Fatal police shootings are still going up, and nobody knows why

2/21/23
 
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from The Washington Post,
2/21/23:

The number of fatal police shootings across the country rose again last year, with officers killing 1,096 people, including a 2-year-old girl caught in a standoff.

Last year saw the most incidents since The Washington Post started tracking the deaths in its Fatal Force database in 2015, after a police officer killed Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager in Ferguson, Mo.

There were only 15 days without such a shooting in 2022.

Since 2017, the number has increased every year, and is now up about 10 percent compared with just three years ago. But criminologists caution that more data is needed to understand what is driving the rise.

“It’s hard to know if the increase is meaningful or random,” said Justin Nix, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “We really need a better understanding of when police shoot and injure people, but more so when police avoid shooting someone.”

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