Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 1,173 civilians having been shot, 248 of whom were Black, as of December 2024. In 2023, there were 1,164 fatal police shootings. Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 6.1 fatal shootings per million of the population per year between 2015 and 2024. Police brutality in the U.S. In recent years, particularly since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, police brutality has become a hot button issue in the United States. The number of homicides committed by police in the United States is often compared to those in countries such as England, where the number is significantly lower. Black Lives Matter The Black Lives Matter Movement, formed in 2013, has been a vocal part of the movement against police brutality in the U.S. by organizing “die-ins”, marches, and demonstrations in response to the killings of black men and women by police. While Black Lives Matter has become a controversial movement within the U.S., it has brought more attention to the number and frequency of police shootings of civilians.

The rate of fatal police shootings in the United States shows large differences based on ethnicity. Among Black Americans, the rate of fatal police shootings between 2015 and December 2024 stood at 6.1 per million of the population per year, while for white Americans, the rate stood at 2.4 fatal police shootings per million of the population per year. Police brutality in the United States Police brutality is a major issue in the United States, but recently saw a spike in online awareness and protests following the murder of George Floyd, an African American who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Just a few months before, Breonna Taylor was fatally shot in her apartment when Louisville police officers forced entry into her apartment. Despite the repeated fatal police shootings across the country, police accountability has not been adequate according to many Americans. A majority of Black Americans thought that police officers were not held accountable for their misconduct, while less than half of White Americans thought the same. Political opinions Not only are there differences in opinion between ethnicities on police brutality, but there are also major differences between political parties. A majority of Democrats in the United States thought that police officers were not held accountable for their misconduct, while a majority of Republicans that they were held accountable. Despite opposing views on police accountability, both Democrats and Republicans agree that police should be required to be trained in nonviolent alternatives to deadly force.

As of November 17, 277 Black people were killed by the police in the United States in 2024. This compares to 201 Hispanic people and 445 white people. The rate of police shootings of Black Americans is much higher than any other ethnicity, at 6.2 per million people. This rate stands at 2.8 per million for Hispanic people and 2.4 per million for white people.

The killing of Tyre Nichols in January 2023 by Memphis Police Officers has reignited debates about police brutality in the United States. Between 2013 and 2024, over 1,000 people have been killed by police every year. Some of the most infamous examples include the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the shooting of Breonna Taylor earlier that year. Within the provided time period, the most people killed by police in the United States was in 2024, at 1,375 people. Police Violence in the U.S. Police violence is defined as any instance where a police officer’s use of force results in a civilian’s death, regardless of whether it is considered justified by the law. While many people killed by police in the U.S. were shot, other causes of death have included tasers, vehicles, and physical restraints or beatings. In the United States, the rate of police shootings is much higher for Black Americans than it is for any other ethnicity, and recent incidents of police killing unarmed Black men and women in the United States have led to widespread protests against police brutality, particularly towards communities of color. America’s Persistent Police Problem Despite increasing visibility surrounding police violence in recent years, police killings have continued to occur in the United States at a consistently high rate. In comparison to other countries, police in the U.S. have killed people at a rate three times higher than police in Canada and 60 times the rate of police in England. While U.S. police have killed people in almost all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, New Mexico was reported to have the highest rate of people killed by the police in the United States, with 8.03 people per million inhabitants killed by police.

As of December 31, the U.S. police shot 1,173 people to death in 2024. In 2023, 1,164 people were shot to death by police in the United States. Police treatment Since as early as the 18th century, police brutality has been a significant issue in the United States. Black Americans have been especially marginalized by police officers, as they have faced higher rates of fatal police shootings compared to other ethnicities. Disparities also exist in perceptions of police treatment depending on ethnicity. A majority of Black Americans think that Black and White people do not receive equal police treatment, while more than half of White and Hispanic Americans think the same. Police reform The upsurge in Black Lives Matter protests in response to the killing of Black Americans as a result of police brutality has created a call for police reform. In 2019, it was found that police killings decreased by a quarter in police departments that implemented a policy that requires officers to use all other means before shooting. Since the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, 21 states, including New York and California, have passed bills that focused on police supervision.

Since 2013, protests opposing police violence against Black people have occurred across a number of American cities under the banner of “Black Lives Matter.” We develop a new dataset of Black Lives Matter protests that took place in 2014–2015 and explore the contexts in which they emerged. We find that Black Lives Matter protests are more likely to occur in localities where more Black people have previously been killed by police. We discuss the implications of our findings in light of the literature on the development of social movements and recent scholarship on the carceral state’s impact on political engagement.

A growing literature demonstrates the importance of both race and skin color in one’s lived experiences, including interactions with police. Media discourse and anti-police brutality movements consistently emphasize race while little, if any, attention is given to skin color. This paper seeks to examine how Black Americans navigate the multidimensionality of race with respect to organizing efforts against institutionalized racism. Do Black Americans perceive skin color as informing police interactions and/or support incorporating skin color into anti-brutality movement messaging? Is self-identified skin color associated with these views? A combination of 67 in-depth interviews and two national surveys of Black Americans reveals widespread recognition that darker-skinned Black people are more likely to be brutalized by police and feelings that BLM organizing is implicitly associated with skin color. Yet, there is general hesitancy for movement messaging to explicitly engage with subgroup disparities based on characteristics like skin color or gender. Among self-identified darker-skinned individuals, skin color is perceived as even more tightly interwoven with policing and there is more openness to discussing skin color alongside race. Overall, this mixed-methods project highlights how Black Americans perceive the multidimensionality of racialized interactions and, in search of justice, strategize responses through social movement organizing.

In 2023, 1,190 deadly police shootings occurred in the United States, a slight increase from 1,156 in the previous year. During this same period, there were 322 Black people killed by the police.

The purpose of this study was to better understand the problem of sexual assault among African American women in Maryland, assess their use of available resources in response to sexual assault, and explore their use of alternative sources of care. Researchers interviewed 223 female victims of sexual assault (Part 1 and Part 2) between January 2004 and July 2005 and conducted 21 focus groups (Part 3) with sexual assault resource service providers between 2003 and 2006. Criteria for inclusion in the interview component (Part 1 and Part 2) of the study included: African American or Caucasian female, aged 18 and over, resident of Maryland, and victim of sexual assault. There were four streams of recruitment for the interview portion of the study: Victims receiving services at one of 18 rape crisis centers located throughout the state of Maryland; Community outreach sessions conducted by rape crisis center community educators; Through community service providers, including those working in domestic violence centers, forensic nurse examiners (SAFE programs), probation and parole offices, reproductive health centers, county health departments, community services agencies, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and local colleges; and Through three detention centers housing female inmates. For Part 3 (Focus Group Qualitative Data), rape crisis center representatives and other community service provider representatives received a letter informing them that a focus group was going to be conducted at the end of their study training session and asked them for their participation. Part 1 (Victim Quantitative Data) includes items in the following categories: Personal Demographics, Details of the Sexual Assault, Medical Care, Law Enforcement, Prosecution/Court Process, Sexual Assault Center Services, Other Counseling Services, and Recommendations for Improvement. Part 2 (Victim Qualitative Data) includes responses to selected questions from Part 1. The data are organized by question, not by respondent. Part 3 (Focus Group Qualitative Data) includes questions on the needs of African American women who have been sexually assaulted, whether their needs are different from those of women of other racial/ethnic backgrounds, unique barriers to reporting sexual assault to police for African American women and their treatment by the criminal justice system, unique issues concerning the use of available resources by African American women, such as post-rape medical care and counseling services, and recommendations on how the state of Maryland could improve services for African American women who are the victims of sexual assault.

Protests started on May 26, 2020, one day after George Floyd, an African-American man died during a police arrest. Demonstrations around the world were sparked, demanding justice for those killed due to police conduct. This dashboard displays the documented demonstrations of protests against police brutality/misconduct following the death of George Floyd. While the death of George Floyd seemed to mark the start of these international demonstrations, and many sources of data indicated these protests were a result of Floyd's death, others who have died by police recently, notably Breonna Taylor, are not neglected in this application. In addition, it is understood that the protests are not only aimed at addressing the death of George Floyd, but the history of police violence, especially in the United States.Due to the nature of this content, there are some warnings and considerations for the audience. This application is intended to show the extent of the demonstrations; however, data points include information, details, and links to reported violence at the respective protests. This might not be suitable for all audiences. An attempt was made to include images from all protests, all of which are hosted, and linked from published news articles. In addition, images of children and unmasked faces from unidentified people, and images of violence were intentionally avoided; however, in some cases, there might have been an exception made (ie, if the identity of the person is given in the linked image source, if the only image available from the protest is depicting violence, or if the image is deemed especially effective at conveying history).The data, both Domestic to United States and International, is manually entered into a Google Sheet where it is then directly imported into ArcGIS Online. Because this is a massive undertaking for one person, there are still many updates that are required. As of June 27, 2020, most locations have been placed on the map; however, many details about each demonstration are missing. There are still updates planned, notably, for multi-day protests that occurred in large USA cities, such as Louisville, KY; Minneapolis, MN; Philadelphia, PA; New York City, NY; Richmond, VA; Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR; and Seattle, WA. Due to the complexity of these protests, marches, and single location demonstrations, this process will take considerably longer to gather information, determine the most appropriate schema, and implement those changes.Once all demonstration locations have been compiled, each location with multiple days of protests will be broken into new rows/points in order to introduce date filtering functions.Most data has been sourced from Wikipedia pages including:List of George Floyd Protests in the United StatesList of George Floyd Protest Outside of the United StatesList of George Floyd Protests in [US/Canadian State] - linked in the Wiki Page for Protests In/Outside the United StatesList of George Floyd Protests in [City] - linked in the Wiki Page for Protests in [US/Canadian State]Citations to publications from these Wikipedia pages were used to supply additional information and images, linked directly from their sources. It is encouraged to view citations in these articles to gain a better understanding of the event, and to support the media that provided this information via ad revenue.Note from the author:As a GIS Analyst by profession, as well as someone who has been emotionally moved by the events that have led to, and transpired following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Elijah McClain, and other Black Americans whose lives have been taken by Police, I felt it was an appropriate response to document, and share information about this international movement. As a person, particularly, a White person, who has been privileged in many aspects of society, and has gained these skills, at least partially, through my privilege, it's necessary to use that as a reason to inform others, provide impact to my community, and rather than speaking for others, use my skills to amplify their voices. With that said, there is a professional aspect that must be taken into consideration with this application. It is my utmost duty, as a GIS Analyst, and a person who follows professional and ethical guidelines to not: alter any information provided by our news media, to add personal bias to the facts, and to be unresponsive of criticism. If there are any complaints, whether information in the application is inaccurate, incomplete, or shows a unprofessional bias, please follow the link within the Dashboard to my Google Forms where you can submit suggestions, recommendations, or provide your personal opinion. I read all of these comments, and take the feedback seriously.There is a known issue with adding a filtering function by US State. Generally, the filter will appropriately reduce the data but on occasion, the location of the protests will shift. This issue is being investigated, and it is uncertain when a resolution will occur.

These Bloomington Police Department cases have been identified as Domestic Battery using the State Statue definition of 'domestic'.

Key code for Race:

A- Asian/Pacific Island, Non-Hispanic B- African American, Non-Hispanic C- Hawaiian/Other Pacific Island, Hispanic H- Hawaiian/Other Pacific Island, Non-Hispanic I- Indian/Alaskan Native, Non-Hispanic K- African American, Hispanic L- Caucasian, Hispanic N- Indian/Alaskan Native, Hispanic P- Asian/Pacific Island, Hispanic S- Asian, Non-Hispanic T- Asian, Hispanic U- Unknown W- Caucasian, Non-Hispanic

Key Code for Reading Districts:

Example: LB519

L for Law call or incident B stands for Bloomington 5 is the district or beat where incident occurred All numbers following represents a grid sector.

Disclaimer: The Bloomington Police Department takes great effort in making open data as accurate as possible, but there is no avoiding the introduction of errors in this process, which relies on data provided by many people and that cannot always be verified. Information contained in this dataset may change over a period of time. The Bloomington Police Department is not responsible for any error or omission from this data, or for the use or interpretation of the results of any research conducted.

The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly known as “The Kerner Commission” after its chair Otto Kerner, was assigned by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 to report on the causes of urban uprisings over the course of four consecutive summers. ‘Rioting’ took place in 150 American cities and resulted directly from police violence against African Americans. The report concluded that the nation was moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal. Fifty years later, urban (and suburban) uprisings following police murders again illuminate the trajectory that the Kerner Commission cautioned against. Protests over several summers challenging excessive police use of force, police violence, and the role of police in enforcing structural racism in the U.S., culminated in 2020, during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and have since taken place around the world.Developing a qualitative study of policing in the Jamaica section of Queens County, New York seeks: 1) to better understand the ways in which policing and police violence in urban communities have been contested during the post-1968 era of massive demographic, political, economic, and cultural change and 2) to investigate how and why the American “War on Drugs” has emerged and police power has expanded and the ways this historic process has shaped Black American neighborhoods, politics, and subjectivity. The findings of this study deepen our understandings of the American police-community dialectic by centering Black agency, politics, and press. Guided by critical discourse analysis and “conceptual metaphor theory,” data is drawn from Black Press, White Press, the archives, and civic organization membership, to examine discourse on protests, civic, and political action, following the historic killings of 10-year-old Clifford Glover in 1973, and 23-year-old Sean Bell in 2006. This study’s recovery of the collective memory of Clifford Glover is the most extensive social science treatment of the first murder trial of an on-duty police officer in New York City history. Linking this largely forgotten past to the innovation of Tactical Narcotics Teams (TNT) in southeast Queens, following the 1988 assassination of 103rd Precinct officer Edward Byrne, reshapes the study of mass incarceration.

This article presents evidence that exposure to officer-involved deaths of low-threat black victims increases political interest and voter turnout among black CMPS respondents under age 40. The analysis takes advantage of variation in the timing of exposure to officer-involved deaths, relative to survey participation, to randomly assign survey respondents to treatment and control conditions. The analysis considers socioeconomic status, police contact, police performance, and other factors that might confound this relationship. The results reveal that victim race, threat level, and visibility affect the likelihood that an officer-involved death will mobilize political interest. Political interest and voter turnout are higher among the treatment group, who were exposed to high-visibility/low-threat Black victims only before they participated in the CMPS, than in the control group, who were exposed to such victims only after they took the survey. Exposing young black respondents to all victims without accounting for threat, visibility, or race does not affect political interest or voter turnout, suggesting the importance of these factors for mobilization. The findings clarify role that Black Lives Matter activists, journalists, and watchdog groups can play in countering the police actions that shape the visibility and framing of black victims of police violence.

As of March 13, 479 people were killed by police in the United States in 2025, *** of whom were White. However, the rate of U.S. police killings has been much higher among Black Americans compared to other racial or ethnic groups.

Under what conditions can citizens hold government officials accountable for their behavior? I examine accountability over the police, a pervasive face of the state as experienced by most people. Like elected politicians, police enjoy significant discretion, limited oversight, power, and corruptibility. Continued problems of police violence and disparate treatment, especially against Black Americans, have shown the importance of accountable policing. Using calls for service records, election returns, survey data, and case studies, I explore challenges of political accountability across the highly varied 18,000 police department in the United States. The police are both a nationally salient social group – evaluated differently by partisans in a national media environment – as well as a locally-provided government function that tens of millions of Americans encounter regularly. This decentralization complicates improvements to policing policies by limiting the impacts of reform activism to particular cities and by misaligning activism with local conditions (Chapter 1). Millions of Americans regularly call the police to manage a swathe of urgent problems. Examining whether citizens punish street-level bureaucrats for misbehavior by withdrawing from demands for police intervention, I find that daily demands for policing services remain steady after well-publicized police abuse (Chapter 2). Absent exit, change requires political action. One manifestation of the varieties of American policing is between elected and appointed police leadership. I show that each approach has problems: elected sheriffs seem too steady in their offices – over which they enjoy almost unfettered control and significant incumbency advantage – while appointed police chiefs are constrained by unions, politicians, and the public (Chapter 3). Drawing on case studies of immigration enforcement in county jails, I show that nationally salient issues can impinge on the domains of county Sheriffs and increase interest and energy in local elections – aligning policies with preferences through a process I term “redirected nationalization” (Chapter 4). An additional problem is that police officers are themselves political agents who can resist change. By analyzing their nearly universal support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, and the status of police as a salient cleavage in American electoral politics, I show a strong affinity between police union and right-wing politics rooted in the sense that police are “under siege” by Black Lives Matter and calls for reform (Chapter 5). This uniform conservative orientation of police culture clashes with the array of problems the police manage, which frequently include homelessness and mental illness (Chapter 6, co-authored with Jacob Brown). I conclude that, where possible, it is better to unbundle the multifaceted police role, with specialized civil servants responding to classes of problems (Chapter 7). However, the decentralization of policing in the United States and the ambiguity of many calls for services will complicate unbundling. Hence, there remains a need to cultivate a police culture sensitive to the range of problems police encounter and, longer term, to ameliorate the social conditions which drive reliance on police services.

Analysis of ‘Domestic Violence’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/1108f681-0223-485c-ba25-469aa6b77902 on 27 January 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

These Bloomington Police Department cases have been identified as Domestic Battery using the State Statue definition of 'domestic'.

Key code for Race:

A- Asian/Pacific Island, Non-Hispanic B- African American, Non-Hispanic C- Hawaiian/Other Pacific Island, Hispanic H- Hawaiian/Other Pacific Island, Non-Hispanic I- Indian/Alaskan Native, Non-Hispanic K- African American, Hispanic L- Caucasian, Hispanic N- Indian/Alaskan Native, Hispanic P- Asian/Pacific Island, Hispanic S- Asian, Non-Hispanic T- Asian, Hispanic U- Unknown W- Caucasian, Non-Hispanic

Key Code for Reading Districts:

Example: LB519

L for Law call or incident B stands for Bloomington 5 is the district or beat where incident occurred All numbers following represents a grid sector.

Disclaimer: The Bloomington Police Department takes great effort in making open data as accurate as possible, but there is no avoiding the introduction of errors in this process, which relies on data provided by many people and that cannot always be verified. Information contained in this dataset may change over a period of time. The Bloomington Police Department is not responsible for any error or omission from this data, or for the use or interpretation of the results of any research conducted.

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

As of October 22, police in the United States had shot 23 unarmed people to death in 2024. The most common weapon for a victim of a fatal police shooting to be carrying is a gun. In 2023, 717 people carrying a gun were shot and killed by the U.S. police.

Recently, we have witnessed the politicizing effects of police killings in the United States. This project asks how such killings might (de)mobilize voters at the local level. We draw on multiple theoretical approaches to develop a theory of community contact with the police. We argue that when a highly visible event tied to government actions occurs---like a police killing---it can spur turnout. This is especially true where public narratives tie such events to government and structural causes. By comparing neighborhoods near a killing before and after election day, we estimate the causal effect on turnout. We find a mobilizing effect. These effects are larger when they ``trend'' on Google, occur in Black communities, or if the victim is Black. Proximity to a killing also increases support for abolishing the police. We conclude that police violence increases electoral participation in communities where narratives about racially unjust policing resonate most.

Characteristics of police violence fatalities, 2013–2019.

As of November 17, New Mexico had the highest rate of people killed by police out of all U.S. states in 2024, with ***** people per million inhabitants killed by police in that time period, followed by Wyoming with ***** people per million inhabitants killed by police.