Each year, hundreds of people in the United States are killed by law enforcement. Police departments disproportionately target minorities as criminal suspects and too often the police use tactics against minorities that simply shock the conscience.

One of the recent cases that rattled the nation was of Freddie Gray, a Baltimore resident. On April 12, Gray suffered a fatal spinal injury while in police custody. The officers’ failure to heed Gray’s requests for medical attention resulted in his death. That tragic event led to about a week of both violent and peaceful protests in the city of Baltimore.

Media coverage on the protests mostly focused on the damage caused by the violence. The nation’s people should instead direct their focus on the more important issue: the actual reason for the violence.

Since last year, police killings have been receiving more media attention than in the past. Last year’s killing of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, along with so many more, drew a lot of public attention. A very infuriating aspect of most of these cases is the fact that police killings almost never lead to murder charges.

Additionally, although all ethnic groups in the United States have become victims of the police, minorities are getting shot in numbers much greater than their proportion in the population. Statistics show that young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than young white men.

The practice of racial profiling is highly pervasive in the police force. Additionally, there is no reliable national database for keeping track of the number of people killed by police each year.

On average at least one person is killed by a cop every day in the United States. Compared to other countries, there are more people being killed by police in a week in the U.S. than in a whole year in other countries such as Australia, Germany, England, etc.

The scale of what is happening across the country right now is unacceptable and changes need to be made immediately.