Austin Police Department (APD) is the principal law enforcement agency serving Austin, Texas. As of Fiscal Year 2022, the agency had an annual budget of $443.1 million and employed around 2,484 personnel, including approximately 1,809 officers. The department also employs 24 K-9 police dogs and 16 horses. Joseph Chacon was confirmed as Austin's new interim police chief effective April 11, 2021.
Oscar Grant III was a 22-year-old African-American man who was killed in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009 by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California. Responding to reports of a fight on a crowded Bay Area Rapid Transit train returning from San Francisco, BART Police officers detained Grant and several other passengers on the platform at the Fruitvale BART Station. BART officer Anthony Pirone kneed Grant in the head and forced Grant to lie face down on the platform. Mehserle drew his pistol and shot Grant. Grant was rushed to Highland Hospital in Oakland and pronounced dead later that day. The events were captured on multiple official and private digital video and privately owned cell phone cameras. Owners disseminated their footage to media outlets and to various websites where it went viral. Both peaceful and violent protests took place in the following days.
"Hands up, don't shoot", sometimes shortened to "hands up", is a slogan and gesture that originated after the August 9, 2014, shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, United States. The slogan implies one has their hands in the air, a common sign of submission, and is therefore not a threat to an approaching police officer. Witness reports from the Brown shooting are conflicted as to what Brown was doing with his hands when he was shot. Some witnesses claimed Brown had his hands in the air before being killed, although investigations later found that physical and forensic evidence contradicted witnesses who had claimed that Brown had his hands up when a police officer shot him. The slogan was adopted at protests against police brutality in the U.S.A. United States Department of Justice investigation claimed that the 'hands up' claim was inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence.
Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old man, was fatally shot on November 20, 2014, in Brooklyn, New York City, United States, by a New York City Police Department officer. Two police officers, patrolling stairwells in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)'s Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York, Brooklyn, entered a pitch-dark, unlit stairwell. Officer Peter Liang, 27, had his firearm drawn. Gurley and his girlfriend entered the seventh-floor stairwell, fourteen steps below them. Liang fired his weapon; the shot ricocheted off a wall and fatally struck Gurley in the chest. A jury convicted Liang of manslaughter, which a court later reduced to criminally negligent homicide.
Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old African-American man, died from multiple gunshot wounds after being shot by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers in Florence, Los Angeles, California on August 11, 2014. In the weeks and months that followed, Ford's shooting triggered multiple demonstrations and a lawsuit by Ford's family claiming $75 million in damages.
Trevor Casper was a state trooper for the Wisconsin State Patrol. On his first solo assignment, Casper was shot and killed in Fond du Lac attempting to apprehend a bank robbery and murder suspect on March 24, 2015.
On April 30, 2014, Dontre Hamilton was shot and killed by police officer Christopher Manney, at Red Arrow Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. No charges were brought, but Manney was fired from the force. As a result of the shooting and subsequent protests, Milwaukee police officers were equipped with body cameras.
Jeremy "Bam Bam" McDole was a 28-year-old African American paraplegic who was shot and killed by police in Wilmington, Delaware on September 23, 2015, at 3:00 pm. McDole was in a wheelchair at the time of the shooting. Police responded to a call about a man with a gun. The 911 caller later recanted her statements and has, to date, faced no penalties for the false statements made, which resulted in McDoles death. Camera footage from a bystander showed officers ordering McDole to drop his weapon and raise his hands, with McDole being shot after reaching for his waist area, but with a gun never being seen and evidence photos of the reported weapon only appearing 6 years after his murder. The Delaware state department cleared the officers of wrongdoing, but concluded that one of the involved officers had shown "extraordinarily poor" police work. A 2020 review by the Delaware Attorney General's Office came to the same conclusion. Both decided against filing any charges. The McDole family sued the city of Wilmington, and in January 2017, a settlement of $1.5 million was reached by the city.
On November 15, 2015, Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot by police officers in Minneapolis. The two officers involved with the shooting were Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze. They were a part of the Minneapolis Police Department and were subsequently placed on paid administrative leave. The night after the shooting, Clark died at the Hennepin County Medical Center after being taken off life support. His death was the result of a gunshot wound he sustained during the November 15 incident.
The murder of Laquan McDonald took place on October 20, 2014, in Chicago, Illinois. McDonald was a 17-year-old African American youth who was fatally shot by a white Chicago Police Officer, Jason Van Dyke. Police had initially reported that McDonald was behaving erratically while walking down the street, refusing to put down a knife, and that he had lunged at officers. Preliminary internal police reports described the incident similarly, leading to the shooting being judged as justifiable, and Van Dyke not being charged at the time. This was later disproven after the video of the murder was released, showing that McDonald was walking away.
The shooting of Anthony Hill, a U.S. Air Force veteran, occurred on March 9, 2015, in Chamblee, Georgia, near Atlanta. Hill, fatally shot by police officer Robert Olsen, suffered from mental illness and was naked and unarmed at the time of the incident. The incident was covered in local and national press and sparked the involvement of Black Lives Matter and other advocacy groups who demonstrated their anger at the shooting. In January 2016, a grand jury indicted officer Olsen on two counts of felony murder and one count of aggravated assault. Nearing the fourth anniversary of the homicide, it was decided that Olsen's trial would be rescheduled for September 23, 2019, with delays including three successive judges having recused themselves in the case.
On August 13, 2016, a riot began in the Sherman Park neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sparked by the fatal police shooting of 23-year-old Sylville Smith. During the three-day turmoil, several people, including police officers, were injured and dozens of protesters arrested. A nightly curfew was set up for teenagers in the area.
In the late evening of March 18, 2018, Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old African-American man, was shot and killed in Meadowview, Sacramento, California by Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet, two officers of the Sacramento Police Department in the backyard of his grandmother's house while he had a phone in his hand. The encounter was filmed by police video cameras and by a Sacramento County Sheriff's Department helicopter which was involved in observing Clark on the ground and in directing ground officers to the point at which the shooting took place. The officers stated that they shot Clark, firing 20 rounds, believing that he had pointed a gun at them. Police found only a cell phone on him. While the Sacramento County Coroner's autopsy report concluded that Clark was shot seven times, including three shots to the right side of the back, the pathologist hired by the Clark family stated that Clark was shot eight times, including six times in the back.
The Chicago Police Board voted on October 17, 2019 to dismiss Chicago Police (CPD) Officer Robert Rialmo who fatally shot Quintonio LeGrier and neighbor Bettie Jones on December 26, 2015 while answering a 911 domestic violence call at the LeGrier residence in Chicago. The dismissal capped a "chaotic finish to a high-profile trial" where a judge first announced that the jury found Rialmo unjustified in his shooting of LeGrier, but erased the verdict promptly, after declaring that the jury found Rialmo feared for his life when he shot LeGrier.
On August 5, 2016, Jamarion Rashad Robinson, a 26-year-old African American man who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was shot 59 times and killed in a police raid in East Point, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. The shooting occurred when at least 14 officers of a Southeast Regional Fugitive Taskforce from at least seven different agencies, led by U.S. Marshals, forcibly entered the apartment of Robinson's girlfriend to serve a warrant for his arrest. The warrant was being served on behalf of the Gwinnett County police and the Atlanta Police Department, and authorities said they had sought his arrest for attempted arson and aggravated assault of a police officer. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) stated that Robinson had been repeatedly ordered to put down a weapon by officers and that he had reportedly fired at them three times.
On the night of June 12, 2020, Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old African American man, was fatally shot by Atlanta Police Department (APD) officer Garrett Rolfe.
On August 23, 2020, Jacob S. Blake, a 29-year-old black man, was shot and seriously injured by police officer Rusten Sheskey in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Sheskey shot Blake in the back four times and the side three times after Blake opened the driver's door to his girlfriend's SUV and attempted to reach inside. Sheskey said that he believed he was about to be stabbed, since Blake was holding a knife. Earlier during the encounter, Blake had been tasered by two officers, but the tasers failed to disable him and he continued towards his vehicle.
In the aftermath of the August 2020 police shooting of Jacob Blake, protests, riots, and civil unrest occurred in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and around the United States as part of the larger 2020–2021 United States racial unrest and Black Lives Matter movements. In addition to street protests, marches, and demonstrations, the shooting also led to the 2020 American athlete boycotts.
On the evening of February 2, 2020, Alvin Cole, a 17-year-old black male, was shot by a Wauwatosa, Wisconsin black male police officer Joseph Mensah, outside Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa. The shooting occurred after Cole refused a command from the police to drop the stolen gun he was holding and Cole fired a bullet as he tried to flee. Two shots were fired when Cole was on his hands and knees, and the remaining three shots were fired by Mensah while Cole was face down on the ground. Mensah was the only officer among the five other officers at the scene who fired his weapon.
