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.

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.

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.

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 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.

List of every shooting incident that occurred in NYC during the current calendar year.

This is a breakdown of every shooting incident that occurred in NYC during the current calendar year. This data is manually extracted every quarter and reviewed by the Office of Management Analysis and Planning before being posted on the NYPD website. Each record represents a shooting incident in NYC and includes information about the event, the location and time of occurrence. In addition, information related to suspect and victim demographics is also included. This data can be used by the public to explore the nature of police enforcement activity. Please refer to the attached data footnotes for additional information about this dataset.

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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Image by pixabay avaiable on pexels.

In the United States, more men than women are shot to death by the police. As of October 22, the U.S. police shot 904 men and 44 women to death in 2024. In 2023, the police shot 1,107 men and 48 women to death.

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

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 police shootings data is from the database maintained by Washington Post at https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings (version 2) that covers the period 2015-2023.The curated datasets are included here along with a research question and guiding questions.See the codebook for full details.

Analysis of ‘🚓 Fatal Police Shootings’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/yamqwe/fatal-police-shootingse on 13 February 2022.

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

About this dataset

The Washington Post has tracked fatal police shootings in the US since 2015, using news and police reports as well as social media and databases like Killed by Police and Fatal Encounters.

The collected data include the race, gender, and age of the deceased, the circumstances of the shooting, and whether the person was armed or experiencing a mental-health crisis.

The Washington Post updates visualizations of the data and provides more information about methodology on the Fatal Force page.

Source: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings
Updated: synced daily
License: CC BY-NC-SA

This dataset was created by Data Society and contains around 7000 samples along with Is Geocoding Exact, Armed, technical information and other features such as: - Body Camera - State - and more.

How to use this dataset

• Analyze Latitude in relation to Manner Of Death
• Study the influence of Name on Age
• More datasets

Acknowledgements

If you use this dataset in your research, please credit Data Society

Start A New Notebook!

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

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.

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.

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 frequently.

Any deaths arising directly from encounters with law enforcement will be included in the database. This will inevitably include, but will likely not be limited to, people who were shot, tasered and struck by police vehicles as well those who died in police custody. Self-inflicted deaths during encounters with law enforcement or in police custody or detention facilities will not be included.

The US government has no comprehensive record of the number of people killed by law enforcement. This lack of basic data has been glaring amid the protests, riots and worldwide debate set in motion by the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014. The Guardian agrees with those analysts, campaign groups, activists and authorities who argue that such accounting is a prerequisite for an informed public discussion about the use of force by police.

Contributions of any information that may improve the quality of our data will be greatly welcomed as we work toward better accountability. Please contact us at thecounted@theguardian.com.

CREDITS
Research and Reporting: Jon Swaine, Oliver Laughland, Jamiles Lartey
Design and Production: Kenan Davis, Rich Harris, Nadja Popovich, Kenton Powell

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 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.

Version 3 release notes:

• Fix bug where Philadelphia Police Department had incorrect FIPS county code.

The LEOKA data sets contain highly detailed data about the number of officers/civilians employed by an agency and how many officers were killed or assaulted. Each data set contains over 2,200 columns and has a wealth of information about the circumstances of assaults on officers.

All the data was downloaded from NACJD as ASCII+SPSS Setup files and read into R using the package asciiSetupReader. It was then cleaned in R. The "cleaning" just means that column names were standardized (different years have slightly different spellings for many columns). Standardization of column names is necessary to stack multiple years together. Categorical variables (e.g. state) were also standardized (i.e. fix spelling errors).

About 7% of all agencies in the data report more officers or civilians than population. As such, I removed the officers/civilians per 1,000 population variables. You should exercise caution if deciding to generate and use these variables yourself.

I did not make any changes to the numeric columns except for the following. A few years of data had the values "blank" or "missing" as indicators of missing values. Rows in otherwise numeric columns (e.g. jan_asslt_no_injury_knife) with these values were replaced with NA. There were three obvious data entry errors in officers killed by felony/accident that I changed to NA.

In 1978 the agency "pittsburgh" (ORI = PAPPD00) reported 576 officers killed by accident during March.
In 1979 the agency "metuchen" (ORI = NJ01210) reported 991 officers killed by felony during August.
In 1990 the agency "penobscot state police" (ORI = ME010SP) reported 860 officers killed by accident during July.

No other changes to numeric columns were made.

Each zip file contains all years as individual monthly files of the specified data type It also includes a file with all years aggregated yearly and stacked into a single data set. Please note that each monthly file is quite large (2,200+ columns) so it may take time to download the zip file and open each data file.

For the R code used to clean this data, see here. https://github.com/jacobkap/crime_data.

The UCR Handbook (https://ucr.fbi.gov/additional-ucr-publications/ucr_handbook.pdf/view) describes the LEOKA data as follows:

"The UCR Program collects data from all contributing agencies ... on officer line-of-duty deaths and assaults. Reporting agencies must submit data on ... their own duly sworn officers feloniously or accidentally killed or assaulted in the line of duty. The purpose of this data collection is to identify situations in which officers are killed or assaulted, describe the incidents statistically, and publish the data to aid agencies in developing policies to improve officer safety.

"... agencies must record assaults on sworn officers. Reporting agencies must count all assaults that resulted in serious injury or assaults in which a weapon was used that could have caused serious injury or death. They must include other assaults not causing injury if the assault involved more than mere verbal abuse or minor resistance to an arrest. In other words, agencies must include in this section all assaults on officers, whether or not the officers sustained injuries."

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please contact me at jkkaplan6@gmail.com

In 2023, the U.S. police killed a total of 137 people in the state of California. A further 127 people were shot to death by police in Texas in that year.