Killed by the cops: since the release of our joint national investigation with The Chicago Reporter, we've published a multimedia website and editorials about racial profiling and fatal police shootings. Visit www.colorlines.com and www.chicagoreporter.com for the complete coverage.(OP-ED)(Editorial)

THE PROBLEM of fatal police shootings in America goes beyond a few bad apples. It points to persistent and systemic problems that lead to ongoing tragedies for communities of color.

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During the years 1980 to 2005, close to 9,600 people were killed by police in America--an average of about one fatal shooting every day.

However, fatal shootings are not inevitable. Washington, D.C., had the nation's highest rate of these shootings during the '90s. But a combination of firearms training for all and true accountability for misbehaving officers led to a dramatic drop in the number of fatal shootings.

It's also clear that shootings are not distributed evenly throughout the population. In Chicago, for example, more than two-thirds of the shootings happened in Black and Latino neighborhoods, and the majority of the incidents occurred in poor neighborhoods.

And Blacks are particularly at risk of being killed by police. Black people were overrepresented among police shooting victims in each of America's 10 largest cities, each of which had more than 1 million people. This contrast was particularly glaring in New York, Las Vegas and San Diego. In each of those cities, the percentage of Black people killed was at least double their share of the general population.

"There is a crisis of perception where Black males and females take their lives in their hands just walking out the door," said Delores Jones-Brown, interim director of the Center on Race, Crime and Justice at John Jay College in New York. "There is a notion they will be perceived as armed and dangerous. It's clear that it's not a local problem."