US sets another grim record for killings by police in 2024

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26-02-2025

US sets another grim record for killings by police in 2024
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The number of people killed by police officers rose slightly in 2024, marking the smallest increase recorded in years, according to a report released Tuesday by Mapping Police Violence.
​​Police killed more than 1,300 people in the U.S. last year, an estimated 0.3% increase in police killings per million people. The slight increase makes 2024 the deadliest year for police violence by a slim margin since Mapping Police Violence began tracking civilian deaths more than a decade ago.
There is no national database that documents police killings in the U.S. and the report comes days after the Justice Department removed a database tracking misconduct by federal law enforcement. Researchers spent thousands of hours analyzing more than 100,000 media reports to compile the Mapping Police Violence database.
"This rise in police violence, even as homicides and violent crime decline nationwide, is a deeply troubling trend that demands data-backed solutions," Campaign Zero, which runs the project, said in a statement.
How many people were killed by police in 2024?
Police killed at least 1,365 people in 2024, according to Mapping Police Violence. That number has been steadily rising since 2019, when 1,113 people were killed by police. The total increased by just 8 people last year, the report found.
Some estimates put the total even higher. The Gun Violence Archive found at least 1,445 suspects were killed and 806 were injured in police shootings in 2024.
It's hard to tell why the uptick was so much smaller than it has been in recent years, in part because the numbers are so small to begin with, according to Abdul Nassar Rad, managing director of research and data at Campaign Zero. Rad said more analysis needs to be done to determine the impact demographic changes, immigration and new policing policies may have had on rates of police violence.
Nearly 65% of the killings occurred following a 911 call, like the death of Sonya Massey, a Black woman who was fatally shot by an Illinois deputy after she called 911 to report an intruder. Rad said its not clear how many more of the victims were the ones who initially called 911.
Almost 90% of the victims were killed by gunshots, 8% by vehicles and 5% by devices like Tasers, according to the report. Some died from other forms of violence, like Robert Brooks, an inmate who died after being violently beaten by multiple officers while handcuffed in a New York prison infirmary.
Some places see sharp increases in police killings while others had none
The southwest United States continued to be a hotspot for police violence, Rad said. New Mexico and Corpus Christi, Texas, were the state and city with the highest per capita rate of police killings, with Corpus Christi seeing a 288% increase from its average from the 11 years prior, Mapping Police Violence found.
But at least 10 cities with at least 250,000 residents and one state, Rhode Island, experienced no police killings last year, according to the report. Rad acknowledged that there may have been police killings in these locations that went unreported by the media and thus not captured in the database.
Rhode Island had the lowest average rate of police killings over the past 11 years followed by Massachusetts, which saw a 75% decrease from its 11-year average in 2024. He said population could be a factor, given that Rhode Island is among the smallest states.
"But then at the same time, what I find interesting is you have places like Wyoming, which also has a pretty small population, but like ninth highest rate of police killings," he added.
Disparities remain for minorities, people with mental health problems
Longstanding disparities for people of color and people with mental health issues persisted at a similar rate in 2024, Rad said.
Black people, for example, were nearly three times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts, the report found. Though Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders make up just 0.3% of the population, they were 7.6 times more likely than white people to be killed by police.
In some cities, the disparities observed were even sharper. Black people were more than 30 times more likely to be killed by police in Chicago and more than 10 times more likely to die in St. Louis, according to more than a decades-worth of data collected by Mapping Police Violence.
In 2024, about 1 in 5 people killed by police exhibited signs of mental illness, the report said. This can be a challenging variable to track, given that there were insufficient details about the victim's mental health status in approximately 30% of incidents, Rad said.
"That is something I think pretty significant in terms of understanding and drawing more attention to that," Rad said.
Contributing: Reuters