In 2016 one thousand ninety-two civilians were killed by the police in the United States. When civilians die during police encounters they lose not only their right to due process, but also their chance to be counted. Matthew J. Thompson and Chris M. Smith argue that since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014, more is known about fatal police violence than ever before due to an increase not in official government statistics but in citizen crowdsourced data collection

Smith, Chris M.

Thompson, Matthew J.

LSE Research Online

2017-5-5Citizen science and crowdsourced data collection, notgovernment statistics, provide the most reliable count ofcitizen fatalities by policeblogs.lse.ac.uk /usappblog/2017/05/05/citizen-science-and-crowdsourced-data-collection-not-government-statistics-provide-the-most-reliable-count-of-citizen-fatalities-by-police-in-recent-years/In 2016 one thousand ninety-two civilians were killed by the police in the United States. When civilians dieduring police encounters they lose not only their right to due process, but also their chance to becounted. Matthew J. Thompson  and Chris M. Smith  argue that since the fatal police shooting ofMichael Brown in August 2014, more is known about fatal police violence than ever before due to anincrease not in official government statistics but in citizen crowdsourced data collection.In his first three months as President, Donald Trump signed executive orders prioritizing officersafety while his Department of Justice proposed ending programs that review the credibility offorensic evidence and investigate patterns of police misconduct and abuse . These positionsestablish an uncritical, pro law enforcement administration and are considered to be largelysymbolic gestures as law enforcement agencies are more directly impacted by local and statebudgets and legislation than by federal priority setting. However, what makes the Trumpadministration’s actions noteworthy is their stark departure from the previous administration’s datadriven approach to tackling social problems.Responding to national concerns over highly publicized deaths of black civilians by policethroughout 2014, President Obama launched the White House Police Data Initiative in May 2015. This initiativecoordinated 21 police departments from across the country to release existing departmental records and developstandards for transparency, accountability, and effective data analysis. Before this initiative, official nationalestimates of deaths by police came from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports, the Bureau of JusticeStatistics (BJS) Arrest-Related Deaths Program, and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) National VitalStatistics Program. Independent investigation concluded that these official sources were missing about 50 percentof deaths caused by on-duty police officers.Undercounting of deaths by police in official data sources arises from different reporting standards by states, issuesin classification, voluntary participation by police agencies, and resistance by police departments to making recordspublic. Sociologists and criminologists often incorporate official crime statistics from the BJS, such as the UniformCrime Reports, into their research, but researchers have largely avoided official data on deaths by police because ofthe known inherent limitations. At the end of 2015, then Attorney General Loretta Lynch described  a BJS pilotprogram employing multiple computer servers dedicated to scraping news articles and online reports every 24 hoursfor anything that looked like a fatal encounter between police and civilians. This encouraging program responded tothe known limitations of the voluntary FBI and BJS reporting compliance and attempted to incorporate andreproduce big data crowdsourcing initiatives that have taken place in the past three years.One of the most surprising developments in police violence data collection has been the growth of citizen scienceand crowdsourced data collection. Early efforts in police violence internet data collection came from the websiteFatal Encounters, which attempts to crowdsource and verify reports of all people killed by police officers sinceJanuary 2000. The British newspaper The Guardian elevated attention to this type of data collection with itsdatabase The Counted and similar efforts include The Washington Post with its database Fatal Force. Journalists atthese newspapers have crowdsourced data collection to catalog every instance of fatal police violence or fatal policeshooting since January 2015. FBI Director James Comey even praised The Guardian’s efforts and admitted thatThe Counted is a leading national source of information on police violence. Thanks to reporters, for the first time in1/3recent history—as far as we can tell—all civilians killed by police are finally being counted: 1,146 civilians in 2015and 1,092 civilians in 2016.Sociologists and criminologists who have been reluctant to use official national data sources on deaths by police aretaking these new crowdsourced databases seriously. For example, several new studies using crowdsourced datashow that unarmed black civilians are more likely to be shot at and killed by police than unarmed white civilians.However, researchers are still grappling with data limitations: undercounting of civilian deaths by police when localreporters fail to put a news story online, no reporting standards for officer-involved deaths, and missing details ofcases such as weapons involved, the level of threat or assault by the civilian, the number of officers at the scene, oreven basic demographic information on the civilians and officers. Crowdsourced and journalist generated data,while currently the best national data available, is no substitute for the reach and scope of the BJS or FBI to collectdata systematically if given the resources and autonomy.Some researchers have worked directly with local police departments to coordinate records and compile data ondeaths by police. Led by Houston, New York City, and St. Louis, city police records are the most complete datasets,as they provide reliable counts of people killed by police as well as comparative instances of nonfatal force. Locallaw enforcement data also provide details for researchers to examine patterns related to race, crime rates,residential segregation, and more. The Tampa Bay Times recently compiled six years of fatal police shootingsrecords from police agencies across the state of Florida, and its investigation confirmed that black civilians are shotat higher rates than white civilians. Unfortunately, local and state analyses cannot provide strong commentary andevidence of national counts and trends. Collecting comprehensive national data on fatalities by police remains anurgent priority.The commitment from the Obama administration and members of Congress for improved data collection wasencouraging in 2015 and 2016. But, under the Trump administration the fate of these early and incomplete executiveand legislative efforts for comprehensive data are now in danger. An executive focus on officer safety does not haveto be at odds with ensuring people killed by police get counted. However, federal agencies like the BJS need theindependence to advance their improved data collection projects transparently. Without a federal commitment to acoordinated, systematic national database, researchers must continue to rely on an array of state and local efforts,journalists, and a cadre of committed activists holding together a patchwork of databases counting our mountingdead. “Stop Police Brutality” by ep_jhu is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0Please read our comments policy before commenting.2/3Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor ofthe London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/2pNzNcm _________________________________About the authorsMatthew J. Thompson  – University of California, DavisMatthew J. Thompson is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University ofCalifornia, Davis. Matthew researches organizational structures, crime, and policing. His currentproject examines law enforcement agency policies and the use of police violence. Chris M. Smith  – University of California, DavisChris M. Smith is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University ofCalifornia, Davis. Chris researches inequality in crime, criminal relationships, and criminalorganizations. Chris is currently building a database (PACOTE) on threatening events betweenpolice officers and civilians from 2015 that will analyze differences in fatal and nonfatal outcomes.Copyright © The Author (or The Authors) - Unless otherwise stated, this work is licensed undera Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial Unported 3.0 License.3/3

Citizen science and crowdsourced data collection, not government statistics, provide the most reliable count of citizen fatalities by police

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