Sometimes police officers use their guns during encounters with the public. When police shoot, they may strike or miss. Police shootings may wound or kill. They may be justified or unjustified.
But knowing exactly how often, when, where, and whom police shoot in the U.S.A. is unreasonably hard. It’s true for cities, suburbs, and rural areas.
PoliceShootingsData.com lets you explore, download, share and use police shootings data for mid-to-large cities. These data are from open records requests of 300 police departments for records from every time a police officer discharged a firearm in all cities with 100,000 or more residents as of 2010.
Our site is intended to inform perspectives on police shootings in U.S. cities. It also provides access to replication materials to reproduce and evaluate the analyses for and findings from the new book Deadly Force: Police Shootings in Urban America. Plus, it exhibits original sequential art to help make police shootings, especially data about them, more public.
Deadly Force: Police Shootings in Urban America
Disclaimer: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1946768. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the creators/authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.