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 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.

The graph illustrates the number of people killed by police in the United States from 2015 to 2024. The x-axis represents the years, spanning from 2015 to 2024, while the y-axis indicates the annual number of deaths. Over this 10-year period, the number of deaths increases from 995 in 2015 to a peak of 1,173 in 2024. Notable figures include 959 deaths in 2016, 1,050 in 2021, and an estimated 1,164 deaths in 2023. The data shows a general upward trend in police-related fatalities from 2015 through 2024. This information is presented in a line graph format, effectively highlighting the yearly changes and overall increase in deaths caused by police actions in the United States, with an anticipated decline in the most recent year.

The graph illustrates the total number of people killed by police in the United States from 2015 to 2024, categorized by race. The x-axis represents different racial groups: White, Black, Hispanic, and Other. The y-axis shows the number of deaths. White individuals account for the highest number of fatalities with 4,647 deaths, followed by Black individuals with 2,479 deaths. Hispanic individuals have 1,716 deaths, while the Other category records the lowest number of deaths at 378. The data highlights that White individuals experience the most police-related fatalities over the ten-year period, with significant numbers also affecting Black and Hispanic communities. This distribution underscores the disparities in police-related deaths among different racial groups in the U.S.

"In 2015, The Washington Post began to log every fatal shooting by an on-duty police officer in the United States. In that time there have been more than 5,000 such shootings recorded by The Post. After Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man, was killed in 2014 by police in Ferguson, Mo., a Post investigation found that the FBI undercounted fatal police shootings by more than half. This is because reporting by police departments is voluntary and many departments fail to do so. The Washington Post’s data relies primarily on news accounts, social media postings, and police reports. Analysis of more than five years of data reveals that the number and circumstances of fatal shootings and the overall demographics of the victims have remained relatively constant..." SOURCE ==> Washington Post Article

For more information about this story

This dataset has been prepared by The Washington Post (they keep updating it on runtime) with every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty since Jan. 1, 2015.

2016 PoliceKillingUS DATASET
2017 PoliceKillingUS DATASET
2018 PoliceKillingUS DATASET
2019 PoliceKillingUS DATASET
2020 PoliceKillingUS DATASET

Features at the Dataset:

The file fatal-police-shootings-data.csv contains data about each fatal shooting in CSV format. The file can be downloaded at this URL. Each row has the following variables:

• id: a unique identifier for each victim
• name: the name of the victim
• date: the date of the fatal shooting in YYYY-MM-DD format
• manner_of_death: shot, shot and Tasered
• armed: indicates that the victim was armed with some sort of implement that a police officer believed could inflict harm
  • undetermined: it is not known whether or not the victim had a weapon
  • unknown: the victim was armed, but it is not known what the object was
  • unarmed: the victim was not armed
• age: the age of the victim
• gender: the gender of the victim. The Post identifies victims by the gender they identify with if reports indicate that it differs from their biological sex.
  • M: Male
  • F: Female
  • None: unknown
• race:
  • W: White, non-Hispanic
  • B: Black, non-Hispanic
  • A: Asian
  • N: Native American
  • H: Hispanic
  • O: Other
  • None: unknown
• city: the municipality where the fatal shooting took place. Note that in some cases this field may contain a county name if a more specific municipality is unavailable or unknown.
• state: two-letter postal code abbreviation
• signs of mental illness: News reports have indicated the victim had a history of mental health issues, expressed suicidal intentions or was experiencing mental distress at the time of the shooting.
• threat_level: The threat_level column was used to flag incidents for the story by Amy Brittain in October 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/10/24/on-duty-under-fire/ As described in the story, the general criteria for the attack label was that there was the most direct and immediate threat to life. That would include incidents where officers or others were shot at, threatened with a gun, attacked with other weapons or physical force, etc. The attack category is meant to flag the highest level of threat. The other and undetermined categories represent all remaining cases. Other includes many incidents where officers or others faced significant threats.
• flee: News reports have indicated the victim was moving away from officers
  • Foot
  • Car
  • Not fleeing

The threat column and the fleeing column are not necessarily related. For example, there is an incident in which the suspect is fleeing and at the same time turns to fire at gun at the officer. Also, attacks represent a status immediately before fatal shots by police while fleeing could begin slightly earlier and involve a chase. - body_camera: News reports have indicated an officer w...

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.

This dataset contains information on fatal police deaths in the United States. The data includes the victim's rank, name, department, date of death, and cause of death. The data spans from 1791 to the present day. This dataset will be updated on monthly basis. Data Scrapped from this website :- https://www.odmp.org/

New Version Features -> With the new web scrapper I have upgraded dataset with more information. 1) The new dataset version is "police_deaths_USA_v6.csv" and "k9_deaths_USA_v6.csv". 2) Splitted the dataset into 2 different datasets 1 for Human Unit and other for K9 Unit. 3) Check out the new web scrapper code in this file "final_scrapper_program_with_comments.ipynb". 4) Also added the correction file which is needed to adjust some data points from K9 dataset. 5) Extended data of Human Unit dataset to 13 Features. 6) Extended data of K9 Unit dataset to 14 Features.

The police_deaths dataset contains 13 variables:

1) Rank -> Rank assigned or achieved by the police throughout their tenure.

2) Name -> The name of the person.

3) Age -> Age of the person.

4) End_Of_Watch -> The death date on which the the person declared as dead.

5) Day_Of_Week -> The day of the week [Sunday, Monday, etc.].

6) Cause -> The cause of the death.

7) Department -> The department's name where the person works.

8) State -> The state where the department is situated.

9) Tour -> The Duration of there Tenure.

10) Badge -> Badge of the person.

11) Weapon -> The Weapon by which the officer has been killed.

12) Offender -> Offender / Killer this says what happened to the offender after the incident was he/she [Arrested, Killed, etc.].

13) Summary -> Summary of the police officer and also the summary of the incident of what happened ? How he/she died ?, etc.

The k9_deaths dataset contains 14 variables:

1) Rank -> Rank assigned or achieved by the K9 throughout their tenure.

2) Name -> The name of the K9.

3) Breed -> Breed of the K9.

4) Gender -> Gender of the K9.

5) Age -> Age of the K9.

6) End_Of_Watch -> The death date on which the the person declared as dead.

7) Day_Of_Week -> The day of the week [Sunday, Monday, etc.].

8) Cause -> The cause of the death.

9) Department -> The department's name where the K9 was assigned.

10) State -> The state where the department is situated.

11) Tour -> The Duration of there Tenure.

12) Weapon -> The Weapon by which the officer has been killed.

13) Offender -> Offender / Killer this says what happened to the offender after the incident was he/she [Arrested, Killed, etc.].

14) Summary -> Summary of the K9 dog and also the summary of the incident of what happened ? How he/she died ?, etc.

Acknowledgements:

The original dataset was collected by FiveThirtyEight and it contains police death data from 1791 to 2016. Here is the link -> https://data.world/fivethirtyeight/police-deaths.

The reason I made this dataset is because it had not been updated since 2016 and the scrapping script was outdated, so I decided to make a new scrapper and update the dataset till present. I got this idea from the FiveThirtyEight group and a fellow kaggler, Satoshi Datamoto, who uploaded the dataset on kaggle. Thank you for inspiration.

Tableau Visualization link :- https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/mayuresh.koli/viz/USALawEnforcementLineofDutyDeaths/main_dashboard

This dataset is one of three that pull together data from several different sources regarding police-related violence and racial equity in the United States. The datasets currently include these types of data:

Part 1: Citizen deaths, police deaths, and other outcomes - Police shootings - Citizen fatalities involving police - Police officer deaths suffered in the line of duty

Part 2: Demographics, crime stats, protests, and other data - Social and economic data - Political leanings of citizens - Sales of DoD equipment to law enforcement agencies - City budgets - Police department headcounts - Police department policies and contract provisions - Juvenile arrests by type of crime and race - Crimes and arrests for the prime city in the four largest metro areas. - Protest activity - Police response - Press activity - Video clips of incidents

I don't believe that any amount of data can fully describe the social dysfunction we have. At the same time, I hope these datasets can be an objective source for providing thoughtful, fact-based analysis of this important issue.

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.

As of November 25, 251 people aged 45 years and over were fatally shot by U.S. law enforcement officers in 2024. 310 people in the same age group were shot to death by police in 2023, and 263 in 2022.

In 2015, The Post began tracking details about each police-involved killing in the United States — the race of the deceased, the circumstances of the shooting, whether the person was armed and whether the person was experiencing a mental-health crisis — by manually culling local news reports, collecting information from law enforcement websites and social media, and monitoring independent databases such as Fatal Encounters and the now-defunct Killed by Police project. In many cases, The Post conducts additional reporting.

In 2022, The Post updated its database to standardize and publish the names of the police agencies involved in each shooting to better measure accountability at the department level.

The 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. began a protest movement culminating in the Black Lives Matter movement and an increased focus on police accountability nationwide. In this data set, The Post tracks only shootings with circumstances closely paralleling those like the killing of Brown — incidents in which a police officer, in the line of duty, shoots and kills a civilian. The Post is not tracking deaths of people in police custody, fatal shootings by off-duty officers or non-shooting deaths in this data set.

The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention log fatal shootings by police, but officials acknowledge that their data is incomplete. Since 2015, The Post has documented more than twice as many fatal shootings by police as recorded by federal officials on average annually. That gap has widened in recent years, as the FBI in 2021 tracked only a third of departments’ fatal shootings.

The Post seeks to make records as comprehensive as possible; the database is updated regularly as fatal shootings are reported and as facts emerge about individual cases. At times, there may be a lag between the date of the shooting and its inclusion in the database because of delays in reporting and data verification.

To provide information about fatal police shootings since Jan. 1, 2015, send us an email at policeshootingsfeedback@washpost.com.

The study was a comprehensive analysis of felonious killings of officers. The purposes of the study were (1) to analyze the nature and circumstances of incidents of felonious police killings and (2) to analyze trends in the numbers and rates of killings across different types of agencies and to explain these differences. For Part 1, Incident-Level Data, an incident-level database was created to capture all incidents involving the death of a police officer from 1983 through 1992. Data on officers and incidents were collected from the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) data collection as coded by the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. In addition to the UCR data, the Police Foundation also coded information from the LEOKA narratives that are not part of the computerized LEOKA database from the FBI. For Part 2, Agency-Level Data, the researchers created an agency-level database to research systematic differences among rates at which law enforcement officers had been feloniously killed from 1977 through 1992. The investigators focused on the 56 largest law enforcement agencies because of the availability of data for explanatory variables. Variables in Part 1 include year of killing, involvement of other officers, if the officer was killed with his/her own weapon, circumstances of the killing, location of fatal wounds, distance between officer and offender, if the victim was wearing body armor, if different officers were killed in the same incident, if the officer was in uniform, actions of the killer and of the officer at entry and final stage, if the killer was visible at first, if the officer thought the killer was a felon suspect, if the officer was shot at entry, and circumstances at anticipation, entry, and final stages. Demographic variables for Part 1 include victim's sex, age, race, type of assignment, rank, years of experience, agency, population group, and if the officer was working a security job. Part 2 contains variables describing the general municipal environment, such as whether the agency is located in the South, level of poverty according to a poverty index, population density, percent of population that was Hispanic or Black, and population aged 15-34 years old. Variables capturing the crime environment include the violent crime rate, property crime rate, and a gun-related crime index. Lastly, variables on the environment of the police agencies include violent and property crime arrests per 1,000 sworn officers, percentage of officers injured in assaults, and number of sworn officers.

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.

Police Killings and Police Deaths Are Public Health Data and Can Be Counted

The Washington Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty since January 1, 2015.

In 2015, The Post began tracking more than a dozen details about each killing — including the race of the deceased, the circumstances of the shooting, whether the person was armed and whether the victim was experiencing a mental-health crisis — by culling local news reports, law enforcement websites and social media and by monitoring independent databases such as Killed by Police and Fatal Encounters.

The Post is documenting only those shootings in which a police officer, in the line of duty, shot and killed a civilian — the circumstances that most closely parallel the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which began the protest movement culminating in Black Lives Matter and an increased focus on police accountability nationwide. The Post is not tracking deaths of people in police custody, fatal shootings by off-duty officers or non-shooting deaths.

The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention log fatal shootings by police, but officials acknowledge that their data is incomplete. In 2015, The Post documented more than two times more fatal shootings by police than had been recorded by the FBI.

The Post’s database is updated regularly as fatal shootings are reported and as facts emerge about individual cases. The Post is seeking assistance in making the database as comprehensive as possible. To provide information about fatal police shootings, send us an email at policeshootingsfeedback@washpost.com.

CREDITS
Research and Reporting: Julie Tate, Jennifer Jenkins and Steven Rich
Production and Presentation: John Muyskens, Kennedy Elliott and Ted Mellnik

The rate of civilians killed by police in the Venezuela is far higher than in comparable developed democratic countries, with 1,830 people killed by police per 10 million residents in 2025. This compares to 69 deaths per 10 million residents in Canada, and seven in Australia - perhaps the two most comparable countries to the United States in many respects. Country with the most prisoners The El Salvador is the country with the largest number of prisoners per capita. This suggests either that they have the most criminals, or that the police make more arrests and judges hand down jail as a more frequent punishment. Costa Rica has the highest burglary rate, seeing almost three times as many break-ins as in the United States, for example. Does weapon ownership contribute to higher number of violent attacks? Other factors may also be at play. One such factor may be gun ownership. If police shootings are more likely to happen in states with a higher number of registered weapons, one could argue that the threat of violence against police makes officers more likely to utilize deadly force. However, countries like Canada also have a high number of individual firearms licenses, indicating that this factor likely does not explain the entire effect. Social factors may also influence this statistic, such as the use of the death penalty. Still, each fatal incident is complex, and the full situation surrounding each involves many factors, meaning that a simple solution is unlikely.

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.

Context

This dataset contains data behind the story, The Dallas Shooting Was Among The Deadliest For Police In U.S. History. The data are scraped from ODMP and capture information on all tracked on-duty police officer deaths in the U.S. broken down by cause from 1971 until 2016.

Content

This dataset tags every entry as human or canine. There are 10 variables:

• person

• dept: Department

• eow: End of watch

• cause: Cause of death

• cause_short: Shortened cause of death

• date: Cleaned EOW

• year: Year from EOW

• canine

• dept_name

• state

Inspiration

Using the data, can you determine the temporal trend of police officer deaths by cause? By state? By department?

Acknowledgements

The primary source of data is the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), started in 1996 by a college student who is now a police officer and who continues to maintain the database. The original data and code can be found on the FiveThirtyEight GitHub.

About this dataset

The Washington Post compiled a dataset of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty since Jan. 1, 2015.

In 2015, The Post began tracking more than a dozen details about each killing by culling local news reports, law enforcement websites and social media and by monitoring independent databases such as Killed by Police and Fatal Encounters. The available features are: - Race of the deceased; - Circumstances of the shooting; - Whether the person was armed; - Whether the victim was experiencing a mental-health crisis; - Among others.

In 2016, The Post is gathering additional information about each fatal shooting that occurs this year and is filing open-records requests with departments. More than a dozen additional details are being collected about officers in each shooting.

The Post is documenting only those shootings in which a police officer, in the line of duty, shot and killed a civilian — the circumstances that most closely parallel the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., which began the protest movement culminating in Black Lives Matter and an increased focus on police accountability nationwide. The Post is not tracking deaths of people in police custody, fatal shootings by off-duty officers or non-shooting deaths.

The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention log fatal shootings by police, but officials acknowledge that their data is incomplete. In 2015, The Post documented more than two times more fatal shootings by police than had been recorded by the FBI. Last year, the FBI announced plans to overhaul how it tracks fatal police encounters.

How to use this dataset

• Understanding US Police Shootings by Curtis Thompson
• Dataset Questions and Suggestions
• More datasets

Acknowledgements

If you use this dataset in your research, please credit the authors.

BibTeX

@misc{wapo-police-shootings-bot , author = {The Washington Post}, title = {data-police-shootings}, month = jan, year = 2015, publisher = {Github}, url = {https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings} }

License

CC BY NC SA 4.0

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This directory contains the data and code behind the story The Dallas Shooting Was Among The Deadliest For Police In U.S. History. The primary source of data is the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), ...