> Another week, another police shooting in the United States. So far this year, 569 people have be killed by US police, according to The Guardian’s count. Police brutality is a horrific normality and, in more ways than one, black men being shot by police has become the modern-day equivalent of lynching.

This is greatly exaggerated. It makes it sound like black men are being gunned down by police left and right, usually without justification, and it makes it sound like the majority of people shot by police are black.

Black men are being shot at a higher rate than other groups (except for Native Americans), but they are only about 1/4 of the police shootings. Here are numbers as of a few days ago:

Number shot in 2016:

• 10 Asian/Pacific Islanders
• 13 Native Americans
• 40 Other/Unknown
• 88 Hispanic/Latino
• 136 Black
• 279 White

Here are the rates per one million group population:

• 0.56 Asian/Pacific Islander
• 1.41 White
• 1.59 Hispanic/Latino
• 3.23 Black
• 3.4 Native American

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0...

To try to get a better idea of what is actually going on, I used a random number generator to pick 10 entries from the list of 2016 police killings at http://www.killedbypolice.net/ and looked at each and classified it as either "Justified" or "Not Justified".

KilledByPolice.net tries to keep a running list of all police killings in the US, and for each they give race/ethnicity, gender, age, state, and links to the news report on the killing and to the KilledByPolice Facebook post on the killing (which usually duplicates that news link, but also includes followup news stories).

Here were the 10 that I looked at, my summary of the facts as gleaned from the news reports, and my verdict as to whether it was justified or not justified.

Keep in mind that this was only a sample of ten. I'd be curious to see other people's sampling results (or even better, the results of someone with the time and interest to go through them all and classify them as justified or not).

The numbering in this list matches the numbering at KilledByPolice.net.

#94, black male. He was fleeing from an arrest attempt, slipped and fell, and a gun that had been concealed fell out. The officer told him not to reach for the gun. The suspect reached for the gun, and was shot. (It later turned out the gun was just a BB gun, but the officer did not know that). My verdict: Justified.

#110, white female. She was the wife of a reserve office. He was cleaning his gun in their home and it accidentally fired, shooting her. My verdict: Not Justified (although also not criminal).

#263, white male. Former officer, fell on hard times and turned to robbery. Killed 2 people during a robbery, and then was killed by police who arrived in response to that. My verdict: Justified.

#272, white male. Suspect was driving/parking suspiciously. Officer talked to him, then headed back to patrol car. Suspect started shooting at the officer, officer shot back. My verdict: Justified.

#328, latino male. Burglar, with knife holding a hostage when police arrived and shot him. My verdict: Justified.

#398, black male. Armed robber, shot at officers several times and hit one. They shot back. My verdict: Justified.

#446, white male. Man walking down the center of the street, bare chested, complaining of chest pains. Police and paramedics arrived to help and/or take him to the hospital. Man became combative and police handcuffed him. He then went into medical distress. CPR was given, but he dies on the scene. I'm unsure how to score this one...it is not clear it should even count as a police killing. However, if I'm going to rate every item as either "justified" or "not justified", then I'll give it: Not Justified.

#475, latino male. Shot a customer in an auto detail shop, then shot at responding officers who shot him. My verdict: Justified.

#505, white male. Police responding to a 911 call about gunshots and a woman yelling for help got the wrong address. The man who answered at that address had a gun, and ignored police orders to drop it. It's unclear whether or not the police identified themselves sufficiently, and there had been a home invasion next door not too long before, so I'm going to tentatively call this one Not Justified.

#535, white male. Reports of a drunk driver causing damage. Police find the car, but the driver is gone. While the officer was working on paperwork, the driver returned and pulled a gun out of his car. The officer struggled with him for control of the gun, and another officer arrived and jumped in to help. After over a minute of struggling, and dozens of commands to drop the weapon, one of the officers finally shot the suspect. (It later turned out the gun was just a BB pistol, but it looked like a regular gun). My verdict: Justified.

So...that's 7 justified, 3 not justified.

Of the three that I classified as not justified, only one remotely fits into the trigger-happy police narrative.

This is quite different from the impression I would have if I had relied solely on what the press is telling me about US police shootings.