It's a heavy question. Honestly, the answer depends entirely on who you ask and which database you trust. For a long time, the federal government didn't even have a clear answer. They just didn't track it.
You'd think the FBI would have a master list, right? Wrong. For decades, the "official" numbers were based on voluntary reporting. If a local department didn't feel like sharing their data on "justifiable homicides," they just didn't. This led to a massive gap between what was happening on the street and what was written in Washington.
How many people are killed by cops every year?
Basically, the number has been climbing. In 2024, the United States hit a grim milestone. According to data from Mapping Police Violence, law enforcement killed at least 1,365 people that year.
That’s the highest number on record since researchers started seriously tracking this stuff back in 2013. To put that in perspective, it's roughly one person killed every 6.4 hours. There were only 10 days in the entire year of 2024 where a police killing didn't occur.
2025 didn't see a massive drop either. Preliminary data indicates at least 1,182 people were killed by police last year. While that looks like a slight dip from the 2024 peak, it’s still significantly higher than the averages we saw a decade ago. It seems like the "new normal" is somewhere between 1,100 and 1,300 deaths annually.
The data gap is real
The Washington Post used to be the gold standard for this. Their Fatal Force database won a Pulitzer because they did the work the government wouldn't. They logged every fatal shooting by an on-duty officer. But on January 1, 2025, they quietly stopped updating it.
This leaves a bit of a void. Now, we rely heavily on non-profits like Campaign Zero and independent researchers like Ian T. Adams. These groups use media reports, social media, and public records to piece together the truth.
It's messy work.
Breaking down the 2024 and 2025 numbers
Most people assume these killings happen during high-stakes shootouts. You know, like a movie. But the reality is way more mundane. And honestly? More tragic.
In 2024, roughly 114 people were killed after being stopped for a simple traffic violation. Think about that. A broken taillight or a failure to signal ending in a fatality. Another 118 people were killed during mental health crises or "welfare checks."
We also see huge variations by state. In 2024:
- New Mexico had the highest per capita rate (13.7 per million people).
- Alaska saw a massive spike in 2025, becoming one of the deadliest states per population.
- Rhode Island actually reported zero police killings in 2024.
- Massachusetts remains one of the lowest, with only 0.3 killings per million.
It’s a bit of a lottery depending on where you live. Some cities, like Stockton, CA, managed to drop their numbers to zero in 2024 after years of high violence. Others, like Corpus Christi, TX, saw their rates triple.
Who is being killed?
The demographics haven't changed much, which is the part that fuels most of the protests. Black people are still killed at much higher rates. In 2024, Black Americans were 2.9 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans.
But here is a stat that often gets missed: Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders faced the highest disparity in 2024, being 7.6 times more likely to be killed than white people. American Indians and Alaska Natives weren't far behind at 3.1 times.
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About 95% of these deaths are from shootings. The rest? Tasers, physical force, or police vehicles. In 2025, there was even a weird uptick in police using drones or robots during standoffs—24 people were killed in incidents where those tools were deployed.
What happens to the officers?
If you're looking for "accountability" in the legal sense, the numbers are microscopic.
In 2024, out of 1,365 killings, only 7 cases resulted in an officer being charged with a crime. That is less than 1%. In 2025, it was 8 cases.
Historically, fewer than 3% of killings result in charges. Convictions? Even rarer. Interestingly, a report from the Police Violence Report noted that Black prosecutors—specifically Black women—are disproportionately the ones bringing these charges. They represent only 1% of elected prosecutors but handle a huge chunk of the cases where officers are actually held to account.
Why the numbers aren't going down
Violent crime across the U.S. has actually been dropping in many areas. So why are police killings hitting record highs?
Some experts point to "pretextual stops." This is when an officer uses a minor infraction (like an air freshener hanging from a mirror) to investigate something else. California tried to ban this with Assembly Bill 2773. Meanwhile, Tennessee went the other way, passing a law in 2024 that prevents cities from restricting traffic enforcement.
Then there’s the "repeat offender" problem within departments. In 2024, of the officers researchers could identify, at least 16 had shot or killed someone before.
It’s a cycle.
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Actionable steps for the curious or concerned
If you want to stay informed or take action, don't just wait for the evening news. The news usually only covers the "viral" cases.
- Check the Map: Use the Mapping Police Violence interactive tool. You can zoom in on your specific city or county to see the local track record.
- Monitor Local Policy: Look at whether your city has "Pretextual Stop" bans or "Mental Health Co-Responder" programs. These two policies have shown the most promise in actually lowering the death toll.
- Support Transparency Laws: At least 25 states now have use-of-force reporting requirements, but many (like New York) have major departments like the NYPD that still fail to report full data to the state. Push for mandatory, public-facing databases.
- Understand the "Unarmed" Nuance: About 80-90 people killed each year are confirmed unarmed. However, many more are killed while holding "non-firearms" like pocket knives or even cell phones that were mistaken for weapons. Reading the full incident reports on databases like Fatal Encounters provides the context that raw numbers often hide.
The reality of how many people are killed by cops every year is that the system is better at generating bodies than it is at generating data. Until the federal government mandates reporting from all 18,000+ agencies, we’ll be stuck relying on the hard work of activists and independent journalists to tell us who lived and who died.