This database contains records of people who’ve been killed through interactions with law enforcement since Jan. 1, 2000.
We believe we include complete records for all 50 states and DC back to 2000, but there are two data points that are not designed to be analyzed by outside entities and will result in inaccurate results: disposition and mental state. Our racial data is the best that exists, but it’s pretty spotty and gets worse prior to 2013. We’ve added racial imputations to the main spreadsheet. We do updates on almost every day, but we usually run a few days behind. Sometimes incidents that weren’t previously reported in the media (or that we missed) crop up because of lawsuits, new media reports or other reasons. Government data also suggests that vehicle-pursuit deaths are often not reported in news media, so our data certainly understates that total (outside of 2013-14, which include the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data from USA Today). To add incidents that aren’t in the database, or if you spot an error, please let us know through the corrections form.
After you’ve read the above caveats, the data in a spreadsheet is right here for download. Or you can use our interface below for simple analysis.
Here’s How the Database Works
Users can search from eleven criteria: name, city, county, state, race, age, gender, year, date of injury resulting in death, cause of death, and the police agencies involved. Unfortunately, our engine can be a bit temperamental.
- If you want to search for a name, put the first name in the top field and the last name in the bottom one. If you put first and last names in the first field, you won’t get the results that include a middle initial, middle name or nickname.
- If someone wanted to search for all the people in Nevada who were killed during interactions with police in Washoe County, they’d type “Washoe” (without quotation marks) in the main search field, then select “State” from the Filter Search Drop-Down, type in the state abbreviation, “NV,” and click “Search.”
- If they wanted to search all the people who died in Nevada, leave the Main Search Box blank, select “State” from the Filter Search Drop-Down, type “NV” in the Filter Search Box, then click “Search.
Some Extra Examples
- For all records of people who died during encounters with the Reno Police Department: Type “Reno Police Department” in the Main Search Box, select “State” from the Filter Search Drop-down, type “NV” in the Filter Search Box, and click “Search”.
- For all people involved in a police-involved death named Henry in California: Type “Henry” in Main Search Box, sort by “State”, type “CA” in the Filter Search Box, then click “Search”.
- For all records for people who died by stun gun: Leave the Main Search Box blank, select “Cause of Death” from the Filter Search Drop-Down, type “Tasered” in the Filter Search Box, then click “Search.
Beware, though, calling up 28,000 records will crash some older browsers.
For volunteers, please, please, check a few details here before you start inputting data. Just the last name, no state necessary. You guys work so hard, I hate to throw out somebody’s work because the incident is already in the database.