Zusha Elinson March 31, 2018
FBI tracking of number of fatal incidents, which could begin in 2019, has no timetable
A deadly police shooting of an unarmed black man in Sacramento, Calif., has spurred fresh protests and again highlighted a long-vexing question: How many people do police kill each year?
There isn’t an easy answer.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation effort launched in 2015 to track the number of people killed by police in the U.S. could begin gathering national data next year, but there is no set timetable, officials said. Another effort by the Justice Department’s research arm, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, to count arrest-related deaths was supposed to begin in 2016but has yet to do so.
Federal agencies began drawing up plans for tallies in the wake of mass protests over the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.
“When something like Ferguson happens, or more recently in Sacramento with Stephon Clark, there is understandable outrage,” said Justin Nix, an assistant professor at University of Nebraska Omaha who studies police shootings. “What we need to be able to do is to step back and say, ‘How often do these things occur? How often are officers firing their guns?’ ”
It could begin as soon as 2019, hinging on various bureaucratic approvals and the ability to recruit enough police departments, said Doug Middleton, who chairs the FBI committee overseeing the use-of-force data collection. He said that 1,600 of the nation’s nearly 18,000 law-enforcement agencies have voluntarily agreed to submit data so far.
“We are embryonic in our efforts to recruit and we hope that law-enforcement agencies will see the value of being a part of this historic effort,” said Mr. Middleton, a former police chief who now serves as deputy county manager for public safety in Henrico County, Va.
The FBI plans to issue public reports with the data much as it does with national crime statistics. These could help identify trends and inform police agencies about what kind of training to give their officers while also informing the public, Mr. Middleton said.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Justice Statistics referred questions to another federal agency, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is now taking the lead. A spokeswoman for that agency said it is “working with stakeholders to develop the arrest related deaths data collection process” and would outline what it proposes to do in coming weeks.
In the past, the federal government has counted police killings in piecemeal fashion, resulting in incomplete numbers. In 2014, a Wall Street Journal analysis found that among 105 of the nation’s largest police departments, about 45% of killings by officers went unreported to the FBI between 2007 and 2012. A 2015 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found the bureau and the FBI had each undercounted by about half the number of arrest-related deaths between 2003 and 2009.
Meantime, the Washington Post and the Guardian began keeping their own tallies. The number of deadly police shootings has hovered just under 1,000 annually for the past three years, according to the Post’s count.
Criminal-justice researchers say it shouldn’t take so long for the government to figure out how to count police killings and that official data would be valuable in understanding how and when police use deadly force. But they also point out that far more than 1,600 agencies would need to report to present a true national picture.
Write to Zusha Elinson at zusha.elinson@wsj.com
Stephen Fischer, an FBI spokesman, said the bureau doesn’t have a precise timetable for beginning the nationwide data-collection program or releasing public reports on the results. He said the bureau tested its system with 100 police agencies last year and is analyzing the results.
The FBI aims to collect data on deaths and injuries caused by police use of force as well as any incident in which a police officer shoots at a someone.
It could begin as soon as 2019, hinging on various bureaucratic approvals and the ability to recruit enough police departments, said Doug Middleton, who chairs the FBI committee overseeing the use-of-force data collection. He said that 1,600 of the nation’s nearly 18,000 law-enforcement agencies have voluntarily agreed to submit data so far.
“We are embryonic in our efforts to recruit and we hope that law-enforcement agencies will see the value of being a part of this historic effort,” said Mr. Middleton, a former police chief who now serves as deputy county manager for public safety in Henrico County, Va.
The FBI plans to issue public reports with the data much as it does with national crime statistics. These could help identify trends and inform police agencies about what kind of training to give their officers while also informing the public, Mr. Middleton said.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Justice Statistics referred questions to another federal agency, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is now taking the lead. A spokeswoman for that agency said it is “working with stakeholders to develop the arrest related deaths data collection process” and would outline what it proposes to do in coming weeks.
In the past, the federal government has counted police killings in piecemeal fashion, resulting in incomplete numbers. In 2014, a Wall Street Journal analysis found that among 105 of the nation’s largest police departments, about 45% of killings by officers went unreported to the FBI between 2007 and 2012. A 2015 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found the bureau and the FBI had each undercounted by about half the number of arrest-related deaths between 2003 and 2009.
Meantime, the Washington Post and the Guardian began keeping their own tallies. The number of deadly police shootings has hovered just under 1,000 annually for the past three years, according to the Post’s count.
Criminal-justice researchers say it shouldn’t take so long for the government to figure out how to count police killings and that official data would be valuable in understanding how and when police use deadly force. But they also point out that far more than 1,600 agencies would need to report to present a true national picture.
Write to Zusha Elinson at zusha.elinson@wsj.com