Jim Fisher, a retired FBI agent and criminal justice professor emeritus at Pennsylvania's Edinboro University, started wondering about officer-involved shootings in late 2010. He discovered there’s no national tracking of the shootings, which he believes are more common than when he was in the FBI decades ago. So, he decided to study them for a year in 2011.
“I noticed a lot of mentally ill people were shot, and a lot of people didn’t have guns,” Fisher said. “With regard to how these cases are investigated, if someone shoots a cop, I guarantee you a thorough investigation, but when a police officer shoots someone, you really can’t trust the result, and they’re really not that thorough.”
Fisher found more than 1,000 incidents nationwide of police shooting -- and either wounding or killing -- suspects in 2011. He said he had expected to find less than a third of that number.
“I was also surprised by the high percentage of justifications for the shootings under circumstances I consider questionable,” he said. “In other words, it seemed to me the police were killing people unnecessarily.”