Title: Police shootings myth: Unarmed Black Americans don't face an epidemic
Headings: There is no epidemic of fatal police shootings against unarmed Black Americans
There is no epidemic of fatal police shootings against unarmed Black Americans
Ideally officers would never need to take anyone's life. But the data on police killings doesn't support reducing or abolishing law enforcement.
Improve — don't abolish — police
A fully-functioning police force

Content: For the last five years, the police have fatally shot about 1,000 civilians annually, the vast majority of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. Black people account for about 23% of those shot and killed by police; they are about 13% of the U.S. population. As of the June 22 update, the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings showed 14 unarmed Black victims and 25 unarmed white victims in 2019. The database does not include those killed by other means, like George Floyd. The number of unarmed Black shooting victims is down 63% from 2015, when the database began. There are about 7,300 Black homicide victims a year. The 14 unarmed victims in fatal police shootings would comprise only 0.2% of that total. Ideally, officers would never take anyone’s life in the course of their duties. But given the number of arrests they make each year ( around 10 million) and the number of deadly-weapons attacks on officers ( an average of 27 per day in just two-thirds of the nation’s police departments, according to a 2014 analysis), it is not clear that these 1,000 civilian shooting deaths suggest that law enforcement is out of control.