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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 o

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.
gfodor 11y ago
Absolute numbers in the last year are interesting, but much more interesting would be trends over a longer period. There's a widespread perception that there is an epidemic of police killings right now, but I haven't seen anyone use data to analyze how novel the current rate is with the past.
- kennelliott 11y ago
  It's tough, because we only started investigating and reporting this data in 2015. We've just announced we will be continuing the investigation in 2016, and by 2017 the government has said it hopes to have a better system in place for reporting and tracking these shootings. We definitely hope to some day have several years' worth of thorough police shootings data to see long-term trends.
rsync 11y ago
Is there any data about the police themselves ? Male vs. female officer, with or without partner, length of service, age, etc. ?

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.

gfodor 11y ago

Absolute numbers in the last year are interesting, but much more interesting would be trends over a longer period. There's a widespread perception that there is an epidemic of police killings right now, but I haven't seen anyone use data to analyze how novel the current rate is with the past.

kennelliott 11y ago
It's tough, because we only started investigating and reporting this data in 2015. We've just announced we will be continuing the investigation in 2016, and by 2017 the government has said it hopes to have a better system in place for reporting and tracking these shootings. We definitely hope to some day have several years' worth of thorough police shootings data to see long-term trends.

rsync 11y ago

Is there any data about the police themselves ? Male vs. female officer, with or without partner, length of service, age, etc. ?