Title: US police shootings: How many die each year? - BBC News
Headings: US police shootings: How many die each year?
US police shootings: How many die each year?
Police killed
Killed by police
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Content: So when you consider the number of officers killed per 100,000, there has been a dramatic decrease. The annual per capita number of officers killed has dropped from 24 per 100,000 in the 10 years to 1980 to 7.3 per 100,000 in the 10 years to 2013 (the last year for which there is good data). This chimes with a bigger trend, which is a steady reduction in crime, including homicides. Killed by police
Official data on the number of people killed by the police turns out to be remarkably unreliable. "We can't have an informed discussion, because we don't have data," FBI Director James Comey said in the House of Representatives in October. "People have data about who went to a movie last weekend, or how many books were sold, or how many cases of the flu walked into an emergency room. And I cannot tell you how many people were shot by police in the United States last month, last year, or anything about the demographics. And that's a very bad place to be." He had previously said it was "unacceptable" that the leading sources of this information were newspapers, the Washington Post and the Guardian. Find out more
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Although the FBI does gather some data on fatal shootings, police forces are not obliged to provide it, and only some of them do.