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.

Analysis of ‘Police Killings US’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/azizozmen/police-killings-us on 13 February 2022.

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

"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 was wearing a body camera and it may have recorded some portion of the incident.

SOURCE

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

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.

Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as a periodic nationwide assessment of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. Each year, this information is reported in four types of files: (1) Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest, (2) Property Stolen and Recovered, (3) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and (4) Police Employee (LEOKA) Data. The Police Employee (LEOKA) Data provide information about law enforcement officers killed or assaulted (hence the acronym, LEOKA) in the line of duty. The variables created from the LEOKA forms provide in-depth information on the circumstances surrounding killings or assaults, including type of call answered, type of weapon used, and type of patrol the officers were on.

The 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, began the protest movement culminating in Black Lives Matter and an increased focus on police accountability nationwide.

Since Jan. 1, 2015, The Washington Post has been compiling a database of every fatal shooting in the US by a police officer in the line of duty. It's difficult to find reliable data from before this period, as police killings haven't been comprehensively documented, and the statistics on police brutality are much less available. As a result, a vast number of cases go unreported.

The Washington Post is tracking more than a dozen details about each killing - including the race, age and gender of the deceased, whether the person was armed, and whether the victim was experiencing a mental-health crisis. They have gathered this information from law enforcement websites, local new reports, social media, and by monitoring independent databases such as "Killed by police" and "Fatal Encounters". The Post has also conducted additional reporting in many cases.

There are four additional datasets. These are US census data on poverty rate, high school graduation rate, median household income, and racial demographics.

Source of census data: https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml

The Counted is a project by the Guardian – and you – working to count the number of people killed by police and other law enforcement agencies in the United States throughout 2015 and 2016, to monitor their demographics and to tell the stories of how they died.

The database will combine Guardian reporting with verified crowdsourced information to build a more comprehensive record of such fatalities. The Counted is the most thorough public accounting for deadly use of force in the US, but it will operate as an imperfect work in progress – and will be updated by Guardian reporters and interactive journalists as frequently and as promptly as possible.

The Motor Vehicle Collisions crash table contains details on the crash event. Each row represents a crash event. The Motor Vehicle Collisions data tables contain information from all police reported motor vehicle collisions in NYC. The police report (MV104-AN) is required to be filled out for collisions where someone is injured or killed, or where there is at least $1000 worth of damage (https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/ny_overlay_mv-104an_rev05_2004.pdf). It should be noted that the data is preliminary and subject to change when the MV-104AN forms are amended based on revised crash details.For the most accurate, up to date statistics on traffic fatalities, please refer to the NYPD Motor Vehicle Collisions page (updated weekly) or Vision Zero View (updated monthly).

Due to success of the CompStat program, NYPD began to ask how to apply the CompStat principles to other problems. Other than homicides, the fatal incidents with which police have the most contact with the public are fatal traffic collisions. Therefore in April 1998, the Department implemented TrafficStat, which uses the CompStat model to work towards improving traffic safety. Police officers complete form MV-104AN for all vehicle collisions. The MV-104AN is a New York State form that has all of the details of a traffic collision. Before implementing Trafficstat, there was no uniform traffic safety data collection procedure for all of the NYPD precincts. Therefore, the Police Department implemented the Traffic Accident Management System (TAMS) in July 1999 in order to collect traffic data in a uniform method across the City. TAMS required the precincts manually enter a few selected MV-104AN fields to collect very basic intersection traffic crash statistics which included the number of accidents, injuries and fatalities. As the years progressed, there grew a need for additional traffic data so that more detailed analyses could be conducted. The Citywide traffic safety initiative, Vision Zero started in the year 2014. Vision Zero further emphasized the need for the collection of more traffic data in order to work towards the Vision Zero goal, which is to eliminate traffic fatalities. Therefore, the Department in March 2016 replaced the TAMS with the new Finest Online Records Management System (FORMS). FORMS enables the police officers to electronically, using a Department cellphone or computer, enter all of the MV-104AN data fields and stores all of the MV-104AN data fields in the Department’s crime data warehouse. Since all of the MV-104AN data fields are now stored for each traffic collision, detailed traffic safety analyses can be conducted as applicable.

The circumstances surrounding "justifiable homicides" by police are the focus of this data collection, which examines occurrences in 57 United States cities during the period 1970-1979. Homicides by on- and off-duty police officers serving communities of 250,000 or more were studied. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire sent to police executives of the 57 cities. The Federal Bureau of Investigation supplied data on justifiable homicides by police, including age, sex, and race data. The variables include number of sworn officers, number of supervisory officers, average years of education, department regulations about issues such as off-duty employment, uniforms, carrying firearms, and disciplinary actions, in-service training, pre-service training, firearms practice, assignments without firearms, on-duty deaths, and off-duty deaths. The study was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice to the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

The Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data, Police Employee Data, 2016 file contains monthly data on felonious or accidental killings and assaults upon United States law enforcement officers acting in the line of duty. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assembled the data and processed them from UCR Master Police Employee (LEOKA) data tapes. Each agency record in the file includes the following summary variables: state code, population group code, geographic division, Metropolitan Statistical Area code, and agency name. These variables afford considerable flexibility in creating subsets or aggregations of the data. Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as a periodic nationwide assessment of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. Each year, this information is reported in four types of files: (1) Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest, (2) Property Stolen and Recovered, (3) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and (4) Police Employee (LEOKA) Data. The Police Employee (LEOKA) Data provide information about law enforcement officers killed or assaulted (hence the acronym, LEOKA) in the line of duty. The variables created from the LEOKA forms provide in-depth information on the circumstances surrounding killings or assaults, including type of call answered, type of weapon used, and type of patrol the officers were on.

This dataset includes all valid felony, misdemeanor, and violation crimes reported to the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from 2006 to the end of last year (2015). For additional details, please see the attached data dictionary in the ‘About’ section.

This data collection was designed to assess the impact of line-of-duty deaths of law enforcement officers on their family members in terms of the psychological, emotional, and financial effects. To assess the impact of the traumatic event, a wide variety of clinical and psychiatric measures of psychological disorder were employed. The data are stored in two files. Included in the first file are variables concerning the respondent's personal characteristics such as age, sex, ethnic origin, marital status, educational level, relationship to deceased officer, and employment. Also included are experiences and emotional reactions to the death of the officer and clinical symptoms of psychological distress. The file also offers information on the deceased officer's demographic characteristics such as age at time of death, sex, ethnic origin, educational level, number of times married, and number of years in law enforcement, as well as the date and time of the incident. The second file contains variables on the respondent's relationship with friends and relatives before and after the traumatic event, behavioral changes of survivors' children following the death, financial impacts on survivors, and satisfaction with treatment and responses received from police departments.

Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as periodic nationwide assessments of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. Law enforcement agencies contribute reports either directly or through their state reporting programs. Each year, summary data are reported in four types of files: (1) Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest, (2) Property Stolen and Recovered, (3) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and (4) Police Employee (LEOKA) Data. The Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest data files include monthly data on the number of Crime Index offenses reported and the number of offenses cleared by arrest or other means. The counts include all reports of Index crimes (excluding arson) received from victims, officers who discovered infractions, or other sources.

The Washington Post spent a year determining how many children have been affected by school shootings, beyond just those killed or injured. To do that, reporters attempted to identify every act of gunfire at a primary or secondary school during school hours since the Columbine High massacre on April 20, 1999. Using Nexis, news articles, open-source databases, law enforcement reports, information from school websites, and calls to schools and police departments, The Post reviewed more than 1,000 alleged incidents, but counted only those that happened on campuses immediately before, during or just after classes. Shootings at after-hours events, accidental discharges that caused no injuries to anyone other than the person handling the gun, and suicides that occurred privately or posed no threat to other children were excluded. Gunfire at colleges and universities, which affects young adults rather than kids, also was not counted. After finding more than 200 incidents of gun violence that met The Post’s criteria, reporters organized them in a database for analysis. Because the federal government does not track school shootings, it’s possible that the database does not contain every incident that would qualify. To calculate how many children were exposed to gunfire in each school shooting, The Post relied on enrollment figures and demographic information from the U.S. Education Department, including the Common Core of Data and the Private School Universe Survey. The analysis used attendance figures from the year of the shooting for the vast majority of the schools. Credits: Research and Reporting: John Woodrow Cox, Steven Rich and Allyson Chiu Production and Presentation: John Muyskens and Monica Ulmanu Per the terms of the Creative Commons license, CISER notes that: 1. the license for this dataset is attached as the files license.htm and license.pdf. A brief version of the Creative Commons license is also included but users should familiarize themselves with the full license before using. 2. the licensed material is located at https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-school-shootings 3. Several of the files have been modified from the format presented at the above url including creating pdf versions of the documentation files and adding SAS, Stata, and SPSS versions through the use of StatTransfer 13. 4. These adapted versions of the original files are also released through the same Creative Commons license as the original with the same license elements.

The Motor Vehicle Collisions vehicle table contains details on each vehicle involved in the crash. Each row represents a motor vehicle involved in a crash. The data in this table goes back to April 2016 when crash reporting switched to an electronic system. The Motor Vehicle Collisions data tables contain information from all police reported motor vehicle collisions in NYC. The police report (MV104-AN) is required to be filled out for collisions where someone is injured or killed, or where there is at least $1000 worth of damage (https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/ny_overlay_mv-104an_rev05_2004.pdf). It should be noted that the data is preliminary and subject to change when the MV-104AN forms are amended based on revised crash details. Due to success of the CompStat program, NYPD began to ask how to apply the CompStat principles to other problems. Other than homicides, the fatal incidents with which police have the most contact with the public are fatal traffic collisions. Therefore in April 1998, the Department implemented TrafficStat, which uses the CompStat model to work towards improving traffic safety. Police officers complete form MV-104AN for all vehicle collisions. The MV-104AN is a New York State form that has all of the details of a traffic collision. Before implementing Trafficstat, there was no uniform traffic safety data collection procedure for all of the NYPD precincts. Therefore, the Police Department implemented the Traffic Accident Management System (TAMS) in July 1999 in order to collect traffic data in a uniform method across the City. TAMS required the precincts manually enter a few selected MV-104AN fields to collect very basic intersection traffic crash statistics which included the number of accidents, injuries and fatalities. As the years progressed, there grew a need for additional traffic data so that more detailed analyses could be conducted. The Citywide traffic safety initiative, Vision Zero started in the year 2014. Vision Zero further emphasized the need for the collection of more traffic data in order to work towards the Vision Zero goal, which is to eliminate traffic fatalities. Therefore, the Department in March 2016 replaced the TAMS with the new Finest Online Records Management System (FORMS). FORMS enables the police officers to electronically, using a Department cellphone or computer, enter all of the MV-104AN data fields and stores all of the MV-104AN data fields in the Department’s crime data warehouse. Since all of the MV-104AN data fields are now stored for each traffic collision, detailed traffic safety analyses can be conducted as applicable.

The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (DICRA) requires the head of each federal law enforcement agency to submit to the U.S. attorney general, information about the death of any person who is detained, under arrest, or in the process of being arrested by a federal law enforcement officer (or by a state or local law enforcement officer while participating in a federal law enforcement operation, task force, or other capacity) being transported to, incarcerated at, or detained at any facility (including immigration or juvenile facilities) pursuant to a contract with a federal law enforcement agency, state or local government facility used by a federal law enforcement agency, or federal correctional or pre-trial detention facility located within the United States (Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013, P.L. 113-242). The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) created the Federal Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (FDCRP) to collect the data required of federal law enforcement agencies. Federal law enforcement agencies are surveyed on an annual basis about deaths that fall under the scope of DICRA. This data collection includes the 2020 Arrest-Related Death Incident Report (CJ-13A) data and the 2020 Detention/Incarceration Incident Report (CJ-13B) data.