Today, I spent time reviewing the new dataset, This data is about the Washington Post started tracking police-involved killings in the US by gathering information from various sources such as news reports, law enforcement websites, social media, and databases like Fatal Encounters and Killed by Police. They made sure to keep track of key details such as the race of the person killed, the circumstances surrounding the shooting, whether the person was armed, and whether they were experiencing a mental health crisis. In 2022, they have improved its database by adding the names of the police departments involved in each shooting, aiming to assess accountability at the department level. The death of Michael Brown in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked the Black Lives Matter movement and increased attention to police accountability. The Post’s database specifically focuses on cases in which a police officer, while on duty, shoots and kills a civilian. The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also track fatal police shootings, but their data is incomplete. Since 2015, The Post has documented more than double the amount of fatal police shootings annually, compared to federal records. This disparity has grown, with the FBI tracking only a third of departments’ fatal shootings in 2021.

The post aims to create comprehensive records and update its database regularly with information on fatal shootings and individual cases.