Decline in Fatal Police Shooting Reports in the United States
Federal records indicate that fatal police shootings have declined nationwide since 2015, but the Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” database shows otherwise: police officers have shot and killed more people each year, with the overall death toll reaching 1,047 in 2021. The FBI’s database only contains about a third of the deadly encounters with police during this period – a drop from half of the cases the newspaper tracked initially.
Missing Data and Its Impact on Transparency and Accountability
The missing data also lacks racial breakdowns among those shot by police, which are much larger than what federal data suggests. Black individuals have been killed by police at a rate much higher than shown in FBI data, more than twice the rate of white individuals.
Missing Data and Its Impact on Police Reforms
Missing data includes police shooting incidents in 440 departments that received nearly $90 million in federal grants to track and report crime data, and shooting incidents in 700 other departments required by local laws to report killings only to state authorities. In at least 34 states, laws require police to report crime data to the state. However, most of these laws are vague about whether police shootings should be included, providing little accountability at the state or local level.
Challenges and Influencing Factors in Data Reporting
A decline in reporting is caused by many factors. In many cases, police departments simply choose not to report fatal police shootings to the FBI. In other cases, departments must report data to state officials who neglect to send it to the FBI. About ten departments reported they failed to report shootings due to administrative errors and will work on improving their processes.
Impact on Police Reforms and Future Improvements
Experts say that the lack of accurate data from the FBI makes it difficult to understand the extent of police use of deadly force, despite ongoing investigations in this area. Experts argue that distorted data at the FBI obscures other patterns that could help the Department of Justice identify problematic departments and work on necessary reforms. A high shooting rate by police compared to other departments of similar size may indicate that officers in the agency need additional training.
Impact on Affected Families
For those grieving after a fatal police shooting, the realization that their loved ones were not recorded in the FBI database adds to their pain of loss. This underscores the need to improve the current system and ensure that all fatal shootings by police are recorded.
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