The number of people killed by police officers rose slightly in 2024, marking the smallest increase recorded in years, says a report by Mapping Police Violence.
​​Police killed more than 1,300 people in the U.S. last year, an estimated 0.3% increase in police killings per million people. The increase makes 2024 the deadliest year for police violence by a slim margin since Mapping Police Violence began tracking civilian deaths more than a decade ago.
There is no national database that documents police killings in the U.S. The report comes after the Justice Department removed a database tracking misconduct by federal law enforcement. Researchers spent thousands of hours analyzing 100,000 media reports to compile the Mapping Police Violence database.
"This rise in police violence, even as homicides and violent crime decline nationwide, is a deeply troubling trend that demands data-backed solutions," said Campaign Zero, which runs the project, reports USA Today.
Police killed at least 1,365 people in 2024. That number has been steadily rising since 2019, when 1,113 people were killed by police.
Some estimates put the total higher. The Gun Violence Archive found at least 1,445 suspects were killed and 806 were injured in police shootings in 2024.
Abdul Nassar Rad of Campaign Zero said more analysis needs to be done to determine the impact demographic changes, immigration and new policing policies may have had on rates of police violence.
Nearly 65% of the killings occurred after a 911 call, like the death of Sonya Massey, a Black woman who was fatally shot by an Illinois deputy after she called 911 to report an intruder.
The southwest U.S. continued to be a hotspot for police violence. New Mexico and Corpus Christi, Tex.,
were the state and city with the highest per capita rate of police killings, with Corpus Christi seeing a 288% increase from its average from the 11 years prior, Mapping Police Violence found.