Title: Another (Much Higher) Count Of Homicides By Police | FiveThirtyEight
Headings: Another (Much Higher) Count Of Homicides By Police
Another (Much Higher) Count Of Homicides By Police
Content: That works out to about three per day, or 1,100 a year. The page doesn’t claim that this is a comprehensive count, but it could be useful — like the count from the FBI’s annual Supplementary Homicide Report is useful — for setting a baseline number of police killings, as long as important caveats are acknowledged. For one, any database drawn from news sites relies on the assumption that the reports are accurate. If there is follow-up reporting that changes the initial understanding of the killing (for example, if it was later determined that a suspect committed suicide during a shoot-out with police), that follow-up wouldn’t necessarily be reflected in the Killed By Police tally. Finally — and most important — we can’t trust the Killed By Police numbers without checking the links. We randomly sampled 146 incidents (10 percent) from the news links posted to Killed By Police. All the posts linked to established outlets, although in some cases a new url for the article had to be found because the news site had restructured its links. Here’s a breakdown of these incidents: 124 incidents (85 percent) were clear-cut police shootings in which the victims were fatally shot by officers acting in the line of duty. “ Line of duty” doesn’t necessarily mean “justifiable,” but it’s an important distinction because it excludes some incidents, such as one in which an off-duty officer shot and killed a friend during a bar fight and was subsequently charged with criminal homicide.