Why Fatal Police Shootings Aren't Declining: Some Uncomfortable Facts

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Real Clear Investigations

When Dexter Reed died in a shootout with Chicago police on March 21, the incident was quickly grafted onto a narrative that began in 2014 after a policeman killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. – namely, that the U.S. faces an epidemic of violence by unbridled cops who do not believe black lives matter. “Killing of Dexter Reed raises questions about Chicago police reform. ‘The message is, go in guns blazing,’” blared a headline in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Reed’s death joins a long list of police shootings that have received wide media coverage and political scrutiny – especially those involving African Americans. Over the years, many police departments embraced reforms, including the use of bodycams, to document incidents – an effort bolstered by a public eager to use smartphones to record the behavior of cops. In 2015, the Washington Post created a database logging every person shot dead by police in the U.S.

 

The belief was that this attention would make all law enforcement officers, especially the bad ones, think twice before pulling the trigger, and significantly reduce the number of shootings – which stood at 994 the year Brown was shot.

Instead, there have been steady, incremental increases. “Police killed the highest number of people on record in 2023,” the Post reported as the number of deadly police-involved shootings hit 1,162 last year.

But if neither a glaring spotlight nor reform gestures to date have moved the needle much in terms of reducing fatal police shootings, perhaps something else explains law enforcement lethality and public alarm about it.

 

An illustration of the kind of fatal police shooting that gets much of the public's attention.

Chicago Sun-Times

 

Numerous professional criminologists told RealClearInvestigations that the problem isn’t racist or trigger-happy police officers. Instead, a handful of intertwined factors are at work: the almost immutable math of crime and demographics; media sensationalism; distorted public perceptions about race and guns; and the inability of inertia-bound police departments to adapt in ways to make a difference.

-- First, the math. “The number of improper, bad shootings is very small,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor in the criminal justice department of the University of South Carolina. “The vast majority are not questionable.”