Police use of deadly force in the United States
Updated: 5/20/2026, 7:10:37 PM Wikipedia source
In the United States, use of deadly force by police has been a high-profile and contentious issue. In 2022, 1,096 people were killed by police shootings according to The Washington Post, while according to the "Mapping Police Violence" (MPV) project, 1,176 people were killed by police in total. MPV documented 1,213 killings by police for 2023. A lack of reliable data has made conclusions about race and policing difficult. Several non-government and crowdsourcing projects have been started to address this lack of reliable data. Research has provided mixed results on the extent of racial bias in the police use of deadly force, with some studies finding no racial bias, while other studies conclude there is racial bias in the use of deadly force. A study by Esposito, Lee, Edwards estimated that 1 in 2,000 men and 1 in 33,000 women have a lifetime risk of dying as a result of police use of deadly force, with the highest risk for black men, at approximately 1 in 1,000. Black, Hispanic, and Native American/Alaskan individuals are disproportionately killed in police shootings compared to White or Asian individuals.
Tables
| White | Black | Asian | Indigenous | |
| Population | 255,040,203 | 46,599,393 | 21,814,724 | 4,785,203 |
| % of total | 77 % | 14 % | 6 % | 1 % |
| All firearm deaths | 28,041 | 10,555 | 679 | 432 |
| % of total | 70 % | 26 % | 1 % | 1 % |
| Fatally shot by police | 355 | 122 | 23 | 20 |
| % of total | 68 % | 23 % | 4 % | 3 % |