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.

Field descriptions:

Header	Description	Source
name	Name of deceased	Guardian
age	Age of deceased	Guardian
gender	Gender of deceased	Guardian
raceethnicity	Race/ethnicity of deceased	Guardian
month	Month of killing	Guardian
day	Day of incident	Guardian
year	Year of incident	Guardian
streetaddress	Address/intersection where incident occurred	Guardian
city	City where incident occurred	Guardian
state	State where incident occurred	Guardian
latitude	Latitude, geocoded from address
longitude	Longitude, geocoded from address
state_fp	State FIPS code	Census
county_fp	County FIPS code	Census
tract_ce	Tract ID code	Census
geo_id	Combined tract ID code
county_id	Combined county ID code
namelsad	Tract description	Census
lawenforcementagency	Agency involved in incident	Guardian
cause	Cause of death	Guardian
armed	How/whether deceased was armed	Guardian
pop	Tract population	Census
share_white	Share of pop that is non-Hispanic white	Census
share_bloack	Share of pop that is black (alone, not in combination)	Census
share_hispanic	Share of pop that is Hispanic/Latino (any race)	Census
p_income	Tract-level median personal income	Census
h_income	Tract-level median household income	Census
county_income	County-level median household income	Census
comp_income	h_income / county_income	Calculated from Census
county_bucket	Household income, quintile within county	Calculated from Census
nat_bucket	Household income, quintile nationally	Calculated from Census
pov	Tract-level poverty rate (official)	Census
urate	Tract-level unemployment rate	Calculated from Census
college	Share of 25+ pop with BA or higher	Calculated from Census

Note regarding income calculations:

All income fields are in inflation-adjusted 2013 dollars.

comp_income is simply tract-level median household income as a share of county-level median household income.

county_bucket provides where the tract's median household income falls in the distribution (by quintile) of all tracts in the county. (1 indicates a tract falls in the poorest 20% of tracts within the county.) Distribution is not weighted by population.

nat_bucket is the same but for all U.S. counties.

Number, percentage and rate (per 100,000 population) of homicide victims, by racialized identity group (total, by racialized identity group; racialized identity group; South Asian; Chinese; Black; Filipino; Arab; Latin American; Southeast Asian; West Asian; Korean; Japanese; other racialized identity group; multiple racialized identity; racialized identity, but racialized identity group is unknown; rest of the population; unknown racialized identity group), gender (all genders; male; female; gender unknown) and region (Canada; Atlantic region; Quebec; Ontario; Prairies region; British Columbia; territories), 2019 to 2024.