Some notes:<p>* The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted":<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0...</a><p>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.<p>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.<p>* 79% of the people killed in this database were reported to have "deadly weapons" (not including cars).<p>* 64% of the people killed in this database were shot and killed while attacking someone with a deadly weapon.<p>You'd really like to have a more detailed breakdown on "deadly weapon"; specifically, you want to know which of the people shot had <i>firearms</i>, versus knives.<p>Nobody was fatally shot by a police officer in Rhode Island? That's surprising.
FWIW (a alot, IMHO), here is the Github account for the data:<p><a href="https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings</a><p>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.<p>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.
Worth reading through these. A lot of people with mental illness shot just for holding guns or knives or "driving toward police."<p>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.
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: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-year-end/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...</a>
Number of people killed last year by police in England and Wales: 3. That's the highest since 2008. [1]<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/fatal-police-shootings" rel="nofollow">http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/fatal-police-shootings</a>
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]<p>Male - 952<p>Female - 41<p>Why such a discrepancy? I don't think males are 23x more dangerous than females.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_law_enforcement" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_law_enforcement</a>
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".<p>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 <i>anything</i> to protect their life, as opposed to protect the public.<p>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.
<p><pre><code> The FBI and CDC log fatal shootings by police, but officials acknowledge that their data is incomplete. [1]
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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?<p>[1]: <a href="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" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-the-washington-p...</a>
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: <a href="https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings</a>
they did an incredible job here, very well done UI easy to filter and educate yourself.<p>The saddest story I found:<p><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/autistic-6-year-old-shot-killed-during-police-pursuit-in-louisiana-report-says/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbsnews.com/news/autistic-6-year-old-shot-killed-...</a>
Just for a fuller picture, here's the listing of police killed, by year, by state, etc.:<p><a href="https://www.odmp.org/search?name=&agency=&state=&from=2015&to=2015" rel="nofollow">https://www.odmp.org/search?name=&agency=&state=&from=2015&t...</a><p>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.
I found this website the other day <a href="http://killedbypolice.net/" rel="nofollow">http://killedbypolice.net/</a> turns out several people per day are killed by police which I was surprised by.
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