Violence by Americans Is Down, Unless Those Americans Happen to Be Police Officers

Earlier in the week, Jesse
Walker
noted that the latest crime numbers from the FBI show both
violent and non-violent crimes declined for 2013, continuing an
overall trend briefly interrupted by a small uptick in 2012.

But as part of that report, the FBI also analyzed fatal police
shootings that are ruled justifiable. Based on those numbers, you’d
think we were all living in Detroit. Americans are often mistaken
in their beliefs that crime is on the rise. But for anybody
noticing all the reports about police shooting and killing citizens
and thinking this is happening more frequently: You are correct.
According to the FBI, police have reached a two-decade high in
fatally shooting suspects. Law enforcement officers killed 461
people in 2013. It’s the third year in a row that fatal shootings
by police have increased.

Actually, a correction: We are seeing an increase in the number
of killings by police reported to the FBI. The numbers are
both self-reported and incomplete. We don’t necessarily have a
true, accurate count of how many people have died at the hands of
police when those deaths aren’t counted as crimes.
From USA Today:

Criminal justice analysts said the inherent limitations of the
database — the killings are self-reported by law enforcement, and
not all police agencies participate in the annual counts — continue
to frustrate efforts to identify the universe of lethal force
incidents involving police.

University of Nebraska criminologist Samuel Walker said the
incomplete nature of the data renders the recent spike in such
deaths even more difficult to explain.

“It could be as simple as more departments are reporting,”
Walker said.

The Nebraska criminologist has been among the most vocal
advocates calling for an all-inclusive national database to closely
track deadly force incidents involving police.

“It is irresponsible that we don’t have a complete set of
numbers,” Walker said. “Whether the numbers are up, down or
stable, this (national database) needs to be done. … This is a
scandal.”

A criminologist with the University of South Carolina thinks the
actual numbers are higher. He thinks there needs to be a federal
mandate for law enforcement agencies to report killings and tie
cooperation to eligibility for federal funds. Would that actually
make a difference, though?