Controversy over the government’s lack of official data on killings by police was set off by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. The death of Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, led to protests and riots in the town and across the US.
The FBI’s annual count of homicides by police, which depends on chiefs voluntarily submitting their numbers, was discredited after it became clear that the method was recording less than half of all killings nationwide. [...]
The Death in Custody Reporting Act, which was reauthorized by Congress in 2014, requires states receiving federal funding for law enforcement to report all killings by police officers on a quarterly basis. Many states have, however, continued to ignore the law without being penalized. [...]
If the rate of homicides recorded by the justice department was consistent, a total of 1,080 would have been logged for all of 2015. The Guardian’s count, which uses slightly different criteria, ended at 1,146 last year. So far in 2016, it has recorded 1,025 deaths.
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