Since police shootings were in the news lately, I was curious to find the data to see for myself. The Guardian has an excellent, and only, afaik, database on police shootings, with breakdowns by race, gender, etc – and circumstances in each tragic event ( leave it to the Brits to analyze an American problem).

That, and the study they did at Harvard, which had some surprising results that showed clear police bias in violent interactions, but not, counterintuitively enough, shootings.

It’s a complicated issue with many factors, and I personally still think that the culture of violence (aka “honor”, aka “machismo” culture), along with the gun culture is primarily to blame for all this unpleasantness.

Interestingly enough, the Guardian’s dataset confirms what I always suspected – that NY is one of the safest places in this country from the police (along with, unsurprisingly, most of the Northeast where gun culture is least developed), and that it’s the worst in the West, with its self-reliance and freedom from government, and South with it’s “honor culture".

Really good design, too – with the wall of portraits not unlike the one at the Killing Fields museum in Phnom Penh (though similarity is superficial).