12 ms·

Investigation: Police Shootings

132 points by ddispaltro 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago
Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how dangerous tasers are. The Guardian also gives the state breakdowns weighted by their population, making it easier to spot problem states. But WaPo makes it much easier to see which states have more shootings of unarmed people. * 79% of the people killed in this database were reported to have "deadly weapons" (not including cars). * 64% of the people killed in this database were shot and killed while attacking someone with a deadly weapon. You'd really like to have a more detailed breakdown on "deadly weapon"; specifically, you want to know which of the people shot had firearms, versus knives. Nobody was fatally shot by a police officer in Rhode Island? That's surprising.
- chishaku 11y ago
  And additional data going back to 2013: http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    That's a great resource. Multiple links for every death, very impressive.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Can we find out if e.g. Laquan McDonald is included in the "64%"? If not, I'd expect he was before the video came out. This is why I hesitate to consider "mitigating circumstances". Public safety officers should be judged by their effect on public safety, not by how well they cover their own asses.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - dccoolgai 11y ago
    I wonder if you would feel that way if one of your loved ones was serving as an officer of the peace - would you want them dealing with dangerous situations on a daily basis people with no regard for "covering their own ass"? Would you feel that way if there were an armed intruder in your home and one of those officers had to respond to protect you? Would you want them to intervene to protect you or your family or sit in your driveway deliberating about whether they should "cover their own ass" or yours? We don't need to excuse unwarranted police violence as a society, but it's equally unfair to outsource dealing with violent and dangerous situations to others and then glibly remove any means they have to deal with those situations without getting killed themselves.
    - gohrt 11y ago
      > We don't need to excuse unwarranted police violence as a society and yet you felt compelled to write this post.
    - cbr 11y ago
      > "covering their own ass" I think you and jessaustin may be using different interpretations of that term, judging by their reference of the McDonald shooting. People are much more ok with police officers doing what they need to do to keep themselves and others safe at the time (your usage) than they are with officers lying about why they used deadly force after the fact to keep from getting in trouble (their usage). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Laquan_McDonald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Laquan_McDonald
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cover+your+ass http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cover+your+ass [EDIT: removed request] I do have police family. I do want him to be safe. I don't want him to file false reports in order not to face the consequences of unlawful action. [EDIT:] As a rural resident and citizen, if "an armed intruder" troubles my family home, the sheriffs will be called to collect a corpse. I'm not fool enough to imagine they'll get there in time for anything else. Home intrusion rates are quite low hereabouts.
- RealGeek 11y ago
  93 victims were unarmed, 33 were armed with a toy, and 27 unknown. That is a lot more than Americans killed by terrorists in US.
  - adam12 11y ago
    For me, this highlights how overblown the terrorist problem is.
    - cryptoz 11y ago
      About 30,000 Americans die in car crashes every year. That's about ~400,000 Americans killed by other Americans in their cars since the 2001 terrorist attacks. It's pretty clear that the emotional appeal is what people seem to care about ("someone wants to kill us") and it has absolutely nothing to do at all with Americans dying. Terrorism has never been a problem. The same number of people died in car accidents during September 2001 as they did in terrorist attacks. Where is our war on cars? Oh, nobody cares about that, cars are freedom, cars are what we went to war to protect.
      - soheil 11y ago
        > it has absolutely nothing to do at all with Americans dying I think it does, it's just that people are simply not aware of the numbers.
      - rayiner 11y ago
        What you call emotion, I call justice, and I think that matters. Consider, without any emotion, the issue of murder versus suicide. What are the negative impacts of those acts? From the point of view of that person's friends and family and society at large, leaving aside emotion or notions of justice, the impact of the acts is the same: loss of that person, loss of their financial and emotional support. In fact, the impact on family and friends is often worse in cases of suicide because insurance policies often have an exemption for suicide. Yet, almost nobody thinks murder should be legal while quite a few people think suicide should be legal. If we just mechanically consider "a death is a death" and count up the monetary impact of each case, we have no way to explain or justify why people feel this way.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Here's the data set as a spreadsheet, which I think is more helpful (I will feel dumb if they made it available as a spreadsheet themselves): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/100kWwv7vLl0ZAbtMn7lYot7TTouZ7DglWI7F0H7SrE8/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/100kWwv7vLl0ZAbtMn7lY... Oklahoma is pretty bad. California is in the top 15 for both fatal shootings weighted by population and for fatal shootings of people not attacking with a deadly weapon. Illinois, where I live, is all the way down at #44 for fatal shootings, which is surprising to me.
  - jmuyskens 11y ago
    The data is available in CSV format on GitHub: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings
  - kbenson 11y ago
    It would be interesting to see how well the numbers correlate to percentage of population in the state that lives in urban and rural areas, or even what percentage of the population is in heavily/dense urbanized areas.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      https://www.dropbox.com/s/ow1ktm5nwy6um5f/Screenshot%202016-01-06%2016.44.21.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ow1ktm5nwy6um5f/Screenshot%202016-... Excuse the formatting. That's the top 10 by fatalities weighted by population. Short answer: it's all over the map.
      - kbenson 11y ago
        Ah, thanks! It looks like Percent Threat is minority deaths over total deaths for that state? The other thing I wondered was how it looked when normalized to the racial makeup of the state (I'm not asking you to do this, just wondering).
        11y ago
- hebdo 11y ago
  If you think that a knife threat should never call for a firearm response then I recommend this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpcrDzy344 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpcrDzy344
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I don't think that and don't appreciate the framing you're trying to impose on me. Could you perhaps word comments like this more carefully? What I think is that people armed with firearms give the police much less reaction time, while people armed with knives can, if they're not on a vector that puts them in contact with other officers or civilians, be pacified more gradually.
    - pboutros 11y ago
      >I don't think that and don't appreciate the framing you're trying to impose on me. Could you perhaps word comments like this more carefully? This is a fantastic, measured answer - I'm always pleased to see reasonable responses to unreasonable comments.
      - hebdo 11y ago
        Sorry for the choice of words, but my point was that a person armed with just a knife can still be very dangerous. The use of a gun in such a situation cannot be simply called a deadly overreaction, without going into details. Therefore I do not see my comment as unreasonable.
        tptacek 11y ago
        Nobody called it a "deadly overreaction", so I'm a little confused about this comment.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    If we're trading youtube clips here's a police force who disarm a man armed with a machete. Armed police are available, (the UK has armed police, especially in London) but those police are not needed because our police force is not fucking incompetent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw Here's another video of a man wielding a knife and approaching police. In the US he's much more likely to be killed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9TFvh6Xps4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9TFvh6Xps4
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Granted, neither has happened to me, but if someone wanted to kill me, I think I'd rather be shot than hacked with a machete.
- kennelliott 11y ago
  Thanks for the constructive feedback, Thomas. These comments will be valuable when we build the 2016 database, if we decide to do so.
  - newman314 11y ago
    Please do. We need more people to see this.
- gohrt 11y ago
  > while attacking someone with a deadly weapon. According to who? In several cases, it was shown that the police claimed "attacking someone with a deadly weapon." that was later shown to be a false claim.
- jeffmould 11y ago
  First off, I am not a doctor and I didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. But as someone that was an EMT and who worked around law enforcement for numerous years in other capacities, I have seen this all too often. "like how dangerous tasers are." Taser stats can be a bit deceiving. In the vast majority of cases where a taser is deployed the individual is in a drug-induced state with increased heart activity. Combine that with the escalating situation and the individual's heart rate is often higher than if they were just in the drug-induced state. These individuals are often highly combative at the time the taser is deployed. Given normal circumstances a taser deployment on these individuals most likely would not result in any harm. However, combine that deployment with the increased heart activity and adrenaline going through the individuals system and it becomes a recipe for disaster. To generalize and say that tasers are dangerous does not take into account the entire picture of events or situation at hand. It's not the taser itself that is dangerous it is the situation the individual has placed themselves in that causes the danger.
  - cauthon 11y ago
    > To generalize and say that tasers are dangerous does not take into account the entire picture of events or situation at hand. It's not the taser itself that is dangerous it is the situation the individual has placed themselves in that causes the danger. That's misleading. If a taser is dangerous in the "vast majority of cases" in which it is used, then its use is dangerous. Doesn't matter if it's safe in situations where it isn't used.
    - jeffmould 11y ago
      I only said that the "vast majority of cases" where the result is deadly has outside factors (i.e. drugs). I did NOT say that the "vast majority of cases" where tasers are deployed. Enormous difference. Tasers are used hundreds of thousands of times annually with no issue. Unfortunately the ones where there is a death, or significant injury, typically involve the use of drugs or other have other outside factors not related to the use of the taser. EDIT: I did say in the vast majority of cases where tasers are deployed. That was an error on my part I did mean that to add that in a vast majority of cases where tasers are deployed and there is a death or significant injury.
rayiner 11y ago
Worth reading through these. A lot of people with mental illness shot just for holding guns or knives or "driving toward police." Recently, an au pair we know (from Germany), had a gun pulled on her because she reached into her purse to get her ID when she was pulled over. The fact that Maryland's finest are totally mental and she could get killed for doing that never occurred to her.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  I don't know. Someone with severe mental illness and a knife (or a car) sounds way more dangerous than a calm person with a gun. It's hard to know whether the shooting was warranted without more details. Maybe better video records of these incidents will be helpful.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    A lot of those people have no intention to harm anyone but themselves. They're suicidal. It's weird that emergency medical treatment for suicidal people is "call the police", but that's what their relatives do. The police turn up, see the weapon, hear "mental illness" and wrongly assume mentally ill people are violent, and shoot them.
    - gohrt 11y ago
      Who are you going to call in an emergency? 911, or, um, what's the number of the suicide psychiatric emergency response team? You don't get to decide whether 911 dispatches police.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        > You don't get to decide whether 911 dispatches police. Maybe America should fix that, because in most other countries you get to ask for the service you want, either when you dial the 911 equivalent number, or by dialing the specific service emergency number. Some countries have an emergency psychiatric numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_nu...
startupfounder 11y ago
I find this discrepancy very interesting, only ~4% of the people shot and killed by police were female. Police departments are male dominate and maybe this factors into the difference[0] Male - 952 Female - 41 Why such a discrepancy? I don't think males are 23x more dangerous than females. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_law_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_law_enforcement
- brighteyes 11y ago
  1. Men do commit a lot more crime than women. We don't know exactly why that is, but probably some combination of biology and society. 2. There is a lot of bias towards seeing men as more dangerous. Some is legitimate - men are physically larger, on average - while some is just pure bias. The bias might be partially justified due to men actually committing more crime, but it's hard to say how much. Regardless, if you encounter the police in a potentially violent situation, it's clearly much better to be a woman than a man.
- rayiner 11y ago
  See Table 5: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf. Men are offenders in 92% of gun homicides, 93% of homicides committed in conjunction with another felony, 95% of drug-related homicides, and 98% of gang-related homicides.
  - spikels 11y ago
    See Table 7: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf. Blacks are offenders in 57% of gun homicides, 60% of homicides committed in conjunction with another felony, 67% of drug-related homicides, and 42% of gang-related homicides.
    - unit91 11y ago
      I don't understand your comment in relation to the male / female issue. Care to expound?
dsugarman 11y ago
they did an incredible job here, very well done UI easy to filter and educate yourself. The saddest story I found: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/autistic-6-year-old-shot-killed-during-police-pursuit-in-louisiana-report-says/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/autistic-6-year-old-shot-killed-...
- burkaman 11y ago
  If anyone is wondering, the police were charged with second degree murder in this case: http://www.wdsu.com/news/local-news/new-orleans/grand-jury-indicts-marshals-in-marksville-shooting-that-critically-wounded-man-killed-boy/36902048 http://www.wdsu.com/news/local-news/new-orleans/grand-jury-i... They have plead not guilty and will be tried soon: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/01/trials_set_for_deputies_charge.html http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/01/trials_set_for_d...
hackuser 11y ago
Number of people killed last year by police in England and Wales: 3. That's the highest since 2008. [1] Why doesn't law enforcement seem to care? The government doesn't even track police shootings (one reason the Washington Post created its database) and, generally, law enforcement's reaction expresses no concern for the victims or for reducing this appalling behavior and widespread failure. [1] http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/fatal-police-shootings http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/fatal-police-shootings
- tptacek 11y ago
  While the police in the US are clearly more violent than those in the UK, it's also the case that there is more crime in the US, more variance in the population, and way, way, way more gun availability. So we may not have very much to learn from your simple comparison.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > So we may not have very much to learn from your simple comparison. You mean that I didn't write a dissertation on it in an HN comment? We don't have much to learn from your simplistic dismissal of a serious issue, based on simplistic speculation about the causes. Have a nice day.
    - knowaveragejoe 11y ago
      What terrible reasoning.
- davidw 11y ago
  It'd be interesting to compare what the UK folks were armed with, including those not shot. My guess is that US cops are far more likely to face people carrying firearms of their own. I figure if we're talking about gun laws, though, the article is probably political in nature, so I flagged it.
- _asdf_asdf 11y ago
  Wow! And England and Wales are entire countries! Except... They are much, much, much smaller countries, and so... One would actually expect a much, much, much smaller number for them. Even combined. Whether by land area or population, they are considerably smaller.
jbattle 11y ago
The state by state numbers are surprising. CA has about 1/10th of the total shootings. IL has only 20, which is less than a lot of other states (NM for example). Florida and Texas seem to be the other big standouts
- maxerickson 11y ago
  More than 10% of US people live in California. So 1/10 of the total doesn't really stand out.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- archgoon 11y ago
  Why on earth would it be surprising that California, with 12% of the population of the United States, would account for 10% of the total shootings? Florida, based on it's population, would have about 61 shootings (it has 60), and Texas would be expected to have about 84 (it has 96, or about 20% more than expected). The only surprising ones you've mentioned are Illinois (which is about half the expected rate) and New Mexico, which is about 3 times the expected.
- davidw 11y ago
  You have to look at per capita numbers. North Carolina and Arkansas actually stand out as having lower numbers than some of the 'usual suspects' states they are next to. Wonder why that is.
danso 11y ago
FWIW (a alot, IMHO), here is the Github account for the data: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings Seems like no big deal but with the commit history, we basically have a record and frequency count of how, in a major project by a major news organization, things get updated. Counting these incidents has always been difficult. Victims names are rarely known at the time of death, nevermind the circumstances. It can take awhile for that information to come out and when it does, often a reporter (at a local newspaper) will have moved on to some other story. The Wapo team is dependent on local reports. The github repo let's us see how efficient they are at it. Very cool transparent move on their part.
- stevenrich 11y ago
  FWIW, this is exactly why we chose to post to Github. We wanted to be as transparent as possible during a fluid process.
gscott 11y ago
I found this website the other day http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ turns out several people per day are killed by police which I was surprised by.
grb423 11y ago
Who determines whether mental illness is present and how?
- stevenrich 11y ago
  Usually family members, though police sometimes state it as well.
grb423 11y ago
Note to self: When uniformed officers approach to serve my arrest warrants, drop cellphone and put hands up. These dudes are dangerous!!
- b_emery 11y ago
  It actually is good advice to keep your hands visible at all times. It's a step in the right direction of keeping the officer at ease.
jmuyskens 11y ago
Hi! I'm a developer who worked on this project. If you'd like to download and check out our data, we are making it available in a repository on GitHub: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings
kennelliott 11y ago
Hi everyone! I'm a developer who worked on this project, and I appreciate the comments and suggestions. If you enjoyed this piece, you might want to check out our related story about the six most important things we learned from a year of investigating and reporting this data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-year-end/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
- tptacek 11y ago
  Is there a way to get the union of "Fleeing suspect" and "deadly weapon" (or, better: "fleeing suspect" and "firearm") from the data?
  - kennelliott 11y ago
    The best we could advise you to do is select both "Deadly weapon" (under the "Weapon" category) and "Other" (under "Threat Level"). Deadly weapon includes all firearms, and the Other (threat level) category includes, but is not limited to, individuals who were fleeing. There will be some information in the blurbs that may indicate if the person was fleeing specifically. We hope that in future versions we will be able to provide a more specific breakdown.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      But you have the data somewhere, right, because you gave it a number (roughly a quarter of all fatalities). Could I derive that number from your data set on Github? (I'm not questioning the number; I'd just like to see if I can generate more context for it).
  - kennelliott 11y ago
    A more roundabout way might be to go here https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-year-end/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo... , look at the second point about fleeing individuals, and look around for those who were brandishing a firearm. Some you will also find showed signs of mental illness. Apologies for not having an exact count of that particular union.
dudul 11y ago
I remember reading an article by a former military guy who was deployed in the middle east. Back home he had to deal with the police and basically said: "they reminded me of myself when I was deployed and operating in enemy controlled areas". The guy goes on to explain on, according to him, the problem is that there is a narrative that cops should be allowed to do anything to protect their life, as opposed to protect the public. This is always the excuse when a cop kills a civilian by mistake - "he feared for his life". Guess what? You're a freaking cop! Not a plumber, or an accountant. Cops should not be allowed to kill someone on suspicion that maybe there is a possibility that they will start shooting at them.
- krapp 11y ago
  >Cops should not be allowed to kill someone on suspicion that maybe there is a possibility that they will start shooting at them. Civilians in the US often have this right, so why shouldn't the police?
  - dudul 11y ago
    For one, civilians don't have the role of "protecting and serving" :) Cops are trained, and are supposed to learn how to handle a situation without pulling out their gun []. I don't necessarily disagree with you though. It would be good for people to be able to walk at night with a bag of candies without getting gunned down. I don't think that 2 problems should cancel each other. [] And I know I'm wrong when I say that. I remember another paper showing how American cops spend a disproportionate amount of time practicing with their gun as opposed to cops in other countries where they mostly learn how to handle situations without their arms.
    - krapp 11y ago
      Police should certainly be held to a higher standard - and when they shoot someone, they should be treated the same as anyone else, if not put under greater scrutiny, because of the greater responsibility their position entails. But the fact remains that, for better or worse, every American by default has the right to shoot people with guns under certain circumstances. I am not a lawyer but I don't see a legal justification for limiting the ability of the police to defend themselves, without treating police officers like felons.
devy 11y ago
The FBI and CDC log fatal shootings by police, but officials acknowledge that their data is incomplete. [1] This is a little bit ironic in that the government agencies cannot do their job properly and it has to take a news company and their great investigative journalism to get it done right? [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-the-washington-post-is-examining-police-shootings-in-the-us/2015/06/29/f42c10b2-151b-11e5-9518-f9e0a8959f32_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-the-washington-p...
bdavisx 11y ago
Blacks were 26% of the deaths, but only make up 13% of the population.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
Just for a fuller picture, here's the listing of police killed, by year, by state, etc.: https://www.odmp.org/search?name=&agency=&state=&from=2015&to=2015 https://www.odmp.org/search?name=&agency=&state=&from=2015&t... Sample search is for 2015, when 129 officers died from all causes including automobile accidents; 39 were killed by gunfire, 5 by vehicle pursuit, 7 by vehicular assault, etc.
mempko 11y ago
What the hell is going on in California? Actually, better question is why is Illinois so much less violent?

132 points by ddispaltro 11y ago

Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how dangerous tasers are. The Guardian also gives the state breakdowns weighted by their population, making it easier to spot problem states. But WaPo makes it much easier to see which states have more shootings of unarmed people. * 79% of the people killed in this database were reported to have "deadly weapons" (not including cars). * 64% of the people killed in this database were shot and killed while attacking someone with a deadly weapon. You'd really like to have a more detailed breakdown on "deadly weapon"; specifically, you want to know which of the people shot had firearms, versus knives. Nobody was fatally shot by a police officer in Rhode Island? That's surprising.

chishaku 11y ago
And additional data going back to 2013: http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/
- jessaustin 11y ago
  That's a great resource. Multiple links for every death, very impressive.
jessaustin 11y ago
Can we find out if e.g. Laquan McDonald is included in the "64%"? If not, I'd expect he was before the video came out. This is why I hesitate to consider "mitigating circumstances". Public safety officers should be judged by their effect on public safety, not by how well they cover their own asses.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dccoolgai 11y ago
  I wonder if you would feel that way if one of your loved ones was serving as an officer of the peace - would you want them dealing with dangerous situations on a daily basis people with no regard for "covering their own ass"? Would you feel that way if there were an armed intruder in your home and one of those officers had to respond to protect you? Would you want them to intervene to protect you or your family or sit in your driveway deliberating about whether they should "cover their own ass" or yours? We don't need to excuse unwarranted police violence as a society, but it's equally unfair to outsource dealing with violent and dangerous situations to others and then glibly remove any means they have to deal with those situations without getting killed themselves.
  - gohrt 11y ago
    > We don't need to excuse unwarranted police violence as a society and yet you felt compelled to write this post.
  - cbr 11y ago
    > "covering their own ass" I think you and jessaustin may be using different interpretations of that term, judging by their reference of the McDonald shooting. People are much more ok with police officers doing what they need to do to keep themselves and others safe at the time (your usage) than they are with officers lying about why they used deadly force after the fact to keep from getting in trouble (their usage). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Laquan_McDonald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Laquan_McDonald
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cover+your+ass http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cover+your+ass [EDIT: removed request] I do have police family. I do want him to be safe. I don't want him to file false reports in order not to face the consequences of unlawful action. [EDIT:] As a rural resident and citizen, if "an armed intruder" troubles my family home, the sheriffs will be called to collect a corpse. I'm not fool enough to imagine they'll get there in time for anything else. Home intrusion rates are quite low hereabouts.
RealGeek 11y ago
93 victims were unarmed, 33 were armed with a toy, and 27 unknown. That is a lot more than Americans killed by terrorists in US.
- adam12 11y ago
  For me, this highlights how overblown the terrorist problem is.
  - cryptoz 11y ago
    About 30,000 Americans die in car crashes every year. That's about ~400,000 Americans killed by other Americans in their cars since the 2001 terrorist attacks. It's pretty clear that the emotional appeal is what people seem to care about ("someone wants to kill us") and it has absolutely nothing to do at all with Americans dying. Terrorism has never been a problem. The same number of people died in car accidents during September 2001 as they did in terrorist attacks. Where is our war on cars? Oh, nobody cares about that, cars are freedom, cars are what we went to war to protect.
    - soheil 11y ago
      > it has absolutely nothing to do at all with Americans dying I think it does, it's just that people are simply not aware of the numbers.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      What you call emotion, I call justice, and I think that matters. Consider, without any emotion, the issue of murder versus suicide. What are the negative impacts of those acts? From the point of view of that person's friends and family and society at large, leaving aside emotion or notions of justice, the impact of the acts is the same: loss of that person, loss of their financial and emotional support. In fact, the impact on family and friends is often worse in cases of suicide because insurance policies often have an exemption for suicide. Yet, almost nobody thinks murder should be legal while quite a few people think suicide should be legal. If we just mechanically consider "a death is a death" and count up the monetary impact of each case, we have no way to explain or justify why people feel this way.
tptacek 11y ago
Here's the data set as a spreadsheet, which I think is more helpful (I will feel dumb if they made it available as a spreadsheet themselves): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/100kWwv7vLl0ZAbtMn7lYot7TTouZ7DglWI7F0H7SrE8/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/100kWwv7vLl0ZAbtMn7lY... Oklahoma is pretty bad. California is in the top 15 for both fatal shootings weighted by population and for fatal shootings of people not attacking with a deadly weapon. Illinois, where I live, is all the way down at #44 for fatal shootings, which is surprising to me.
- jmuyskens 11y ago
  The data is available in CSV format on GitHub: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings
- kbenson 11y ago
  It would be interesting to see how well the numbers correlate to percentage of population in the state that lives in urban and rural areas, or even what percentage of the population is in heavily/dense urbanized areas.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/ow1ktm5nwy6um5f/Screenshot%202016-01-06%2016.44.21.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ow1ktm5nwy6um5f/Screenshot%202016-... Excuse the formatting. That's the top 10 by fatalities weighted by population. Short answer: it's all over the map.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      Ah, thanks! It looks like Percent Threat is minority deaths over total deaths for that state? The other thing I wondered was how it looked when normalized to the racial makeup of the state (I'm not asking you to do this, just wondering).
      - 11y ago
hebdo 11y ago
If you think that a knife threat should never call for a firearm response then I recommend this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpcrDzy344 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpcrDzy344
- tptacek 11y ago
  I don't think that and don't appreciate the framing you're trying to impose on me. Could you perhaps word comments like this more carefully? What I think is that people armed with firearms give the police much less reaction time, while people armed with knives can, if they're not on a vector that puts them in contact with other officers or civilians, be pacified more gradually.
  - pboutros 11y ago
    >I don't think that and don't appreciate the framing you're trying to impose on me. Could you perhaps word comments like this more carefully? This is a fantastic, measured answer - I'm always pleased to see reasonable responses to unreasonable comments.
    - hebdo 11y ago
      Sorry for the choice of words, but my point was that a person armed with just a knife can still be very dangerous. The use of a gun in such a situation cannot be simply called a deadly overreaction, without going into details. Therefore I do not see my comment as unreasonable.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        Nobody called it a "deadly overreaction", so I'm a little confused about this comment.
- DanBC 11y ago
  If we're trading youtube clips here's a police force who disarm a man armed with a machete. Armed police are available, (the UK has armed police, especially in London) but those police are not needed because our police force is not fucking incompetent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw Here's another video of a man wielding a knife and approaching police. In the US he's much more likely to be killed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9TFvh6Xps4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9TFvh6Xps4
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Granted, neither has happened to me, but if someone wanted to kill me, I think I'd rather be shot than hacked with a machete.
kennelliott 11y ago
Thanks for the constructive feedback, Thomas. These comments will be valuable when we build the 2016 database, if we decide to do so.
- newman314 11y ago
  Please do. We need more people to see this.
gohrt 11y ago
> while attacking someone with a deadly weapon. According to who? In several cases, it was shown that the police claimed "attacking someone with a deadly weapon." that was later shown to be a false claim.
jeffmould 11y ago
First off, I am not a doctor and I didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. But as someone that was an EMT and who worked around law enforcement for numerous years in other capacities, I have seen this all too often. "like how dangerous tasers are." Taser stats can be a bit deceiving. In the vast majority of cases where a taser is deployed the individual is in a drug-induced state with increased heart activity. Combine that with the escalating situation and the individual's heart rate is often higher than if they were just in the drug-induced state. These individuals are often highly combative at the time the taser is deployed. Given normal circumstances a taser deployment on these individuals most likely would not result in any harm. However, combine that deployment with the increased heart activity and adrenaline going through the individuals system and it becomes a recipe for disaster. To generalize and say that tasers are dangerous does not take into account the entire picture of events or situation at hand. It's not the taser itself that is dangerous it is the situation the individual has placed themselves in that causes the danger.
- cauthon 11y ago
  > To generalize and say that tasers are dangerous does not take into account the entire picture of events or situation at hand. It's not the taser itself that is dangerous it is the situation the individual has placed themselves in that causes the danger. That's misleading. If a taser is dangerous in the "vast majority of cases" in which it is used, then its use is dangerous. Doesn't matter if it's safe in situations where it isn't used.
  - jeffmould 11y ago
    I only said that the "vast majority of cases" where the result is deadly has outside factors (i.e. drugs). I did NOT say that the "vast majority of cases" where tasers are deployed. Enormous difference. Tasers are used hundreds of thousands of times annually with no issue. Unfortunately the ones where there is a death, or significant injury, typically involve the use of drugs or other have other outside factors not related to the use of the taser. EDIT: I did say in the vast majority of cases where tasers are deployed. That was an error on my part I did mean that to add that in a vast majority of cases where tasers are deployed and there is a death or significant injury.

rayiner 11y ago

Worth reading through these. A lot of people with mental illness shot just for holding guns or knives or "driving toward police." Recently, an au pair we know (from Germany), had a gun pulled on her because she reached into her purse to get her ID when she was pulled over. The fact that Maryland's finest are totally mental and she could get killed for doing that never occurred to her.

humanrebar 11y ago
I don't know. Someone with severe mental illness and a knife (or a car) sounds way more dangerous than a calm person with a gun. It's hard to know whether the shooting was warranted without more details. Maybe better video records of these incidents will be helpful.
- DanBC 11y ago
  A lot of those people have no intention to harm anyone but themselves. They're suicidal. It's weird that emergency medical treatment for suicidal people is "call the police", but that's what their relatives do. The police turn up, see the weapon, hear "mental illness" and wrongly assume mentally ill people are violent, and shoot them.
  - gohrt 11y ago
    Who are you going to call in an emergency? 911, or, um, what's the number of the suicide psychiatric emergency response team? You don't get to decide whether 911 dispatches police.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      > You don't get to decide whether 911 dispatches police. Maybe America should fix that, because in most other countries you get to ask for the service you want, either when you dial the 911 equivalent number, or by dialing the specific service emergency number. Some countries have an emergency psychiatric numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_nu...

startupfounder 11y ago

I find this discrepancy very interesting, only ~4% of the people shot and killed by police were female. Police departments are male dominate and maybe this factors into the difference[0] Male - 952 Female - 41 Why such a discrepancy? I don't think males are 23x more dangerous than females. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_law_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_law_enforcement

brighteyes 11y ago
1. Men do commit a lot more crime than women. We don't know exactly why that is, but probably some combination of biology and society. 2. There is a lot of bias towards seeing men as more dangerous. Some is legitimate - men are physically larger, on average - while some is just pure bias. The bias might be partially justified due to men actually committing more crime, but it's hard to say how much. Regardless, if you encounter the police in a potentially violent situation, it's clearly much better to be a woman than a man.
rayiner 11y ago
See Table 5: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf. Men are offenders in 92% of gun homicides, 93% of homicides committed in conjunction with another felony, 95% of drug-related homicides, and 98% of gang-related homicides.
- spikels 11y ago
  See Table 7: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf. Blacks are offenders in 57% of gun homicides, 60% of homicides committed in conjunction with another felony, 67% of drug-related homicides, and 42% of gang-related homicides.
  - unit91 11y ago
    I don't understand your comment in relation to the male / female issue. Care to expound?

dsugarman 11y ago

they did an incredible job here, very well done UI easy to filter and educate yourself. The saddest story I found: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/autistic-6-year-old-shot-killed-during-police-pursuit-in-louisiana-report-says/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/autistic-6-year-old-shot-killed-...

burkaman 11y ago
If anyone is wondering, the police were charged with second degree murder in this case: http://www.wdsu.com/news/local-news/new-orleans/grand-jury-indicts-marshals-in-marksville-shooting-that-critically-wounded-man-killed-boy/36902048 http://www.wdsu.com/news/local-news/new-orleans/grand-jury-i... They have plead not guilty and will be tried soon: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/01/trials_set_for_deputies_charge.html http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/01/trials_set_for_d...

hackuser 11y ago

Number of people killed last year by police in England and Wales: 3. That's the highest since 2008. [1] Why doesn't law enforcement seem to care? The government doesn't even track police shootings (one reason the Washington Post created its database) and, generally, law enforcement's reaction expresses no concern for the victims or for reducing this appalling behavior and widespread failure. [1] http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/fatal-police-shootings http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/fatal-police-shootings

tptacek 11y ago
While the police in the US are clearly more violent than those in the UK, it's also the case that there is more crime in the US, more variance in the population, and way, way, way more gun availability. So we may not have very much to learn from your simple comparison.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > So we may not have very much to learn from your simple comparison. You mean that I didn't write a dissertation on it in an HN comment? We don't have much to learn from your simplistic dismissal of a serious issue, based on simplistic speculation about the causes. Have a nice day.
  - knowaveragejoe 11y ago
    What terrible reasoning.
davidw 11y ago
It'd be interesting to compare what the UK folks were armed with, including those not shot. My guess is that US cops are far more likely to face people carrying firearms of their own. I figure if we're talking about gun laws, though, the article is probably political in nature, so I flagged it.
_asdf_asdf 11y ago
Wow! And England and Wales are entire countries! Except... They are much, much, much smaller countries, and so... One would actually expect a much, much, much smaller number for them. Even combined. Whether by land area or population, they are considerably smaller.

jbattle 11y ago

The state by state numbers are surprising. CA has about 1/10th of the total shootings. IL has only 20, which is less than a lot of other states (NM for example). Florida and Texas seem to be the other big standouts

maxerickson 11y ago
More than 10% of US people live in California. So 1/10 of the total doesn't really stand out.
deleted 11y ago
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archgoon 11y ago
Why on earth would it be surprising that California, with 12% of the population of the United States, would account for 10% of the total shootings? Florida, based on it's population, would have about 61 shootings (it has 60), and Texas would be expected to have about 84 (it has 96, or about 20% more than expected). The only surprising ones you've mentioned are Illinois (which is about half the expected rate) and New Mexico, which is about 3 times the expected.
davidw 11y ago
You have to look at per capita numbers. North Carolina and Arkansas actually stand out as having lower numbers than some of the 'usual suspects' states they are next to. Wonder why that is.

danso 11y ago

FWIW (a alot, IMHO), here is the Github account for the data: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings Seems like no big deal but with the commit history, we basically have a record and frequency count of how, in a major project by a major news organization, things get updated. Counting these incidents has always been difficult. Victims names are rarely known at the time of death, nevermind the circumstances. It can take awhile for that information to come out and when it does, often a reporter (at a local newspaper) will have moved on to some other story. The Wapo team is dependent on local reports. The github repo let's us see how efficient they are at it. Very cool transparent move on their part.

stevenrich 11y ago
FWIW, this is exactly why we chose to post to Github. We wanted to be as transparent as possible during a fluid process.

gscott 11y ago

I found this website the other day http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ turns out several people per day are killed by police which I was surprised by.

grb423 11y ago

Who determines whether mental illness is present and how?

stevenrich 11y ago
Usually family members, though police sometimes state it as well.

grb423 11y ago

Note to self: When uniformed officers approach to serve my arrest warrants, drop cellphone and put hands up. These dudes are dangerous!!

b_emery 11y ago
It actually is good advice to keep your hands visible at all times. It's a step in the right direction of keeping the officer at ease.

jmuyskens 11y ago

Hi! I'm a developer who worked on this project. If you'd like to download and check out our data, we are making it available in a repository on GitHub: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings

kennelliott 11y ago

Hi everyone! I'm a developer who worked on this project, and I appreciate the comments and suggestions. If you enjoyed this piece, you might want to check out our related story about the six most important things we learned from a year of investigating and reporting this data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-year-end/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

tptacek 11y ago
Is there a way to get the union of "Fleeing suspect" and "deadly weapon" (or, better: "fleeing suspect" and "firearm") from the data?
- kennelliott 11y ago
  The best we could advise you to do is select both "Deadly weapon" (under the "Weapon" category) and "Other" (under "Threat Level"). Deadly weapon includes all firearms, and the Other (threat level) category includes, but is not limited to, individuals who were fleeing. There will be some information in the blurbs that may indicate if the person was fleeing specifically. We hope that in future versions we will be able to provide a more specific breakdown.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    But you have the data somewhere, right, because you gave it a number (roughly a quarter of all fatalities). Could I derive that number from your data set on Github? (I'm not questioning the number; I'd just like to see if I can generate more context for it).
- kennelliott 11y ago
  A more roundabout way might be to go here https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-year-end/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo... , look at the second point about fleeing individuals, and look around for those who were brandishing a firearm. Some you will also find showed signs of mental illness. Apologies for not having an exact count of that particular union.

dudul 11y ago

I remember reading an article by a former military guy who was deployed in the middle east. Back home he had to deal with the police and basically said: "they reminded me of myself when I was deployed and operating in enemy controlled areas". The guy goes on to explain on, according to him, the problem is that there is a narrative that cops should be allowed to do anything to protect their life, as opposed to protect the public. This is always the excuse when a cop kills a civilian by mistake - "he feared for his life". Guess what? You're a freaking cop! Not a plumber, or an accountant. Cops should not be allowed to kill someone on suspicion that maybe there is a possibility that they will start shooting at them.

krapp 11y ago
>Cops should not be allowed to kill someone on suspicion that maybe there is a possibility that they will start shooting at them. Civilians in the US often have this right, so why shouldn't the police?
- dudul 11y ago
  For one, civilians don't have the role of "protecting and serving" :) Cops are trained, and are supposed to learn how to handle a situation without pulling out their gun []. I don't necessarily disagree with you though. It would be good for people to be able to walk at night with a bag of candies without getting gunned down. I don't think that 2 problems should cancel each other. [] And I know I'm wrong when I say that. I remember another paper showing how American cops spend a disproportionate amount of time practicing with their gun as opposed to cops in other countries where they mostly learn how to handle situations without their arms.
  - krapp 11y ago
    Police should certainly be held to a higher standard - and when they shoot someone, they should be treated the same as anyone else, if not put under greater scrutiny, because of the greater responsibility their position entails. But the fact remains that, for better or worse, every American by default has the right to shoot people with guns under certain circumstances. I am not a lawyer but I don't see a legal justification for limiting the ability of the police to defend themselves, without treating police officers like felons.

devy 11y ago

The FBI and CDC log fatal shootings by police, but officials acknowledge that their data is incomplete. [1] This is a little bit ironic in that the government agencies cannot do their job properly and it has to take a news company and their great investigative journalism to get it done right? [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-the-washington-post-is-examining-police-shootings-in-the-us/2015/06/29/f42c10b2-151b-11e5-9518-f9e0a8959f32_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-the-washington-p...

bdavisx 11y ago

Blacks were 26% of the deaths, but only make up 13% of the population.

deleted 11y ago
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blisterpeanuts 11y ago

Just for a fuller picture, here's the listing of police killed, by year, by state, etc.: https://www.odmp.org/search?name=&agency=&state=&from=2015&to=2015 https://www.odmp.org/search?name=&agency=&state=&from=2015&t... Sample search is for 2015, when 129 officers died from all causes including automobile accidents; 39 were killed by gunfire, 5 by vehicle pursuit, 7 by vehicular assault, etc.

mempko 11y ago

What the hell is going on in California? Actually, better question is why is Illinois so much less violent?