Police unions blamed for rise in fatal shootings even as crime plummeted

In particular, the politicians are to blame because they a beholden to the police unions and their campaign cash:

Police unions have emerged as the leading opponent of reform efforts as lawmakers respond to weeks of protests over the police killings of Black people across the country.

Despite years of demonstrations against police violence, data shows that law enforcement agencies killed more people last year than they did five years ago. Black people are killed at a far higher rate than white people.

The rise comes even as violent crime has plummeted across the country for decades. Despite the falling crime numbers, America’s policing budget has nearly tripled over the last 45 years.

Looking at the historical data, researcher Lyman Stone, a former federal economist who now serves as a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, found that police killings mostly fell between the 1960s and the 2000s but have been at high levels ever since.

“The pace of increase has been especially dramatic since 2002,” Stone wrote. “This calculation shows the frequency of police killings has risen by much more than criminal or terrorist violence, which suggests that rising police violence is probably not a response to rising criminal violence.”

Salon.com