PBS高端访谈:联邦调查局的统计明显低估了警察杀人事件的数量

 　　HARI SREENIVASAN: The nation's been focused on Staten Island, Ferguson, and Cleveland in the last few weeks as citizens and law enforcement assess how they have and how they should deal with one another.

　　This as a new investigation¹ by the The Wall Street Journal reveals that accounting² for killings³ by police might be grossly underestimated.

　　Wall Street Journal reporter Rob Barry joins us now. So, how did you do your reporting, and what did you find?

　　ROB BARRY: Thanks for having me. What we did was we asked about 105 departments to give us the number of people who have been killed over a five or six year period.

　　And we compared those numbers to what had reported to the FBI. And we found that there was a lot of stuff that wasn't in the FBI's information.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: You said that at least 550 police killings between 2007 and 2012 never made it onto the books?

　　ROB BARRY: Yeah, and that's only among the top 105, 110 largest agencies in the country.

　　So there's 18,000 jurisdictions⁴. So you know, that's just a small estimate of the total.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: OK, so for example, some jurisdictions could call something a justifiable⁵ homicide versus⁶ an unjustifiable homicide? Discrepancies⁷ in definitions? What do you mean?

　　ROB BARRY: Yes, it was a wide range of things. That was certainly one of the issues there, that what we're dealing⁸ with here are essentially⁹ crime reports.

　　And agencies who are forced to report information about unfortunate events where officers take someone's life. They don't really want to include that in a crime report.

　　It's not a crime in their eyes. It was a justifiable event. So there was some concern by some agencies about that issue.

　　There's also a lot of other issues involved. You had technical issues. So you have departments which, at least they told us, they thought that these things were being reported, they thought they were participating in this program.

　　But then when they went in and they looked into it, when we said to them, “hey, here's the numbers that you reported,” maybe there would be one, but they told us 10.

　　They'd look into it and they'd say, “Oh, well it turns out that we haven't been keying it in correctly.” So that was another issue.

　　And then I think the largest issue was that three of the biggest states in the country – New York, Florida, and Illinois – have almost nothing reported.

　　And that's because of how this process works. What happens is that when an agency wants to send this information to the FBI, they pass it through a state agency first.

　　And in all three of those states' cases, there are issues, varying issues, with the way that the states then turn around and pass it up to the FBI.

　　Such that there's no information about justifiable homicides from any of those states.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: What you're also saying here is that not everybody has to report.

　　ROB BARRY: It's voluntary, exactly. And when you're dealing with 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, a lot of them small, a lot of these agencies only have five, 10, officers at them, these events are very rare.

　　Reporting them is just not built into their process in many cases.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: So we've got different definitions, we've got 18,000 jurisdictions, it's all voluntary, and I'm assuming some of these departments are pretty sensitive about this information in the first place.

　　ROB BARRY: Yeah, of course. I mean, each of these things are inflammatory or potentially inflammatory events.

　　So there were concerns – a lot of departments asked me when we went to them and said, “Will you provide us with the number of incidents you've had,” quite a few departments answered first saying “Why? Yes we'll give it to you, but just tell us why you want this.”

　　There's a lot of concern about it being used for comparisons. And I mean, you know, when we see what's happening across the country right now, I think that you can understand that concern.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: And your reporting is not saying that all cops. You're just pointing out that there's this discrepancy¹⁰ in how we're reporting the information.

　　So if there are these gaps in the data set, how do we make any policy based on maybe faulty numbers?

　　ROB BARRY: That is a great point. And that's why we were looking at this in the first place.

　　We wanted to get a benchmark. We wanted to know how often does this happen and who does it happen to?

　　When we tried to do that using the available information and took it to experts, everyone said well, you can't really do that.

　　And we said, OK. And that raised the question of why not?

　　In terms of solutions as to what we'd do from here, it's a complicated problem. And we've discussed most of the reasons why.

　　Some of – some of the people involved in this are working now towards coming up with incentives¹¹, financial incentives from the federal government or some sort of mandatory¹² process that would require these things to be reported.

　　But from what I've been able to tell at this point, there's nothing concrete on the way.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Rob Barry from The Wall Street Journal, thanks so much.

　　ROB BARRY: Thank you for having me.

1 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

2 accounting   

n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表

参考例句：

• A job fell vacant in the accounting department.财会部出现了一个空缺。
• There's an accounting error in this entry.这笔账目里有差错。

3 killings   

谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发

参考例句：

• His statement was seen as an allusion to the recent drug-related killings. 他的声明被视为暗指最近与毒品有关的多起凶杀案。
• The government issued a statement condemning the killings. 政府发表声明谴责这些凶杀事件。

4 jurisdictions   

司法权( jurisdiction的名词复数 )； 裁判权； 管辖区域； 管辖范围

参考例句：

• Butler entreated him to remember the act abolishing the heritable jurisdictions. 巴特勒提醒他注意废除世袭审判权的国会法令。
• James I personally adjudicated between the two jurisdictions. 詹姆士一世亲自裁定双方纠纷。

5 justifiable   

adj.有理由的，无可非议的

参考例句：

• What he has done is hardly justifiable.他的所作所为说不过去。
• Justifiable defense is the act being exempted from crimes.正当防卫不属于犯罪行为。

6 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

7 discrepancies   

n.差异，不符合（之处），不一致（之处）( discrepancy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• wide discrepancies in prices quoted for the work 这项工作的报价出入很大
• When both versions of the story were collated,major discrepancies were found. 在将这个故事的两个版本对照后，找出了主要的不符之处。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

9 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

10 discrepancy   

n.不同；不符；差异；矛盾

参考例句：

• The discrepancy in their ages seemed not to matter.他们之间年龄的差异似乎没有多大关系。
• There was a discrepancy in the two reports of the accident.关于那次事故的两则报道有不一致之处。

11 incentives   

激励某人做某事的事物( incentive的名词复数 )； 刺激； 诱因； 动机

参考例句：

• tax incentives to encourage savings 鼓励储蓄的税收措施
• Furthermore, subsidies provide incentives only for investments in equipment. 更有甚者，提供津贴仅是为鼓励增添设备的投资。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

12 mandatory   

adj.命令的；强制的；义务的；n.受托者

参考例句：

• It's mandatory to pay taxes.缴税是义务性的。
• There is no mandatory paid annual leave in the U.S.美国没有强制带薪年假。