Shots Fired: Part 1

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

History, Science, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Society & Culture

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2017

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A couple years ago, Ben Montgomery, reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, started emailing every police station in Florida. He was asking for any documents created - from 2009 to 2014 - when an officer discharged his weapon in the line of duty. He ended up with a six foot tall stack of reports, pictures, and press clippings cataloging the death or injury of 828 people by Florida police. Jad and Robert talk to Ben about what he found, crunch some numbers, and then our reporter Matt Kielty takes a couple files off Ben's desk and brings us the stories inside them - from a network of grief to a Daytona police chief. And next week, we bring you another, very different story of a police encounter gone wrong. Produced and reported by Matt Kielty For the full presentation of Ben Montgomery's reporting please visit the Tampa Bay Times' 'Why Cops Shoot?" We can't recommend it highly enough. Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that in reporter Ben Montgomery's six years of Florida data there were, on average, 130 people shot and killed each year. Police officers did indeed shoot 130 people per year, on average, but only half of those shootings were fatal. The audio has been adjusted to reflect this fact. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we start, this podcast contains some tape that's described some pretty graphic violence.
0:09.5	We want to let you know that before we get going.
0:13.5	Wait, you're listening.
0:14.6	Okay.
0:15.9	All right.
0:17.2	Okay.
0:18.5	All right.
0:19.9	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:22.9	Radio Lab.
0:23.4	From W. N. Y.
0:25.4	C.
0:26.3	See?
0:26.6	Yeah.
0:30.9	Hey, I'm Chad Abumrod.
0:32.5	I'm Robert Crilwich.
0:33.7	This is Radio Lab and today.
0:35.8	Okay.
1:12.6	We're going to start this show with a fellow named Ben Montgomery, a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times. He's a guy we've had on the show before. Ben, say something. Hi. This is Ben. Okay. Good. All right. We just want to know from you, like, what are you guys doing? How are you doing it? What are you thinking? I'll start at the beginning. Yeah, start at the beginning. Tell us what you're doing. So after the Mike Brown shooting in Ferguson. There was growing outrage tonight after an unarmed African-American teenager was shot and killed. When that became a national story, there was a lot of belly aching in the press. How many people do we see killed in the United States about by the police each year.
1:17.6	How no one keeps accurate statistics.
1:19.6	There's currently no national statistics on police shootings, law enforcement officer involved shootings.
1:25.6	And it struck me at the time that like what we react to is all anecdotal. You know, once in a while, one of these things will catch fire.
1:32.1	Tamir Rice. Jason Harrison. Sam DeBose is a national story. And I personally was having
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