09/03/14 – Brian Burghart – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And now where's my police state section here?
Fatalencounters.org is the website.
And Brian Burghardt is the journalist who has put it together.
It's an attempt.
Well, I'll let you explain it.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Brian?
I'm great.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
Tell us all about this.
What is this project here?
Okay, well, the idea is that the federal government does not collect statistics on deadly, use of deadly force from law enforcement.
I'm focusing on fatal uses of deadly force.
You could look at officer-involved shootings.
There's a million different ways to look at it.
I'm looking at fatalities, okay?
It's not just guns.
It's also cars.
It's also batons.
It's whatever.
So the idea is, since the government doesn't create a database, I'm creating a database.
And I'm doing it through using public documents and crowdsourcing.
Okay, and then it's interesting, isn't it, that, well, first of all, that I blew it and didn't give you a proper introduction.
You're the editor and publisher of the Reno News and Review from Reno, Nevada.
So that's very important to mention there.
But isn't it strange how, or I mean, I guess I really don't know, but my impression is that the FBI keeps statistics on every single thing about everything except who gets killed by cops and in what numbers.
Your impression is right on.
And in fact, they do sort of keep this information.
They have this document that is supposedly a list of justifiable homicides.
But it's more the appearance of a document.
For example, there are 17,985 state and local law enforcement agencies in the United States.
So they pulled 700 of them.
And their result was they're about 400 a year when anecdotal evidence like collecting years worth of data on killed by police on Facebook shows that it's closer to 1,200 a year.
And then, well, I guess part of the problem is we don't have really eras to compare or anything like that, right?
We took up this project back in the 70s, did they?
So can we say, wow, there's a rate of increase.
They actually did collect information better back in those days.
Okay, so then can you compare?
Are things really changing then, do you think?
Well, all right, here's my thing.
This database started in March.
So really it's only been going for a couple months.
And I've only got about 1,300 incidents out of what I expect to be about 17,000.
So I'm not really drawing any conclusions yet.
I mean, it's just very early in the collection process.
Even though it's already huge, it's still very early.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, no, I wouldn't want you to get ahead of yourself there either.
But I would say the appearance...
There's a couple reasons that it appears that it is increasing.
Number one, the numbers were so much lower back when they did collect them.
But that might have just been the way they collected them back then.
And also because the way...
Since so much of this is crowdsourced, people depend on their memory.
And they remember, you know, a couple years back.
And they researched that.
And the Internet did not have as wide a use in 2000, which is when I start.
So the farther you get, the more spotty the reporting is on the Internet.
Right.
So it would naturally have a tendency to creep up with the use of the Internet.
You really need grad students going down and digging through records.
Because, yeah, you're right.
I mean, the local CBS affiliate news station's website has been redone 15 times since then.
You can't count on them still having stories from back then at all.
Right.
And back in those earlier days, memory was expensive.
So it's like we'd clean out our archives, you know.
Many newspapers and media sources cleaned out their archives.
Video was almost impossible.
It was so huge.
So, yeah, originally, my original idea, and this is how I did the state of Nevada, was to make public records requests of every state and local law enforcement agency in the United States.
That was going to be the crowdsourced part of it.
So I did that with Nevada.
I sent public records requests and I got hard copies back for the entire state of Nevada.
So Nevada is comprehensive in the database.
You can draw conclusions from Nevada all you want.
Well, that's good.
So you talk about how it's open source and all that.
And, you know, I don't know if I'd have the time or if I'd really be useful, but I can think of police shootings here in Austin, Texas, you know, that were unjustified from way back then that may or may not be in here.
Maybe I'd like to help contribute.
I'm sure there are people listening who are thinking, yeah, I know a guy that killed my cousin or whatever it is, who might want to make sure that their people are counted in here.
So how can they help?
Well, go to howtohelp on fatalencounters.org.
And actually, a lawyer in Texas got my records for all the state and local law enforcement agencies in Texas.
There's like 1900 of them.
And he's doing public records requests of all of them.
So we're going to have, Texas will be a comprehensive state that we have.
You know what I think is going to happen?
For social science, I'm way ahead of what we've got here.
But I'm guessing that when this is more or less complete, that you can say, okay, look what we've done here now.
Let's really start to go through and see what we can see.
That this is just going to absolutely, it's not really going to be surprising, but it's going to be absolutely shocking to people.
Just, you know, it'll be, you know, the word epidemic is going to be unavoidable here.
And anybody with a Facebook feed can tell you that right now, you know?
Yeah, I think the numbers will shock people.
I think they believe the FBI when the FBI says it's 400 a year.
I think some of the other things are actually more shocking.
For example, in Nevada, 9% of the homicides committed since 2000 were committed by police.
That's a huge number.
Up to maybe 30% of people killed by police are mentally ill.
That's a huge number.
And that all goes back to training.
We'll also be able to do things like use the U.S. Census Bureau's zip code function to compare socioeconomic status of where people are killed.
And I think the biggest thing we'll find that they have in common is that they were poor.
You know, in the area where they're killed.
I think we'll find that people are more likely to be killed, well obviously we'll find that more likely to be killed in areas of high urban density.
Right.
Another thing I think we'll be able to do is check the names against the veterans list of vets, people who served our country.
We'll find out a huge percentage of people who were killed by police are veterans.
Well, they're even trained specifically to be terrified of veterans, too.
So that's probably a big part of it.
Yeah, I think people...
I think they are.
But I also think that veterans...
You know, they have higher incidence of PTSD, they're also more experienced with guns, which is one of the things that caused police to shoot you.
You know, there's a lot of factors to it, and all that bears further analysis, but it can't be done until we have the numbers.
Right.
So I mean, that's the whole purpose of this thing.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, it's like you're saying, what you're describing there is just a taste of what's possible, but we don't even know what's going to happen when all the civil rights lawyers are done digging through what you put together here.
So...
Right.
May 10 million lawsuits bloom.
Probably not, actually.
The way it has...
See, there's a couple people, like Deadspin is doing one sort of like mine, except they're looking at particular incidents.
I mean, I'm not interested in officers' names, for example.
I'm not interested in the numbers of bullets that flew.
I'm only interested in trends, so that you can look across the country and compare, say, Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Reno, Nevada, or, you know, Reno to Boise, and see if one of them has a much higher rate of incidents per 100,000 people.
But since I am working with Kyle over there, we're going to combine our two databases, our two spreadsheets into one, which will have all that information.
So you'll be able to look at incidents and at trends before this is all over.
Right.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
So, you know, again, the possibilities are endless.
I can't imagine what all different kinds of conclusions will be able to be drawn from the data.
I mean, just the short list that you went down of things that you're beginning to glean from the Nevada numbers, that kind of stuff is just the very beginning.
So, you know, I think this is a really important project that you're doing here.
A big part of what was going on in Ferguson is we don't really know what the race numbers are.
Nobody tracks that.
So anybody can say anything, you know, and nobody can contradict them and say, okay, this is the truth.
We're finding that out.
I mean, we already know more about it than has existed.
About Ferguson specifically?
Can you talk about that?
No, I can't talk about...
I haven't even focused on Ferguson.
There's...
So, no, I can't.
I see what you mean, though.
It was basically a figure of speech there.
I get you.
Yeah.
For example, if all these other factors are equal, like people are in one zip code, mental illness is roughly equal across the genders, race is equal across gender, all these other things remaining equal, why is it 96% of the people killed by police are men?
It seems like if mental illness is a big factor, women would have to take in 15%, right?
Just logically.
So there's all kinds of things that raise questions about how police interact with people who are mentally ill, because it suggests that they're less likely to kill a woman, and I, you know, anecdotally, I believe that.
Well, I can see that in the numbers, actually.
I believe that's true, and I think that's how, that's training.
That's how they relate differently to women.
You know, it's about how we perceive different people in different ways.
And if we could modify that, or quantify it, or modify protocols, or procedures to take that into account, fewer people will die.
Well, I mean, I may be cynical, but it seems to me like the answer there is a lot harder to justify killing a woman.
But you can say, oh, I was afraid, he was coming at me, and whatever, and it doesn't matter if he's dead, as long as he's a male, then that's a good enough excuse to shoot somebody, basically, for a cop.
That is almost always the reason that's given.
I mean, the courts have recognized that as an acceptable reason.
The officer was in fear for their life.
And we know that that is probably, if it's absolutely true, an acceptable reason to shoot somebody, to defend yourself, right?
But the courts have always accepted it.
There's no...
It's supposed to be a reason, not an excuse to shoot somebody.
Exactly.
That's the point, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
And there are protocols that define those reasons, and I think how we perceive this will change once the real numbers are out there.
Yeah.
Or even a sizable sampling.
I mean, I don't know.
If we've got 20%, is that going to be enough to draw conclusions from?
I would say so.
And we've already got...
All right, just in the database, there's about 1,300.
That means they've been kind of...
They've been gone through by the fact-checkers and editors, so that's the best information we have.
Then there's another level where people have submitted through the form, which is...
It doesn't go into the database until it's been fact-checked and verified by editors.
And it's not a real fact-checking.
It's a checking against either media accounts or public records, which is not the same as calling people, you know?
Right.
And then there's another level, a spreadsheet, where people can do further research on subjects.
And there's about 2,000 on that.
And then I have about 3,000 more that haven't even been put on a spreadsheet yet.
They're just in different...
Well, they're on multiple spreadsheets mostly.
And so we're...
I mean, we're approaching 30%, right?
Yeah.
I think conclusions will be...
We'll be able to draw real conclusions by, well, for sure, by the end of the year.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you're making real progress too, huh?
Got enough volunteers and all that.
It is...
It's the crowd.
I mean, people have submitted from France.
I mean, people all over the United States, people are doing visualizations of the data based on these early numbers we have.
The spreadsheets are available to anyone who wants to help.
It's like, just as long as people understand the very preliminary data, I love it.
I think it's awesome.
I think, you know, part of it is the frustration too with the media because, you know, take your average local TV news channel.
I'm sure there are exceptions.
But your average local TV news channel is going to always take the cop's side against the people every time.
Seven on your side where we justify what the cops just did to you.
That's all it is.
I mean, that's almost...
They're like the government's ombudsman for the mayor's office or the local police department.
And so people feel like you know, god dang, people keep getting shot, they report the facts, but they never seem to recognize the pattern that is scaring the hell out of everybody else here.
And so, you know, hopefully this will help break through some of that.
You got that exactly right.
You got it exactly right.
It's like, local media are generally lop dogs to the government.
They don't ever question these reasons of justification.
It's like somebody smoked pot once so they got busted for pot so they're a criminal.
Bullshit.
It's just not...
It's just not right.
You know, somebody is in a car with a knife.
How is the officer in fear of their life for that?
Or some 18-year-old kid is running away from an officer, no sign of a weapon, no sign of, you know, danger.
Why does that kid get killed?
How is it we live in a society where cops are all trained as though we have total Singapore levels of gun control around here and that anybody with a gun must therefore be a criminal trying to use it on you, when in fact there are hundreds of millions of legally owned firearms by law-abiding private citizens in this country.
But now all of a sudden, you know, you got a number 10 on the threat matrix because you own a Glock.
It's totally crazy.
It's...
Legal behavior is considered justification for killing.
I mean, I don't know how I'm saying it any clearer than that.
It's like you see it all the time.
Person had a gun.
But lots of people carry guns and you don't get to shoot them just because you don't like them.
There has to be more to it than that.
There has to be.
Alright, well listen, I think that when it comes to making a change this is the kind of thing that can really help for people to be able to go and say no actually it's not just an assumption here we've got the data that really shows that it's time for you know whatever state assembly to pass a bill that changes something around here because we're sick of it.
You know, it's crazy what's going on here.
Well, I tend to agree.
I mean, that's the whole purpose of the thing is to help the government do the right thing if only by by undermining their ability to lie.
Yeah.
Providing that intellectual ammo for the people who are taking them on.
Well, listen, Brian, I thank you very much for the effort and for your time on the show today.
I think it's just great.
And good luck to you.
Oh, well, you're welcome.
Thanks for having me on.
Alright, everybody, that is Brian Burkhart.
He's at FatalEncounters.org and he's also the editor and publisher in Reno, Nevada.
So go and check out.
It's a really great website.
They've got all the tools where you can help out as well.
You can go through and review the data and learn what you can from it.
Pass the link on to your activist friends.
It's FatalEncounters.org Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here for WallStreetWindow.com Mike Swanson knows his stuff.
He made a killing running his own hedge fund and always gets out of the stock market before the government generated bubbles pop.
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Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here for OffNow.org Now, here's the deal.
Due to the Snowden revelations, we have a great opportunity for a short period of time to get some real rollback of the national surveillance state.
Now, they're already trying to tire us by introducing fake reforms in the Congress.
In the courts, they've betrayed their sworn oaths to the Constitution and Bill of Rights again and again and can in no way be trusted to stop the abuses for us.
We've got to do it ourselves.
How?
We nullify it at the state level.
It's still not easy.
The OffNow project of the Tenth Amendment Center has gotten off to a great start.
I mean it.
There's real reason to be optimistic here.
They've gotten their legislation introduced all over the place in state after state.
I've lost count more than a dozen.
You're always wondering, yeah, but what can we do?
Here's something.
Something important.
Something that can work if we do the work.
Get started cutting off the NSA support in your state.
Go to OffNow.org.
Hey, you own a business?
Maybe we should consider advertising on the show.
See if we can make a little bit of money.
My email address is Scott at Scott Horton dot org.
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