On average, police in the United States shoot and kill more than 1,000 people every year, according to an ongoing analysis by The Washington Post.
After Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man, was killed in 2014 by police in Ferguson, Mo., a Post investigation found that data reported to the FBI on fatal police shootings was undercounted by more than half. That gap has widened in recent years. By 2021, only a third of departments’ fatal shootings appeared in the FBI database.
This is largely because local police departments are not required to report these incidents to the federal government. Also compounding the problem: an updated FBI system for reporting data and confusion among local law enforcement about reporting responsibilities.
As part of its investigation, The Post began in 2015 to log every person shot and killed by an on-duty police officer in the United States. Since then, reporters have recorded thousands of deaths. In 2022, The Post updated its database to standardize and publish the
— source washingtonpost.com | Dec. 31, 2023