As of November 17, New Mexico had the highest rate of people killed by police out of all U.S. states in 2024, with 12.75 people per million inhabitants killed by police in that time period, followed by Wyoming with 12.13 people per million inhabitants killed by police.

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 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.

The rate of civilians killed by police in the United States is far higher than in comparable developed democratic countries, with 33.5 people killed by police per 10 million residents in 2019. This compares 9.8 deaths per 10 million residents in Canada, and 8.5 in Australia - perhaps the two most comparable countries to the United States in many respects.

Country with the most prisoners The United States 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. Again, the evidence is mixed, but home invasions are less common there. New Zealand has the highest burglary rate, seeing over 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.

During December 2023, around 16.1 percent of respondents have seen a police officer physically abuse another person. In contrast, only 1.6 percent were victims of police abuse themselves. Some of the most common crimes in El Salvador are robbery, theft, and extortion.

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.

This special topic poll, fielded April 1-5, 2000, queried residents of New York State on the prospective Senate race between First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 2000, and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President Bill Clinton, New York State governor George Pataki, Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, and civil rights activist Al Sharpton. Regarding the upcoming Senate race, respondents were asked how much attention they were paying to the upcoming election, for whom they would vote, whether that decision was firm, and who they thought would win. Respondents were also asked which of the potential candidates cared more about people like the respondent, whether the candidates cared about the needs and problems of Black people, and whether the candidates were trying to bring together or divide various groups of New Yorkers. Respondents were asked whether they approved or disapproved of the way Giuliani was handling his job as mayor, and the way he was handling crime, education, and race relations. Regarding Mrs. Clinton, respondents were asked whether they approved of the way she was handling her role as First Lady. Opinions were also elicited on whether Hillary Clinton and Giuliani were spending more time explaining what they would do as senator or attacking each other. Respondents were asked to rate the performance of the New York City police department, whether the police should interfere in individuals' freedoms to make the city safer, and if the respondent had ever been insulted by an officer, felt in personal danger from a police officer, or felt safer because of a police officer. Other questions focused on whether racial profiling was widespread in New York City, whether racial profiling was justified, whether respondents had personally been racially profiled, and if the police favored whites over Blacks or Blacks over whites. In relation to the police shooting death of Patrick Dorismond, an unarmed Black male, outside of a Manhattan bar, respondents were asked how closely they had been following the shooting, how common brutality by the New York City police department against minorities was, how the policies of the Giuliani administration affected the amount of police brutality in New York City, whether the officer involved in the Dorismond shooting should face criminal charges, and whether the public comments made by Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, and Sharpton regarding the shooting made the situation better or worse. Background information on respondents includes voter registration and participation history, political party, political orientation, marital status, religion, education, age, sex, race, Hispanic descent, and family income.

In the United States between 2005 and 2020, of the 42 nonfederal police officers convicted following their arrest for murder due to an on-duty shooting, only five ended up being convicted of murder. The most common offense these officers were convicted of was the lesser charge of manslaughter, with 11 convictions.

In 2023/24, the police in England and Wales fatally shot two people, compared with three in the previous reporting year, and six in 2016/17. During the same reporting year, the police used firearms twice, compared with 13 times in 2018/19. In general, the police in England and Wales and the rest of the UK do not have a tradition of carrying firearms, with the country having some of the strictest gun laws in the world. In 2023/24, out of around 147,746 police officers, just 5,861 were licensed to carry firearms in England and Wales. Comparisons with the United States Among developed economies, the United States is something of an outlier when it comes to police shootings. In 2023, it is estimated that the police in the United States fatally shot 1,163 people. There are also significant disparities based on a person's ethnicity. Between 2015 and March 2024, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was six per one million people, 2.7 per million people for Hispanic Americans and 2.4 per million people for white Americans. Gun violence overall is also far more prevalent in the United States, with 42 percent of American households owning a firearm as of 2023. Gun homicides rare in England and Wales Of the 602 homicides that took place in England and Wales in 2022/23, just 29 were committed by a person using a firearm. By far the most common method of killing was using a knife or other sharp instrument, at 244 homicides, or around 41,4 percent of them. Compared with twenty years ago, homicides in England and Wales have declined; there were 1,047 in 2002/03. After that reporting year, homicides fell significantly, to a low of just 533 in 2014/15, but this trend reversed, and by 2016/17, there were more than 700 homicides recorded. Although there have been some fluctuations, particularly during 2020/21 at the height of COVID-19 lockdowns, the number of homicides has generally remained at these levels in the years since.

During a 2018 survey, approximately 45.3 percent of respondents in Brazil stated that street violence was the most frequent type of violence in the South American country. Moreover, 25.8 percent of the interviewees mentioned domestic violence against women and around 17.9 percent cited gang violence.Furthermore, it has been recently found that most of the Brazilian population is afraid of suffering violence from the police.

In France, in February 2024, the most common type of offense reported to the police was theft without violence against people. Moreover, 2,419 armed robberies were committed during that time.

97 cases of police violence against members of the LGBTQ+ community were reported in Colombia in 2022. The trans women were the most common targets, with 25 cases.

In 2024, there were a total of 2,532 shootings registered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. March was the month with the most shootings in each of the given years, except for 2024 - in that year, there were 254 occurrences, or about 10 percent of the year's total. The lowest number of shootings in the given period occurred in August 2023 when 153 cases were recorded. Police violence in Rio In 2022, the Supreme Court ordered the state government of Rio de Janeiro to come up with a plan to reduce police lethality, as the level of violence in police actions was deemed unacceptable, due to high numbers of casualties and human rights violations. The number of civilians killed as a result of police intervention more than quadrupled between 2013 and 2019, reaching a record number of 1,814 that year. Despite the decrease in comparison to 2019, every year from 2020 to 2022 saw more than 1,200 civilians being killed. Furthermore, it is deemed that there is structural racism in the actions of security forces. For instance, 80 percent of the deaths caused by police interventions in the state during 2023 were of people of color. Shootings and massacres in Rio Civil society and public institutions have made proposals to alleviate this situation. One of them is the ADPF 635 (Allegation of Violation of a Fundamental Precept), also known as ADPF Favelas Case, presented by the Brazilian Socialist Party, and whose preliminary approval took place in June 2020. The measure restricted unplanned police operations in the favelas during the pandemic. Despite its frequent violations, it showed evident results. Shootings fell from 7,368 in 2019 to less than 3,000 in 2024. Over one third of documented shootings in 2024 were due to police operations, while 288 were motivated by murder or attempted murder, the second most common reason. In March 2022, the government of Rio de Janeiro published a plan to reduce deaths during police operations. That year, the State of Rio de Janeiro recorded 92 fewer deaths than the previous year, and the number has fallen every year since.

Crimes that involve racism and xenophobia were far from uncommon in Italy. In 2022, 1,105 crimes were perpetrated for racist and xenophobic reasons. With around 280 cases, most of these crimes were classified as incitement to violence. However, many other forms of crimes were also filed. During that year, 216 threats and almost 180 peace disturbance actions were notably perpetrated under racist or xenophobic pretenses. Hate crimes in Italy From a larger perspective, racist and xenophobic crimes fall under the hate crime classification. Such crimes were on the rise in Italy. In 2020 over a thousand hate crimes were notably registered by the police. As for racist and xenophobic crimes, the most common type of hate crime was incitement to violence. In 2020, over 300 cases of incitement to violence were filed by the Italian police. Different motivations behind hate crimes In 2020, most hate crimes were motivated by one’s skin color or origin. However, crimes under the bias of disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity are also classified as hate crimes. In 2020, almost 200 crimes against disabled people were registered by the police. The most common type of criminal acts directed at this minority was physical assault, followed by theft and robbery. During that year, 71 hate crimes were committed because of one’s sexual orientation or gender identity. However, hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community in Italy most frequently involved physical assault. Ultimately, although such criminal figures solely represent reported crimes, an increase in reported hate crimes is undeniable.

The Italian police recorded over 1,100 hate crimes in 2023. 264 were classified as incitement to violence, which was the most common hate crime that occurred in Italy. Further 165 hate crimes were the desecration of graves. The cases recorded were hate crimes having ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, anti-Semitism as bias-motivation, as well as bias against Roma and Sinti, and people with disabilities. Targeted groups of hate crimes   Most of the known hate crimes were related to racism and xenophobia. In 2020, more than 800 reports concerned this bias. Among these crimes, the most frequent ones were incitement to violence, desecration of graves, physical assaults, and threats. People with disabilities were the second most targeted group. Opinion on measures against this growing hate   In the last years, the number of hates crimes in Italy rose. However, in a survey conducted in 2019, most of the Italians believed that the measures adopted against discrimination were effective. In October 2019, the Italian Senate voted in favor of the establishment of a special committee to combat racial hate. A survey about this Extraordinary Commission show that a large part of Italian interviewees was in favor of its establishment. The Commission was proposed by the Senator Liliana Segre, Holocaust survivor. In fact, the committee was also named “Segre Commission”.

Assaults by police officers in Brazil were more common against persons of color (POCs), in comparison to white people, according to a survey conducted in 2021. In that year, approximately 25 percent of Brazil's black population reported having experienced physical aggression from the police, while the figure for white people was 19 percent. Meanwhile, nearly 9 percent of black people said they had suffered physical assault when approached by the police, against 6 percent of their white counterparts.

There were 1,248 firearm offences recorded in London 2023/24, compared with 1,085 in 2022/23. Compared with previous years, there were far fewer offences in 2020/21 and 2021/22, which may have been due to the lockdowns brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is also reflected in London's overall crime rate, which fell from 102.4 crimes per 1,000 people in 2019/20, to 83.3 in 2020/21, before increasing to 92.8 in 2021/22, and 105.8 in the most recent reporting year. Firearm homicides rare in the UK The United Kingdom has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, resulting in relatively low levels of gun crime and firearm homicides. In 2022/23 just 4.9 percent of homicides in England and Wales were the result of shootings, compared with 85.7 percent in the United States in 2021. The most common method of killing for homicides in England and Wales was by far the use of a sharp instrument at 41.4 percent of homicides in the 2022/23 reporting year. London police budget rising In 2023/24 the budget for policing in London reached 4.53 billion British pounds, compared with 4.44 billion pounds in the previous financial year. This is the sixth-consecutive year of London's police budget increasing, compared with the period between 2013/14 and 2018/19, when it remained around 3.3 billion pounds, and was actually smaller than in 2012/13 when the budget was 3.62 billion. These budget increases have occurred alongside a recruitment drive for police officers. In 2023, there were 35,900 police officers in London, compared with just 31,087 in 2018.

Knives or other sharp objects were involved in 46 percent of homicides in England and Wales in 2023/24, the most of any method of killing. Homicides which involved hitting or kicking without a weapon made up 17.4 percent of homicides, while shootings were identified as the method in 3.9 percent of homicides. Overall, there were 570 homicides in this reporting year, which was slightly lower than in the previous year, when there were 585, but noticeably higher than in 2014/15, when there were 504. Firearm homicides rare in England and Wales In 2023/24, there were 262 knife homicides in England and Wales, compared with 282 in 2021/22, which was the highest figure recently. By comparison, homicides which involved the use of a firearm were far less common, with just 22 in the 2023/24 reporting year. Due to strict gun laws and low levels of ownership, the UK contrasts starkly with the United States, which has struggled with high levels of gun violence. Although some specialist police officers in England and Wales are licensed to carry firearms, the majority of police officers are unarmed. In 2023/24, for example, there were just 5,861 armed police, out of around 147,746 police officers. Overall knife crime on the rise Like many other types of crime, knife crime offences in the 2010s started to decline at the start of the decade before creeping up again from 2014 onwards, reaching almost 52,000 in 2019/20. In London, where much of the media’s attention on knife crime is focused, there were 15,928 knife crime offences alone in 2019/20. Although this fell during subsequent reporting years, which were influenced by COVID-19 restrictions, it remains to be seen if the trend will continue. In 2023/24, the number of knife offences in the capital was higher than in any other year since 2019/20.

Of the 720,506 arrests in England and Wales in 2023/24, the most common type of offence that people were arrested for was violence against the person, with 309,071 people arrested for this type of offence.