Police Killings Undercounted By More Than 50 Percent: Study

WASHINGTON, DC — A new study released this week by researchers at the University of Washington found more than half of police killings over the last four decades have been mislabeled, which researchers assert has led to a massive undercount of deaths.

The peer-reviewed study, published in The Lancet medical journal, found that from 1980 to 2019, more than 55 percent of 31,000 deaths attributed to police violence were assigned other causes in official federal databases.

The nation turned a more critical eye on police violence following the high-profile death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Bystander video showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck and back for more than nine minutes.

Chauvin was guilty of murder and manslaughter in April.

To conduct the study, researchers analyzed data from the National Vital Statistics System, which tracks births and deaths, and compared it to three databases that track police violence: Fatal Encounters, a blog and independent database operated by journalist D. Brian Burghart; Mapping Police Violence, an independent database maintained by data scientist and policy analyst Samuel Sinyangwe; and The Guardian’s The Counted.

The top five states with the highest under-reporting rates between 1980 and 2019 were Oklahoma, with an estimated 83·.7 percent of deaths misclassified, followed by Wyoming, Alabama, Louisiana, and Nebraska.

Researchers also found substantial differences in the number of reported deaths among different racial and ethnic groups.

Black men were killed by police at higher rates — about 3.5 times more than white men, the researchers concluded. Their deaths were also mislabeled more than any other race, according to the study, which also found about one in every thousand Black men in the United States is killed by police.

Researchers also found Latinos and Native Americans faced higher rates of fatal violence at the hands of law enforcement.

Study authors concluded that "the USA must replace militarised policing with evidenced-based support for communities, prioritize the safety of the public, and value Black lives."