Lethal Police Violence

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Homicide Studies
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David A. Klinger
Research Note
On the Problems and Promise of Research on Lethal Police Violence : A
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430861HSX16110.1177/108876
7911430861KlingerHomicide Studies
1
University of MissouriSt. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
Corresponding Author:
David A. Klinger, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of MissouriSt. Louis, One
University Boulevard, 324 Lucas Hall, St. Louis, MO 63121-4499, USA
Email: klingerd@umsl.edu
On the Problems and
Promise of Research on
Lethal Police Violence:
A Research Note
David A. Klinger
1
Abstract
We presently have little information about how frequently police officers shoot
citizens or are involved in any sort of interaction in which citizens die. Despite this,
however, researchers persist in using the limited data available on fatal police violence
in various sorts of analyses. The current article outlines the liabilities in available
counts of fatal police action, describes some of the problems posed by using such data,
discusses why counting citizens killed by police bullets is not a sound way to measure
deadly force, and offers some ideas for improving measurement of the use of deadly
force and other police actions that lead to the death of citizens.
Keywords
comparative, historical, justifiable homicide, policing, public policy
That law enforcement officers carry firearms with the express legal authority to use
them in the course of their duties gives the police a power over life and death that is
unique in the American criminal justice system (Bittner, 1970; Fyfe, 1982; Geller &
Scott, 1992). Recognizing this, the National Research Councils Committee to Review
Research on Police Policy and Practices recently stated that [t]here is no more
important piece of data regarding police behavior than that on the exercise of lethal
force (Skogan & Frydl, 2004, p. 157). Despite this, we know next to nothing about
how often American police officers exercise their prerogative to use deadly force.
Research Note
Klinger 79
Studies from previous decades provided detailed information about shooting pat-
terns in individual agencies (e.g., Fyfes 1978 examination of New York City Police
firearms discharges and Geller and Karales (1982) similar work regarding the Chicago
Police Department). Except for work of this sort, which extracts internal data kept by
individual law enforcement agencies, we have no sound, empirically grounded, idea of
how many people across the nation are shot at by police officers, how many are struck
by police bullets, or how many of the individuals who are shot die from the wounds
they suffer. While some national data sources on deaths at the hands of the police do
exist, the counts they contain are notoriously inaccurate (Fyfe, 2002; Klinger, 2008;
Loftin, Wiersema, McDowall, & Dobrin, 2003; Sherman & Langworthy, 1979; and
below) andby definitionprovide absolutely no information about police firearm
discharges that do not cause fatal injury.
Because we do not have sound national data on police shootings we are not able to
answer simple empirical questions such as, How often do American police officers
discharge their firearms at citizens? How many citizens are struck by bullets fired by
American police officers each year? And, How many citizens are killed by police
bullets in the United States each year? It also means that we cannot track how police
use of deadly force varies at the national level from year-to-year (or any other tempo-
ral unit), comprehensively compare its use between jurisdictions (or any other spatial
aggregate) across the nation, or seek to empirically identify the correlates and determi-
nants of police shootings across time and space in the United States.
Despite the fact that sound national data do not exist, researchers have persisted in
using official counts of fatalities at the hands of the police as a measure of deadly
force by American police officers, including in studies that seek to explain variability
in deadly force usage across time and space (e.g., Jacobs & Britt, 1979; Jacobs &
OBrien, 1998; Smith, 2003; 2004; Sorensen, Marquart, & Brock, 1993).
1
This later
tradition of research is especially troubling because it produces findings about the
correlates of deadly police violence that are of dubious validity. The remainder of this
article is devoted to outlining the liabilities of official death counts as indicators of
deadly force and other deadly police action across the United States, describing and
demonstrating the problems inherent in using any count of citizens killed by the police
to measure deadly force usage, and presenting some ideas about how to develop a data
collection program that will provide valid and reliable nationwide information about
police firearm usage and police-involved deaths of citizens in the United States.
Official Data on Deadly Police Action
There exist three sources of data with national reach that have some relevance to the
construct police use of deadly force. The first data source is the National Center for
Health Statistics (NCHS) National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), which keeps
records on deaths by legal intervention, a mortality category that is intended to
capture homicidal deaths caused by law enforcement personnel. Academics have
long noted the weakness of the NVSS deaths by legal intervention data as an
80 Homicide Studies 16(1)
indicator of citizen death at the hands of police officers in the United States, however.
Three decades ago Sherman and Langworthy (1979), in the first academic analysis of
the adequacy of NVSS data, compared NVSS counts of police-caused deaths for a
sample of states and counties with counts from other sources (e.g., data generated by
law enforcement agencies) for the years 1970 to 1976 and found that the NVSS
figures grossly underreported citizen deaths at the hands of police officers, perhaps
by as much as 51% nationwide. Based on this finding, they concluded that the Vital
Statistics data do not provide an adequate basis for arriving at accurate national esti-
mates of the number of citizens killed by police officers each year (p. 34). Sherman
and Langworthy also compared city-level police-caused homicide counts in the NVSS
data with figures kept by a small number of individual police departments. This exer-
cise likewise disclosed substantial discrepancies between the two data sources, which
led the two researchers to conclude that NVSS data should not be used to compare
police homicide rates from one particular city to another (p. 34).
Sherman and Langworthy (1979) briefly mentioned a second federal data source
that includes counts of police-caused homicide in the United States: the Supplementary
Homicide Report (SHR) program administered by the FBIs Uniform Crime Reporting
(UCR) section, which includes counts of justifiable homicides by law enforcement
officers. They devoted little attention to SHR counts of killing by police officers, how-
ever, because of the FBIs reservations about the quality of th[e]se data (p. 14).
In 2003, Loftin et al. presented the results of a comparative analysis they conducted
of NVSS and SHR counts of police-caused homicides for the 23-year period 1976
to 1998. Among the key findings they reported were that (a) both the NVSS and
SHR programs undercount the number of homicides committed by Americas police
officers each year, (b) the NVSS reported fewer police-caused deaths each year than
did the SHR (with a total of 1,974 fewer deaths6,684 versus 8,658over the years
in question), and (c) while yearly national SHR counts were consistently higher than
NVSS counts, in many states (more than half) the NVSS data counted more police-
caused deaths than did the SHR system during the 23-year study period.
2
After noting
these key points, Loftin et al. stated that at present reliable estimates of the number of
justifiable homicides committed by police officers in the United States do not exist
(p. 1121).
In 2003 the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) started collecting information
about deaths caused by police officers as part of a program designed to track citizen
mortality while in state custody. Known as the Death in Custody Reporting Program
(DCRP), this undertaking seeks to count every citizen deathno matter the cause
that occurs at any point in the criminal justice process, starting with police efforts to
catch suspects. Suspect deaths caused by the actions of police officers are counted as
a part of what the DCRP refers to as Arrest-Related Deaths. In 2007, BJS published
a document that, among other things, reported the number of police-caused deaths that
the DCRP had tabulated for the years 2003 to 2005 (Mumola, 2007).
One aspect of the discussion of this information was a comparison of the number
of arrest-related deaths in the DCRP data with the number of justifiable homicides by
Klinger 81
police officers recorded in the FBIs SHR for each of the 50 states and Washington,
DC. There are remarkable differences between the two data sets across the majority
of the 51 units of analysis. Take the nations most populous state, for example.
Californias SHR figures count a total 352 justifiable homicides by police officers for
the 3 years in question (i.e., 2003-2005), while the DCRP data show just 160. As
Klinger (2008) concluded in a previous discussion of the data presented in Mumolas
(2007) report, the lack of correspondence between the DCRP and SHR figures indi-
cates that the DCRP should not be viewed as a reliable indicator of deaths caused by
police officers.
To summarize about previously published studies of national-level data on citizen
deaths at the hands of U.S. police officers, the available evidence indicates that none
of the three data collection systems provides counts of police-caused deaths that
researchers should trust. Despite this, however, some researchers might be tempted to
use one (or more) of these data sources to measure deaths caused by police action.
Indeed, as noted above, some researchers persist in using the SHR data for this very
purposedespite all of the ink that has been previously spilt in attempts to dissuade
scholars from doing so (e.g., Fyfe, 2002; Geller & Scott, 1992; Skogan & Frydl, 2004).
In an attempt to drive a stake through the heart of the notion that available data on
police caused deaths provide sound indicators of the construct police-caused deaths,
the rest of this section presents data that further demonstrates the inadequacy of extant
national level police-caused homicide statistics.
Since Mumola (2007) presented the SHR and DCRP counts of deaths at the hands
of American police officers for the years 2003 to 2005, both BJS and NCHS have
released their counts of deaths caused by American police officers for 2006 (i.e., the
DCRP and NVSS statistics, respectively). Because the FBIs SHR data on justifiable
homicides by police officers is also available,
3
this provides an opportunity to examine
a 4-year series of police-caused death counts (i.e., 2003-2006) across the three cur-
rently available official data sources. As shown in Table 1, none of the three data
sources contain the same counts for any of 4 years in question. On the other hand,
some of the counts for some of the years are quite close (particularly in 2004, when the
high count was 372 and the low was 367) and the differences between the three data
sources for all 4 years are not too substantial; the greatest being that the NVSS count
(1,643) is 12% higher than the SHR count (1,468).
While one might be tempted to take from this information the opinion that the
observed similarities indicate that the three sources are providing at least somewhat
sound measures of police-caused deaths across the nation, thorough consideration of
the matter indicates that this is not the case. First, recall that Loftin et al. (2003) dem-
onstrated that substantial differences at the state level between SHR and NVSS counts
are masked in data that is aggregated at the national level. Second, recall that Klinger
(2008) pointed out that the same phenomenon is operative where DCRP numbers go,
with state-level DCRP numbers often varying wildly from those found in the SHR. A
look at the numbers in the three data sources for the most populous state in the nation
illustrates this problem.
Table 2 above presents NVSS, SHR, and DCRP numbers for California for the four
years in question. Perhaps the most striking aspects of the table are the differences
between DCRP and SHR death counts for the first 3 years, where each year the SHR
numbers are more than 100% higher than the DCRP numbers and the total death count
for the 3 years combined in the SHR are 120% higher than in the DCRP (352 vs. 160).
Another striking aspect of the table is that the NVSS counts are consistently lower than
the SHR counts, with the SHR count for the entire period in question being almost a
third higher (31%; 476 vs. 363). A final aspect of the table worth noting is the substan-
tial jump in DCRP recorded deaths for 2006 over previous years; from an annual aver-
age of just 53 for 2003 to 2005, to 114 in 2006.
This massive jump is apparently due to the extensive outreach efforts that BJS per-
sonnel working on the DCRP made to individuals and agencies in California who are
responsible for reporting information to BJS. BJS was well aware of the remarkable
differences in DCRP and SHR death counts in California (and other states as well) for
2003 to 2005 and worked diligently to identify possible reasons for the discrepancies.
Once they realized that a sizable portion of the problem resided in a lack of clarity
among those responsible for reporting deaths in custody about precisely what sorts of
incidents should be reported to BJS, DCRP personnel developed and executed a plan
to clarify matters.
4
The sizable increase in the number of deaths counted in the DCRP
Table 1. Official Counts of Police-Caused Deaths in United States, 2003-2006
NVSS SHR DCRP
2003 423 371 366
2004 372 368 367
2005 414 343 368
2006 434 386 439
Total 1,643 1,468 1,540
Note: NVSS = National Vital Statistics System; SHR = Supplementary Homicide Report; DCRP = Death in
Custody Reporting Program.
Table 2. Official Counts of Police-Caused Deaths in California, 2003-2006
NVSS SHR DCRP
2003 85 120 50
2004 80 122 60
2005 101 110 50
2006 97 124 114
Total 363 476 274
Note: NVSS = National Vital Statistics System; SHR = Supplementary Homicide Report; DCRP = Death in
Custody Reporting Program.
Klinger 83
from 2005 to 2006, along with the narrowing of the gap between SHR and DCRP
death counts from 60 in 2005 to 10 in 2006, indicates that these efforts yielded sub-
stantial gains. While this narrowing of the gap is welcome, it is clear that the DCRP
numbers still lag behind those found in the SHR.
Given that the SHR numbers typically provide the highest counts of death at the
hands of the police, some might be tempted to view the SHR as providing the best and
therefore an acceptable, count of police-caused deaths in our nations most populous
state. This would be a mistake; for a quick look at some unpublished data shows that the
SHR data provide grossly inaccurate counts of police-caused homicides in California.
As noted above, one way that previous research established the inaccuracies in
official counts of deaths at the hands of the police is by comparing such counts with
data on citizen deaths kept by local police agencies. A look at SHR figures and internal
data kept by the two largest law enforcement agencies in California shows that the
validity problem in official counts of police-caused deaths first identified by
Sherman and Langworthy in 1979, and tracked by Loftin et al. (2003) through 1998,
is still alive and well in the current century.
Table 3 displays data relevant to citizen deaths at the hands of Los Angeles city
police officers (LAPD) and Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies (LASD) for the
years 1996 to 2008. The column titled LAPD Internal contains data from the LAPDs
Use of Force Section on the annual number of citizens shot dead by LAPD officers.
The column titled LASD Internal contains data from the LASDs Homicide Division
on the number of citizens fatally shot in each of these years by LASD deputies. The
Table 3. Comparison of LAPD and LASD Internal Counts of Citizens Killed by Officer/
Deputy Gunfire and FBI (SHR) Counts of Justifiable Homicides, 1996-2008
LAPD Internal LAPD SHR LASD Internal LASD SHR
1996 24 19 14 7
1997 20 12 18 2
1998 13 7 10 5
1999 14 11 10 4
2000 14 13 12 3
2001 7 4 12 6
2002 15 11 9 4
2003 14 6 15 6
2004 15 3 12 4
2005 11 1 10 3
2006 12 7 10 3
2007 14 15 6 5
2008 20 19 9 4
Total 193 128 147 56
Note: LAPD = Los Angeles Police Department; LASD = Los Angeles County Sheriff s Department.
columns titled LAPD SHR and LASD SHR contain data from the SHR program
on the number of citizens who were reported to have died at the hands of LAPD offi-
cers and LASD deputies, respectively.
5
A quick glance at the Totals at the bottom of each column of Table 3 shows that
the official SHR figures are substantially lower than those kept by each agency; 128
versus 193 for the LAPD (difference = 65; 34% lower) and 56 versus 147 for the
LASD (difference = 91; 62% lower). A second notable aspect of the table is that the
size of the gap between the internal and SHR figures varies wildly from year to year
and across the two agencies. The largest single-year gap for the LASD was 16, which
occurred in 1997 when agency records indicate that deputies fatally shot 18 people and
the SHR records indicate that LASD deputies killed just 2 citizens. The smallest gap
for the LASD occurred in 2007, when the SHR contains just one fewer death than does
the LASD internal data. Where the LAPD is concerned, the largest gap is found in
2005, when internal records recorded 10 more deaths than did the SHR (11 vs. 1); the
smallest differences occurred in 2000, 2007, and 2008, when the numbers were off by
just one. Given the overall and year-by-year differences between official SHR and
internal counts, it is clear that the SHR figures do not provide accurate counts of deaths
at the hands of the police in the two largest law enforcement agencies in California
(which also happen to be among the five largest in the United States).
Further consideration of the matter indicates that the problems with SHR data
regarding the LAPD and LASD have substantial consequences beyond the bounds of
Los Angeles. SHR data show a total of 1,427 justifiable homicides by police officers
in the state of California during the years 1996 to 2008. We know from the internal
records kept by the LAPD and LASD that this figure undercounts the number of citi-
zens killed by California police officers by at least 156 during these years (i.e., 65 for
LAPD plus 91 for LASD). Because internal numbers on fatal police shootings from
the several hundred California law enforcement agencies besides the LAPD and LASD
are not readily available, we have little notion of the full scope of the police-caused
death undercount in the California SHR data; only that at minimum, it averages well
over 10 per year.
Given the information presented in the preceding paragraphs, it should be clear that
presently available official counts of deaths at the hands of American police remain
deeply flawed. Before moving on, one final point on the utility of official counts of
police homicides as indicators of deadly force usage by police officers is in order. It is
a simple one: Citizens die at the hands of the police via means besides law enforce-
ment gunfire; in incidents in which officers deploy TASERS, in situations in which
officers strike citizens with batons, in altercations in which officers do nothing more
than grapple with suspects, and so on (Ho et al., 2009). Because the previously dis-
cussed numbers supplied by the LAPD and LASD count the number of people fatally
shot by members of the respective departments, the previously discussed undercounts
likely underestimate the extent to which SHR data are off the mark in Los Angeles, in
California, and the rest of the country as a count of citizens who expire as the result of
interactions with police officers. Conversely, it is possible that the numbers recorded
Klinger 85
in official counts of police-caused homicides for some jurisdictions are limited to
nongunfire deaths, or include some combination of deaths from both police gunfire
and other causes.
6
Whatever the case might be on this point, it is clear that official
counts of police-caused deaths do not provide a sound measure of citizens killed by
police gunfire (or, for that matter, of citizen deaths caused by any sort of police action,
including firearms discharges by officers).
What Fatal Gunshot Injuries Miss
About the Use of Deadly Force by Police Officers
Even if we had sound counts of the number of citizens killed by police gunfire in the
United States, we would still be missing a substantial aspect of the picture regarding
the use of deadly force by American police officers; for most police bullets fired dont
kill anyone (e.g., Geller & Scott, 1992). First, in many instances when police officers
discharge their weapons at suspects, all of their shots miss the intended target. Second,
when officers bullets do find their mark, a sizable portion of people struck survive
their wounds. As James Fyfe (1978) noted more than three decades ago in his ground-
breaking dissertation on deadly force in policing, the critical question when studying
police shootings is the pulling of the trigger, not the ultimate result of bullet(s) that are
thus fired. As he put it,
Deadly force is physical force capable of or likely [emphasis in original] to kill;
it does not always kill. The true frequency of police decisions to employ fire-
arms as a means of deadly force, therefore, can best be determined by consider-
ing woundings and off-target shots as only fortuitous variations of fatal
shootings. All are of a kind. (p. 32)
While (as one might by now suspect) there exists no sound information about how
many times police officers in the United States fire their guns and hit no one, there is
somealbeit limitedsound information on instances in which citizens suffer nonfa-
tal gunshot wounds. Some police agencies keep internal records regarding police shoot-
ings that include both the number of citizens who die from police gunfire and the number
who suffer nonfatal gunshot wounds. Data of this sort provide some sense of the scope
and nature of that component of deadly force that is missed by counts of citizen fatalities
from police gunfire. Consider the data in Tables 4 and 5 below, which present informa-
tion about citizens struck by police bullets in our nations two most populous cities for
the 35-year period 1974 to 2008.
7
If we put aside the fact that the tables do not contain
any information about instances in which police fired and missed, a brief examination
of the data on citizens killed and nonfatally wounded by New York and Los Angeles
police gunfire in recent decades illustrates the weakness of using citizen deaths to
measure police deadly force usage.
An initial point worthy of note in Tables 4 and 5 is that in both cities for the 35 years
in question most of the citizens who were shot did not expire; 31.4% of citizens shot
by NYPD officers died, while 41.8% of those shot by LAPD officers perished.
8
A
second key point is that the proportion of citizens struck by police bullets who suffered
fatal wounds varied substantially from year to year in each city. In Los Angeles, the
fatality rate varied from a low of 24.6% (in 1979) to a high of 64.5% (in 2008), while
Table 4. Citizens Struck by NYPD Gunfire, 1974-2008
Total Killed Wounded Percentage fatal
1974 121 41 80 33.9
1975 131 44 87 33.6
1976 104 25 79 24
1977 118 30 88 25.4
1978 115 37 78 32.2
1979 108 28 80 25.9
1980 126 25 101 19.8
1981 124 33 91 26.6
1982 120 33 87 27.5
1983 92 29 63 31.5
1984 74 26 48 35.1
1985 58 11 47 18.9
1986 56 18 38 32.1
1987 50 14 36 28
1988 70 24 46 34.2
1989 91 30 61 32.9
1990 111 39 72 35.1
1991 108 27 81 25
1992 87 24 63 27.6
1993 91 33 58 32.3
1994 90 29 61 32.2
1995 84 26 58 31
1996 78 30 48 38.5
1997 59 20 39 33.9
1998 62 19 43 30.6
1999 43 11 32 25.6
2000 34 14 20 41.2
2001 30 11 19 36.7
2002 37 13 24 35.1
2003 36 14 22 38.9
2004 33 11 22 33.3
2005 25 7 18 28
2006 31 11 20 35.5
2007 29 10 19 34.5
2008 31 13 18 41.9
Total 2,657 810 1,847 Average 31.4
Note: NYPD = New York Police Department.
Klinger 87
Table 5. Citizens Struck by LAPD Gunfire 1974-2008
Total Killed Wounded Percentage fatal
1974 69 26 43 37.7
1975 75 30 45 40
1976 75 30 45 40
1977 73 33 40 45.2
1978 60 20 40 33.3
1979 57 14 43 24.6
1980 44 14 30 31.8
1981 46 15 31 32.6
1982 52 21 31 40.4
1983 65 25 40 38.5
1984 46 19 27 41.3
1985 65 23 42 35.4
1986 48 21 27 43.8
1987 56 22 34 39.3
1988 78 23 55 29.5
1989 68 22 46 32.4
1990 73 39 34 53.4
1991 61 23 38 37.7
1992 77 25 52 32.5
1993 56 18 38 27.3
1994 45 29 16 64.4
1995 36 15 21 44.4
1996 49 24 25 49
1997 41 20 21 48.8
1998 26 13 13 50
1999 24 14 10 58.3
2000 34 14 20 41.2
2001 23 7 16 30.4
2002 35 15 20 42.9
2003 27 14 13 51.9
2004 41 15 26 36.6
2005 29 11 18 37.9
2006 27 12 15 44.4
2007 33 20 13 60.6
2008 31 20 11 64.5
Total 1,745 706 1,039 Average 41.8
Note: LAPD = Los Angeles Police Department.
in New York the rate ranged from 18.9% (in 1985) to 41.9% (in 2008). Figure 1 dem-
onstrates in graphical fashion both the differences between the two cities and the vari-
ability in each city over time.
The two key points noted above illustrate just how dicey it is to use the number of
citizens killed by police bullets as an indicator of police gunfire. First, because the
percentage of citizens shot who succumbed to their wounds during the 35 years in
question is nearly one-third higher in Los Angeles, using the number of suspects killed
by police bullets to compare police shootings in the two cities would present a mis-
leading picture; one that would depict New York as having relatively fewer shootings
in comparison to Los Angeles than is actually the case.
9
In a similar vein, the substan-
tial year-to-year changes in the proportion of citizens shot who died in each city iden-
tify a serious problem with using citizen deaths to track changes in police gunfire
usage across time.
10
With the proportion of persons struck by police gunfire who die
in a given year varying by more than 100% in each city across the three-and-half
decades in question (i.e. a high/low of 41.9%/18.9% in New York and 64.5%/24.6% in
Los Angeles), it is clear that using deaths to chart temporal changes in the use of police
firearms is not sound practice. That the average New York and Los Angeles fatality
rates appear quite different (i.e., 31% vs. 42%) strongly suggests that the use of a citi-
zen death measure in any analysis seeking to explain spatial variation in deadly force
usage is likewise highly problematic.
Discussion
The problems that flow from using citizen deaths by police bullets to measure deadly
force almost certainly extend beyond the borders of our nations two largest cities.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
1994
Percent Fatal LA
Percent Fatal NY
2008 1974 1976 1978 2006 2004 2002 2000 1998 1996 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992
Figure 1. Percentage of persons struck by LAPD and NYPD gunfire who died, 1974 to 2008
(LAPD average 41.8%, NYPD average 31.4%)
Klinger 89
This is so because the proportion of citizens shot who suffer fatal injuries from police
bullets in jurisdictions besides New York and Los Angeles almost certainly varies
substantially from one year to the next, as well as over longer periods of time (e.g.,
the last 35 years). Moreover, it would be dubious to assume that Los Angeles has the
highest and New York the lowest police shooting kill ratios in the United States.
Indeed, data from earlier decades found substantial variability in death rates within
given agencies over time and identified agencies with kill ratios both lower than New
York and higher than Los Angeles (Geller & Scott, 1992).
11
Thus, even if we did have sound counts of the number of citizens killed by police
bullets in each U.S. law enforcement jurisdiction, comparative analyses using such
data would run the risk of yielding results that are not reflective of the true relation-
ships between police gunfire and other factors of interest (e.g., community violence,
poverty levels, racial/ethnic composition, and so on). That is, when examining poten-
tial community-level predictors, we might well be misled into believing that some
specific factor(s) are not associated with police shootings when analyses using the
more comprehensive measure of all persons struck by police gunfire would indicate
that they are. Conversely, it is also possible that the opposite would hold; that is, it
could well be that some posited predictors would be significantly correlated with citi-
zen deaths from police gunfire, while these factors would not be significantly associ-
ated with a measure of deadly force that includes all citizens struck by police bullets.
Finally, it is also possible that any measured significant associations that are reflective
of actual associations in the underlying relationships are stronger or weaker than those
that actually obtain. In sum, the patterns evident in the New York and Los Angeles data
presented above strongly suggest that even if sound counts of the number of citizens
killed by police bullets were widely available, the results of any research that used
such data to establish the determinants of variation in deadly force usage would be
highly suspect.
12
The analysis of the Los Angeles and New York data does not shed any direct empir-
ical light on whether James Fyfes (1978) contention about how to properly conceptu-
alize and measure police shootings matters in the realms of comparative analysis and
analyses seeking to identify the determinants of deadly force usage. Recall that he
asserted that misses, woundings, and fatal injuries from police bullets are merely dif-
ferent outcomes of the same police decision to pull the trigger and that, therefore,
deadly force in police work should be thought of and measured in terms of incidents
in which officers discharged firearms, not whether police bullets wound or kill anyone.
While the information needed to directly assess the empirical importance of Fyfes
assertion using the Los Angeles and New York data sets (i.e., counts of shootings in
which no citizens were hit over the 35 years in question) is not available, consideration
of the available data in light of some other information indicates that Fyfes contention
is indeed important.
Research from earlier decades found substantial variability both over time and
across agencies in the portion of incidents in which police officers discharge their
weapons that any police bullets strike citizens. Geller and Scott (1992) report, for
example, that LAPD shooting hit rates dropped from 56% for the years 1974 to 1979
to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and that hit rates among big cities in 1991 varied from a low
of 25% (Memphis) to a high of 100% (San Antonio and San Francisco). Given the
notable differences in the portion of citizens struck by police bullets who died in New York
and Los Angelesboth across time within each jurisdiction and between the two locales
over the entire time seriesthere is every reason to believe that a measure of total shoot-
ings would likewise vary notably from one that simply counts dead citizens. Unless and
until evidence comes to light showing that the numbers reported by Geller and Scott
were incorrect, the patterns they reported, coupled with the findings from New York
and Los Angeles, provide strong evidence that using citizen deaths by police bullets to
measure police gunfire is indeed suboptimal for conducting analyses that seek to track
changes in shooting patterns over time, to compare shooting rates across jurisdictions,
or to assess the correlates of deadly force usage.
In a similar vein, the scrutiny of the three official counts of citizen deaths at the
hands of the police shows that none are sound indicators of what they seek to measure.
Quite simply, what the various analyses presented herein showed about the liabilities of
the numbers kept by the National Vital Statistics System, the FBIs Supplementary
Homicide Report system, and the BJSs Death in Custody Reporting Program demon-
strates that none of these sources provide valid data on police-caused deaths. Particularly
telling in this regard was what the numbers from the LAPD and LASD showed about
the scope of error in SHR death counts; the official measure used most often in crimi-
nological research that addresses deaths at the hands of the police (e.g., Jacobs &
OBrien, 1998; Smith, 2003, 2004; Sorensen et al., 1993). It is worth noting that research
of this ilk typically aggregates SHR death counts for several years (e.g., Jacobs &
OBrien used the 7-year period 1980-1986). In this regard, the LAPD and LASD data
show that aggregation does not solve the measurement error problem; no matter what
7-year period one might use from 1996 to 2008, discrepancies between agency and
SHR counts always abound.
In sum, independent of the matter of how to properly measure police firearms
usage, evidence presented in this article demonstrates that what previous research
(e.g., Fyfe, 2002; Loftin et al., 2003; Sherman & Langworthy, 1979) disclosed about
liabilities in official counts of citizens killed by police action in the 1970s, 1980s,
and 1990s holds true in the 21st century. That is, NVSS and SHR numbers remain
grossly inaccurate and those in the new DCRP are no better.
With it clearly established that all three official counts of police-caused deaths
contain substantial errors and that counting police deadly force usage by citizen deaths
is highly problematic, Where should we go from here? The first thing we should do
is recognize that the findings of research using NVSS, SHR, or DCRP data to measure
fatal police violence are of dubious validity. Academics continue to uncritically cite
studies that have used NVSS and SHR data as evidence of research that has estab-
lished the determinants of police behavior.
13
This should stop. It is simply not sound
practice to favorably cite studies that are rooted in data that have been repeatedly
demonstrated to be deeply flawed. Instead, those who wish to cite such studies should
Klinger 91
note the limitations inherent in the work so that readers are aware of them. Second,
researchers should no longer blindly use NVSS or SHR data as indicators of deadly
police action in any sort of work that seeks to explain variation in violent police behav-
ior, account for the effects of such behavior on some other factor(s),
14
or otherwise
presuppose the validity of these measures. It is simply not sound practice to continue
to conduct analyses with data that is known to be deeply flawed without carefully
examining the weaknesses of the measures, considering the implications of the weak-
nesses, and alerting readers to both the weaknesses and their implications. Third,
researchers should steer clear of the extant DCRP Arrest Related Deaths data. Due to
the overwhelming evidence that counts of police-caused deaths in the DCRP are
wildly inaccurate, it would be a mistake to start down any sort of inquisitorial path
with DCRP figures as ones indicator of lethal police action.
Conclusion
The foregoing is not intended as a call to stop conducting research on deadly police
action and the use of deadly force by police officers. For, as the NRC report noted at
the outset of this article stated, the use of deadly force by the police is a critical issue.
Rather, the preceding critique is offered in the hope that the field might work to
develop better nationwide measures of both deaths at the hands of the police and of
police firearms usage.
One possible place to start such work might be to expand the scope of the DCRP to
capture detailed information about all citizen deaths related to police action in the
United States. The Arrest-Related Deaths component of the DCRP is intended to do
this, and BJS is currently seeking to expand the resources devoted to this component
of the DCRP to improve its scope and reach (BJS, 2010). This will likely be no simple
matter, however, if the challenges that the DCRP program has faced thus far are any
indicator. One of the reasons the aforementioned differences between SHR and DCRP
police-caused death counts exist, for example, is that some states did not participate in
the DCRP. Unless all states participate, future DRCP counts willby definitionbe
lacking so far as having true national scope. Another challenge facing the DCRP is that
participating states have based the numbers reported to BJS on different data sources;
some, for example, used police agency counts and others used information from medi-
cal examiner or coroner offices. Ensuring that death counts from different sorts of
public bureaucracies (with different orientations to the subject at hand) are valid and
reliable will likely take a good deal of effort. In sum, expanding the DCRP to the point
where it will yield sound data on police violence has multiple hurdles to overcome.
One important issue that could be addressed should BJS succeed in its efforts to
develop detailed information about all citizen deaths related to encounters with the police
is the nature of police involvement when citizens are fatally injured. Because, as previ-
ously noted, citizens die in a variety of sorts of encounters with police officers in which
they are not shot (e.g., Ho et al., 2009), it would be helpful to know the sorts of circum-
stances in which citizens die so that we could begin to develop some sense of the
prevalence of various sorts of police-involved citizen death. It may be, for example, that
deaths from police actions that are not intended to seriously harm citizens occur more
frequently than we currently suspect, that certain sorts of putatively nonlethal police
actions are more likely to be involved in deaths than others (e.g., Tasings vs. baton
strikes), and that different sorts of deaths are related to different exogenous factors. With
better data, we might be able to get sound empirical handles on issues such as these.
An improved DCRP might also be able to provide detailed information about those
arrest-related deaths that are caused by police bullets throughout our nation. As pres-
ently structured, the Arrest-Related Deaths component of the DCRP seeks minimal
information about any weapons that police officers might have used in an incident
that led to a citizens death, and asks only whether a Handgun or a Rifle/shotgun
caused the death. A more robust DCRP data collection effort could seek a great deal
more information about things such as the number of officers who fired their weapons,
the number of rounds each officer discharged, the number of rounds that struck the
deceased, the caliber of the rounds, and so on. Such information would permit research-
ers to develop insights into a variety of questions about the nature of incidents in
which police bullets kill citizens across the nation.
Once a more detailed and refined data collection process of this sort is up and run-
ning, the DCRP could be expanded to include data collection on incidents in which
officers shot citizens, but none died. While this would require a program modification
so that police shootings are handled via a separate data collection stream with a differ-
ent instrument, transitioning the data collection system to include nonfatal gunshot
wounds suffered by citizens could well be a straightforward process. It would require
only that law enforcement agencies (a) provide information on all incidents in which
police bullets strike citizens and (b) specify whether the citizen(s) shot died from their
wounds or survived. With detailed information on all incidents in which officers shot
citizens, researchers could examine a plethora of questions about what might account
for whether citizen shot by the police die or survive. It may be, for example, that citi-
zens who are shot with particular sorts of police weapons tend to have differential
mortality rates (e.g., rifles vs. handguns, different handgun calibers, etc.), that there is
a strong correlation between the number of gunshot wounds suffered and the likeli-
hood of death, that citizens shot in communities with better medical care are more
likely to survive, and so on. Research in this tradition concerning citizen-on-citizen
gun assaults has proven to be valuable for understanding the dynamics and outcomes
of these criminal attacks (e.g., Braga, 2003). Similar research with data on police
shootings might just yield similarly important information concerning the shooting of
citizens by police officers. For example, such information might shed light on one
question implicit in the above-reported data on differential kill ratios across police
agencies. Where the differences between NYPD and LAPD ratios go, for example, it
could be that officers in Los Angeles tend to fire more bullets per shooting incident,
they tend to more often use shoulder weapons versus hand guns, and so on.
15
Whatever
the case, fine-grained police shooting information might well be able to shed light on
important questions such as this.
Klinger 93
And a robust program that tracks detailed information about incidents in which citi-
zens are shot by police officers could set the stage for the development of a system to
collect data on all police shootings. Once police agencies throughout the United States
become accustomed to providing detailed information on incidents in which their offi-
cers shoot citizens, it would be relatively easy for them to also report on shootings in
which no police bullets struck anyone. With detailed information about all incidents
across the country, researchers could then seek to identify factors that differentiate
between misses, hits, and fatalities. Again, it may be, for example, that matters such as
the types of weapons officers fire and the number of rounds they discharge are associ-
ated with variability in whether police bullets miss, hit, or kill citizens.
Moreover, a program to comprehensively measure all incidents in which police
officers in the United States discharged their weapons at citizens would yield the gold
standard indicator of deadly force that Fyfe (1978) identified over three decades ago.
16

With such a measure in hand, researchers could conduct sound studies of police deadly
force usage that track trends over time, catalogue differences across various spatial
aggregates (cities, states, regions, etc.), and seek to identify the determinants of vari-
ability in deadly force usage across space and over time. Information of this sort would
go a long way toward developing sound understanding of the exercise of deadly force
by police officers in the United States. Until the measures that would permit such
analyses are available, however, researchers should keep in mind that the indicators
that have been used to measure deadly force in the past contain substantial flaws and
act accordingly. And this same admonition applies concerning police-involved citizen
deaths not caused by gunfire. Because presently available national data that may have
some relevancy to such deaths is riddled with error, researchers should proceed with
extreme caution until sound counts of citizen death from interactions with the police
become available.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Janet Lauritsen, Rick Rosenfeld, Lee Slocum, and anonymous reviewers for
their comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Notes
1. These studies do not always clearly state precisely what they seek to study when they write
of deadly or lethal force. Some just use general terms (e.g., deadly force; Jacobs &
OBrien, 1998) while others note they are studying police gunfire (Sorenson et al., 1993).
2. Loftin et al. (2003) explain that this is because the more populous states tended to have
higher SHR counts, which swamped the discrepancies in the other direction among the
smaller states that had higher NVSS counts.
3. The FBI had already posted SHR numbers for 2008 at the time this article was written, but
neither the CDC nor the BJS had yet to post the numbers for 2007.
4. This information was graciously supplied to me by Christopher Mumola of the BJS DCRP
program in personal communications during October of 2009.
5. The SHR figures come from records kept by the California Department of Justice, which
then passes them along to the FBIs UCR program.
6. Perhaps this explains why the SHR death count for the LAPD in 2007 is one higher than
the internal numbers on fatalities from LAPD gunfire.
7. The NYPD data come from records kept by the late Deputy Commissioner James Fyfe, and
updated by others in the NYPD since he died in November of 2005. Where LAPD num-
bers are concerned, data for 1974 to 1979 come from the Board of Police Commissioners
(1980), data for 1980 to 1990 from Geller and Scott (1992), data for 1991 and 1992 from
Chevigny (1997), and data for 1993 to 2008 from the LAPD Use of Force Section.
8. Research indicates that most citizens shot by other citizens in the United States likewise
survive their wounds (see, for example, Braga, 2003; Cook, 1985).
9. While the raw numbers of citizens killed and wounded by NYPD gunfire are greater than
the numbers for the LAPD for the 35-year period in question, New York has substantially
larger numbers of police officers and citizens, which means that shooting rates normed for
officers and city population are greater in Los Angeles. For example, the average popula-
tion in New York City was a bit more than twice that of Los Angeles for the 35 years in
question (roughly 7,500,000 vs. 3,500,000). Norming the shooting rates for population
based on citizens killed puts the LAPD at a rate of 1.87 for every citizen killed by NYPD
gunfire. Norming shooting rates based on citizens hit by police gunfire puts the LAPD at a
rate of 1.41 for every citizen shot by NYPD officers.
10. If the fatality rate in a city was constant from year to year, then using deaths would not
present a problem because the changes over time would likewise be constant.
11. On pages 97 to 99 Geller and Scott report substantial variability in short-term death rates
among citizens shot by police officers across larger police agencies during various years in
the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s: the low was 18% (Philadelphia 1975-1978 and Baltimore
1991), the high 88% (Milwaukee 1991).
12. This does not mean that counting deaths from police gunfire is never of any utility. For
some proposes (e.g., determining which police actions contribute what portion of the total
number of citizen deaths at the hands of the police) knowledge of fatal police gunshot
counts is essential. Whatever the case regarding the utility of counting citizen fatalities
from police gunfire for other purposes, the point remains that citizen deaths from police
gunfire is not a sound measure of police deadly force usage.
13. Jacobs and Britt (1979) and Jacobs and OBrien (1998) alone were cited in dozens of other
works in the past decade, many of which appeared in leading social science journals.
14. See, for example, Kents (2010) use of SHR data to account for the effects of police vio-
lence against citizens in a study of citizen violence against the police. To her credit, she
Klinger 95
did note that the SHR has limitations and briefly addressed possible consequences of the
limitations for her analysis.
15. Among other factors to consider would be differences in agency shooting policies (which
can vary substantially on matters such as shooting to stop the flight of individuals suspected
of having committed a violent crime) and firearms qualification procedures although the
work of Morrison and Vila (1998) suggests that qualification might have but a marginal
effect (see especially page 513).
16. Lest anyone think Fyfes notion is that of a lone researcher, it is worth noting that the
National Research Councils Committee to Review Research on Police Policy and Prac-
tices called for legislation requiring police agencies to file annual reports to the public on
the number of persons shot at, wounded, and killed by police officers (Skogan & Frydl,
2004, p. 262).
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Bio
David A. Klinger is associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University
of MissouriSt. Louis. His research interests include the ecology of social control, the use of
force by police officers, and risk management in crisis situations. Prior to pursuing an academic
career, he served as a street cop with the Los Angeles and Redmond, Washington, police
departments.

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