Sunday, December 19, 1999
No one knows national figures on police shootings
BY PERRY BROTHERS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Despite the protests and controversy they provoke, there is no comprehensive data on police shootings across the country.
“It's a scandal,” said Samuel Walker, a criminal justice professor at University of Nebraska. “The point is that there is no data on this ...
“The FBI and the Justice Department should be collecting this so that people like you and me know what's going on. They collect data on homicides and crime, but they ignore the other side of the equation.”
Researchers agree that city-to-city comparisons measuring the use of deadly force offer only a glimpse of the whole picture and the numbers — even in the largest cities — often are small compared to the number of times police come in contact with civilians.
But collecting the information is important, experts say, because it could pinpoint cities with deadly force problems just as crime data pinpoints cities with high homicide rates or heroin problems.
The lack of reliable data frustrates William A. Geller, who co-authored the last comprehensive national study of use of deadly force published by the Police Executive Research Forum in 1992. The federal government should be keeping a closer eye on police use of deadly force, he said.
“I get about 10 calls a week looking for updated (police shooting) information,” Mr. Geller said.
The only standardized national database on police shootings is the FBI's Uniform Crime Statistics Justifiable Homicide table. The statistics are based on voluntary reporting by police departments and do not include police shootings ruled unjustified — or “bad shoots.”
In 1997, the latest figures available, 353 justifiable homicides were reported by agencies. An FBI report for the number of justifiable homicides in Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland for 1997 listed only three, all in Cleveland.
The report missed one of Cincinnati's most controversial police 9shootings — Lorenzo Collins. Columbus also had a fatal police shooting that year. Both were ruled justified.
The Justice Department promised this year to follow through on a 1994 Congressional mandate requiring the FBI to collect data on police shootings, but no formal start date has been announced.
Deadly force, weak controls
Shots fired: The cases
A mistaken shot in the dark
Toughest decision takes a split-second
No one knows national figures on police shootings
About this series
Agencies with review power
Experts who reviewed shootings
