People Killed By Police In The U.S.

Posted: 5/2/2015

Trigger

Just came across this older article “More Than 1,000 People Have Been Killed by Police in 2014” (published Dec. 9, 2014). It relies largely on this anonymous website “http://www.killedbypolice.net/”. Not sure how accurate the information is on this website.

The article mentions that there is no national database or statistics available in the U.S. that reliably records all killings of people committed by police officers. The FBI statistics is based on voluntary reporting by police agencies, but a significant number of police agencies do not participate or underreport etc., e.g. New York state does not participate at all.

Many Whites Are Killed

Why the mainstream media do not appear to research how many whites are killed by police is a deplorable!

Of the over 1,100 people killed in 2014 according to the article and website above, many were white if you glance over the spreadsheet and if you accept the racial classification as correct. Many entries do not state the race of the killed person. I would estimate that at least 30% of the listed killed persons are white.

Thus, you have again the question of supposedly disparate effect on blacks vs. whites? Right? Wrong, the circumstances and location of where the person was killed matter as well.

Are Overall Too Many Killed?

The FBI numbers reported in the above article of individuals killed by law enforcement per year in 2013 were 461 (source; The FBI calls this justifiable homicide). There is apparently quite a discrepancy between the FBI numbers and the above website.

Between 2009 - 2013, the FBI reported between 397 and 461 killed persons per year by law enforcement officers (source). There is no breakdown given by race, gender etc.

Contrasting this with the FBI reported justifiable homicides per year committed by private citizens “killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony” we see numbers ranging between 266 and 315 for the same period 2009 - 2013 (source).

A quick search on similar German statistics appears to show that on average 1 person per 10 million population were killed by police using firearms in recent years (or about 8-10 people total per year). Other forms of killing (e.g. by car chase) or some police departments are not included in the statistics etc. Extrapolating these numbers to the U.S. would result on average about 33 persons killed by police.

According to the FBI, in 2013 a total of 12,253 individuals were murdered of which 5,537 were reported as white and 6,621 as black (source).

So if it is true that 1,000 or more people were killed by police in 2014, then this would suggest that too many were killed. More research into this would not hurt.

Killed By Police Website

Unfortunately, we do not know who is behind or how accurate the information is.

Unfortunately, gender and race were not separated and you can not sort or filter the spreadsheet. Thus, this information is needlessly useless for further investigation.