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 in 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 this time period, the most people killed by police in the United States was in 2023, at 1,353 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 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.

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.

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 Shootings dashboard contains information on shooting incidents where a victim was struck by a bullet, either fatally or non-fatally; that occurred in the City of Boston and fall under Boston Police Department jurisdiction. The dashboard does not contain records for self-inflicted gunshot wounds or shootings determined to be justifiable. Information on the incident, and the demographics of victims are included. This information is updated based on analysis conducted by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center under the Boston Police Department Bureau of Intelligence and Analysis. The data is for 2015 forward, with a 7 day rolling delay to allow for analysis and data entry to occur.

This dataset reflects reported incidents of crime (with the exception of murders where data exists for each victim) that occurred in the City of Chicago from 2001 to present, minus the most recent seven days. Data is extracted from the Chicago Police Department's CLEAR (Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting) system. In order to protect the privacy of crime victims, addresses are shown at the block level only and specific locations are not identified. Should you have questions about this dataset, you may contact the Research & Development Division of the Chicago Police Department at PSITAdministration@ChicagoPolice.org. Disclaimer: These crimes may be based upon preliminary information supplied to the Police Department by the reporting parties that have not been verified. The preliminary crime classifications may be changed at a later date based upon additional investigation and there is always the possibility of mechanical or human error. Therefore, the Chicago Police Department does not guarantee (either expressed or implied) the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or correct sequencing of the information and the information should not be used for comparison purposes over time. The Chicago Police Department will not be responsible for any error or omission, or for the use of, or the results obtained from the use of this information. All data visualizations on maps should be considered approximate and attempts to derive specific addresses are strictly prohibited. The Chicago Police Department is not responsible for the content of any off-site pages that are referenced by or that reference this web page other than an official City of Chicago or Chicago Police Department web page. The user specifically acknowledges that the Chicago Police Department is not responsible for any defamatory, offensive, misleading, or illegal conduct of other users, links, or third parties and that the risk of injury from the foregoing rests entirely with the user. The unauthorized use of the words "Chicago Police Department," "Chicago Police," or any colorable imitation of these words or the unauthorized use of the Chicago Police Department logo is unlawful. This web page does not, in any way, authorize such use. Data are updated daily. To access a list of Chicago Police Department - Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting (IUCR) codes, go to http://data.cityofchicago.org/Public-Safety/Chicago-Police-Department-Illinois-Uniform-Crime-R/c7ck-438e

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

An Officer Involved Shooting (OIS) is the discharge of a firearm, whether accidental or intentional, by a police officer, whether on or off duty. For the purposes of this posting, an OIS will only refer to the instances in which an officer discharged a firearm at a person. CMPD posts Officer Involved Shootings in an effort to create greater transparency of the actions of our employees. It is important to us that members of the community are informed whenever an officer discharges his/her firearm at a person and whether the shooting follows department policies and procedures. We believe that your trust and confidence in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department will increase as you understand what our officers encounter and how we hold them accountable for their actions. The CMPD is continuously reviewing and improving our practices to reduce the likelihood of deadly force incidents. The following is a complete list of OIS tables posted on the Charlotte Open Data Portal:1) Officer Involved Shootings – Incidents: contains INCIDENT_ID (for joining to other OIS tables), year and month recorded, location, district attorney legal review status, descriptive narrative of incident2) Officer Involved Shootings – Individuals: contains INCIDENT_ID (for joining to other OIS tables) as well as individual’s race, gender, age, and injury type3) Officer Involved Shootings – Officers: contains INCIDENT_ID (for joining to other OIS tables) as well as officer’s race, gender, years of service, and CMPD policy violation status. Please note that the relationship of the Incidents table to the Individuals table is one-to-many, and the relationship of the Incidents table to the Officers table is one-to-many.

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.

This information will not be updated while the Cincinnati Police Department undergoes transfer to a new data management system.

Data Description: This data represents officer involved shooting incidents by the Cincinnati Police Department. An officer involved shooting (OIS) may be defined as the discharge of a firearm, which may include accidental and intentional discharges, by a police officer, whether on or off duty.

Data Creation: This data is created through reporting by the Cincinnati Police Department.

Data Created By: The source of this data is the Cincinnati Police Department.

Refresh Frequency: This information will not be updated while the Cincinnati Police Department undergoes transfer to a new data management system.

CincyInsights: The City of Cincinnati maintains an interactive dashboard portal, CincyInsights in addition to our Open Data in an effort to increase access and usage of city data. This data set has an associated dashboard available here: https://insights.cincinnati-oh.gov/stories/s/c64e-ybfz/

Data Dictionary: A data dictionary providing definitions of columns and attributes is available as an attachment to this dataset.

Processing: The City of Cincinnati is committed to providing the most granular and accurate data possible. In that pursuit the Office of Performance and Data Analytics facilitates standard processing to most raw data prior to publication. Processing includes but is not limited: address verification, geocoding, decoding attributes, and addition of administrative areas (i.e. Census, neighborhoods, police districts, etc.).

Data Usage: For directions on downloading and using open data please visit our How-to Guide: https://data.cincinnati-oh.gov/dataset/Open-Data-How-To-Guide/gdr9-g3ad

Disclaimer: In compliance with privacy laws, all Public Safety datasets are anonymized and appropriately redacted prior to publication on the City of Cincinnati’s Open Data Portal. This means that for all public safety datasets: (1) the last two digits of all addresses have been replaced with “XX,” and in cases where there is a single digit street address, the entire address number is replaced with "X"; and (2) Latitude and Longitude have been randomly skewed to represent values within the same block area (but not the exact location) of the incident.

This dataset contains Phoenix Police Department Officer-Involved Shooting (OIS) incidents from January 2017 forward, including demographic information for officers as well as individuals. Data is updated hourly; however, new OIS incidents are only displayed after information is compiled for all the fields displayed in the dataset, which may take several days following the incident.

More than one officer may discharge their weapon during the same incident. Accidental discharges, discharges at animals, and discharges at objects where there was not an active threat by a subject are not included in this data set.

View Operations Order 1.5: Response to Resistance Policy

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Help us improve this site and complete the Open Data Customer Survey.

This Data includes all officer-involved shootings since 2009. Transparency is a priority for the Orlando Police Department and we will continue to include more information in this Dataset.

Starting in 2014 all officer-involved shooting investigations are reviewed by the State Attorney's Office. A link to the State Attorney's review letter is provided for investigations that are complete. Prior to 2014 only cases where the someone was hit as a result of the shooting were reviewed by the State Attorney's Office. All other cases were reviewed internally. A link to those findings are provided.

The data set is refreshed on the last Friday of the month at 7:30 PM. The website will reflect the last time the data set was updated and the total count of rows. The grid on the “Data” tab will display the up to date data. However, in certain situations there is a delay in the refresh of the downloadable data file. Sometimes the downloadable file does not reflect the updates to the data in the portal. After a delay (duration has been variable; up to 30 minutes), the file will be updated on the server and then downloads will include the updated data.

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.

Dallas Police Public Data - Officer Involved Shootings City Of Dallas

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 ---

Values are: posterior mean (posterior standard deviation) of the regression coefficients. The symbol log referes to the natural logarithm. Pop refers to absolute population size. Pct. B. refers to the percentage of the county population that is black. Md. In. refers to median income. Gini refers to the Gini index of inequality. GRP refers to the Google search racism proxy. W. Ast and B. Ast refer to the white- and black-specific arrest rates for assualt, respectively. W. Wps and B. Wps refer to the white- and black-specific arrest rates for weapons violations, respectively. Posterior probabilty that a postive regression coeffcient is less than zero (or a negative one greater than zero) is coded as: * indicates a probability between 0.10 and 0.05, ** indicates a probability between 0.05 and 0.01, and *** indicates a probability of 0.01 or less.

Police killings dataset (not just shooting, but by any means) is from https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ that covers the period 2013-2023. This includes the Washington Post (WaPo) dataset on shooting victims.The curated datasets are included here along with a research question and guiding questions.See the codebook for full details.

Analysis of ‘US Police Shootings’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/ahsen1330/us-police-shootings on 28 January 2022.

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

Context

In the recent killings, a hot topic came into being, "Racism". So, I chose to gather some data to take out some insights and analyze the story around racism in America. I downloaded the raw data from kaggle and prepared it for visualization while correcting values, handling missing content, normalization and categorization

Content

It contains basic data about people like their name, age, gender and race. Along with it, is the shooting/killing information, like date of event, where it happened? how they were shot? did they attack? Were they holding weapons? Did they show any mental illness? Was the policeman wearing a camera/was the incident recorded? Did the suspect flee? Apart from that, a category column holds type of weapon used by the suspect

Acknowledgements

Kagglers

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