Two officers 400 miles apart claimed self-defense after they were indicted in the murders of two Black women, killings that prompted a national outcry over police brutality and law enforcement accountability. Connor Grubb, an Ohio police officer, was indicted last week, one year after fatally shooting Ta'Kiya Young in her car. Sean Grayson, a former sheriff's deputy in Illinois, was indicted on murder charges for shooting Sonya Massey in her kitchen after she picked up a pot from her stove. Experts say the shootings, two of hundreds across the U.S. each year, underscore the prevalent use of deadly force by law enforcement despite widespread de-escalation standards. Internal discipline procedures vary greatly across the 18,000 law enforcement agencies, reports USA Today. In the cases of Massey and Young, in Illinois, the deputy was fired within days of shooting Massey, his union dropped a grievance and the sheriff resigned. In Ohio, the officer's indictment came a year after the incident, his union is sticking by him and he remains on paid administrative leave. According to Mapping Police Violence, most killings by officers began with traffic stops, mental health checks, disturbances, non-violent offenses, or where no crime was alleged. Since January, law enforcement officers have killed 759 people, putting the year on track to be the deadliest since the group began tracking incidents in 2013.
Use of force accountability is influenced by degrees of sensitivity to public sentiment and fear of reprisal, experts said. While some departments require officers to de-escalate situations, punishment typically doesn't extend beyond professional discipline, said law Prof. Stephen Rushin of Loyola University of Chicago.
"The crux of the issue is often about making sure that officers have fair and adequate process," Rushin said, "and balancing that fairness and procedural kind of legitimacy with the need for supervisors to take decisive action against officers that they view as unfit to serve on the force or they view as warranting discipline." Courts generally don’t hold officers accountable for failing to de-escalate a situation before deadly force is used, or whether not de-escalating led to a need for serious, critical, or deadly force. As deaths have risen, so has the number of police officers charged with violent on-duty crimes, including murder, manslaughter, and assault. Charges, such as those facing Grubb and Grayson, remain rare and convictions rarer still. FewerK than 2% of killings by police result in an officer being charged and 1% result in an officer being convicted, according to Mapping Police Violence.
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