gang violence. Other news outlets and researchers have published larger tallies that include a wide range of gun crimes in which four or more people have been either wounded or killed. While those larger datasets of multiple-victim shootings may be useful for studying the broader problem of gun violence, our investigation provides an in-depth look at the distinct phenomenon of mass shootings—from the firearms used to mental health factors and the growing copycat problem.
If we compare the 202 citizens killed in mass shootings to citizens killed by police in the same time frame, the comparison is off the charts. We are talking about a 2,223 percent difference.
As 2022 begins, American police polish off another deadly year, ending 1,124 lives in 2021. This number is set to increase by one, on average, every 8 hours.