Police Have Shot and Killed at Least 2,195 People Since Ferguson

http://www.vox.com/a/police-shootings-ferguson-map

Updated by German Lopez and Soo Oh 

on September 20, 2016, 1:34 p.m. ET

Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, and Walter Scott 

are just three of at least 2,195 people killed by 

police since August 9, 2014, the day of the 

Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

Fatal Encounters, a nonprofit, has tracked these 

killings by collecting reports from the media, 

public, and law enforcement and verifying 

them through news reports. Some of the data 

is incomplete, with details about a victim’s 

race, age, and other factors sometimes missing.

 It also includes killings that were potentially 

legally justified, and is likely missing some 

killings entirely.

Vox’s Soo Oh created an interactive map with data 

from Fatal Encounters. It shows some of the 

killings by law enforcement since the Brown 

shooting:

The map includes cases in which a police officer 

shot and killed someone. But some of the shootings

 — it’s hard to say how many — were 

“suicide by cop,” when people kill themselves by 

baiting a police officer into using deadly force. 

The map doesn’t include non-shooting deaths, 

such as vehicle crashes, stun guns, drug 

overdoses, and asphyxiations.

The FBI already collects some of this data from 

local and state agencies, but asVox’s Dara Lind 

explained, that data is very limited. Reporting 

homicides for participating agencies is mandatory, 

but reporting the circumstances of homicides is 

not. So we might know that thousands of people 

die in a certain state, but we won’t always know 

why those homicides happened and whether they 

involved police. Participation in the FBI reporting 

programs is also voluntary, making the number 

of reported homicides in the federal data at best 

a minimum of what’s going on across the country.

Since the historical data is so bad, it's hard to 

gauge whether these types of killings are 

becoming more common. But the Fatal 

Encounters database is much more complete 

than the FBI figures, giving some of the best 

context we have for the wide range of police 

use of force — especially as the issue continues 

to capture national attention in the aftermath 

of Brown’s death.

Correction: This article originally described 

some incidents in which people died while 

interacting with police as examples of police 

using deadly force. But in some of the cases, 

these people died due to other causes.

Vox’s Soo Oh created an interactive map with 

data from Fatal Encounters. It shows some 

of the killings by law enforcement since the 

Brown shooting:

Police shootings and brutality in the US: 

9 things you should know

Edited by German Lopez

Since the August 2014 police shooting of 

Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 

police in America have been under 

heightened scrutiny. The Black Lives 

Matter protests in particular have shined 

a light on what many see as a systemic 

emphasis on excessive use of force 

by police, particularly on racial and 

ethnic minorities.

So here's what you need to know about 

use of force by police in America.

• 1. American police shoot and kill far more people than their peers in other countries
• 2. There are huge racial disparities in how US police use force
• 3. Cities across the country have been riddled with accusations of police abuse
• 4. There's no good data on how many people police kill each year
• 5. Police can use deadly force if they merely perceive a threat
• 6. Cops are almost never prosecuted and convicted for use of force
• 7. Killings of police officers on duty are near record lows
• 8. The federal government has helped the militarization of police
• 9. Reforms have focused on community policing and accountability — but that may not be enough
• 10. Share this card stack!
• 11. Explore