Over 1,000 people are killed by law enforcement each year in the United States. While the majority of those killings are deemed to be justified by oversight officials, many are not. Footage of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 sparked nationwide protests, calls for fundamental police reform, and increased scrutiny over the use of deadly force and other abuses of power.
From 2013 to through May 2023, a reported 11,706 people were killed by police officers – both on and off duty – in the United States, according to Mapping Police Violence, a research collaborative that collects data on police killings across the nation. Adjusting for population, this comes out to around 3.5 police killings for every 100,000 people. However, the number of police killings in the last 10 years varies considerably from state to state.
Continue reading “Ranking the States Based on Killings by Law Enforcement”