USA - About 1,100 police-related homicides in 2014.

About 1,100 police-related homicides in 2014. The use of force by the police is so poorly monitored that there is no precise accounting of how many citizens are killed, much less their ethnicity or other crucial details. Since 2009, one regular if incomplete measure, the F.B.I.’s account of justifiable homicides by police officers (See Uniform Crime Reports), ranged from 397 to 426 deaths annually before jumping to 461 in 2013, the latest reporting year. Federal experts have long acknowledged that that estimate is too low. Only recently have online databases compiled by volunteers begun to produce a more accurate picture. Two of the more prominent ones, Fatal Encounters and Killed by Police, each logged about 1,100 police-related homicides in 2014. Their totals are higher when police-related deaths, such as fatalities in high-speed car chases or suicides in standoffs, are included. Because the records of killings are drawn mostly from news media reports, some crucial details, including the race of officers and suspects, often are missing. That data suggests that any perception that higher numbers of unarmed African-Americans are being killed by the police in recent months is driven by citizens’ postings of unsettling cellphone videos and pictures. “People are shocked by all these shootings,” said Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who is an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York. “But they’ve always been there.” Fatal Encounters, maintained by D. Brian Burghart, the publisher of The Reno News and Review, may be the most meticulous aggregator of reports of killings by the police. The data, covering killings from 2013 to the present, reinforces federal statistics in one broad respect: In police homicides in which the victim’s race is identified, African-Americans account for about three in 10 deaths, and whites roughly half. “Blacks are three times as likely to be killed by cops as are whites, on a per-capita basis,” said Dr. Moskos. But part of that is because of crime in predominantly black neighborhoods. “Blacks are four or five times as likely to be victims of homicides, and they are five times as likely to feloniously kill a cop,” he said. Relying on data gathered by Fatal Encounters, The New York Times ranked states by their rates of police-involved homicides per 100,000 residents. The result: the 5 deadliest jurisdictions are: 1) New Mexico, 2) District of Columbia, 3) Arizona, 4) Nevada, 5) Oklahoma. The 5 safest jurisdictions are, in order: 47) Massachusetts, 48) New Jersey, 49) New York, 50) New Hampshire, 51) Rhode Island.