A police officer raises his weapon at a car speeding in his general direction as a more vocal and confrontational group of demonstrators stands on the sidewalk during further protests in reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown near Ferguson, Missouri August 18, 2014. Police fired tear gas and stun grenades at protesters in Ferguson, Missouri on Monday, after days of unrest sparked by the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
The Gawker blog Deadspin is asking for reader help gathering data on officer-involved shootings in America.
Kyle Wagner writes:
The United States has no database of police shootings. There is no standardized process by which officers log when they’ve discharged their weapons and why. There is no central infrastructure for handling that information and making it public. Researchers, confronted with the reality that there are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, aren’t even sure how you’d go about setting one up. No one is keeping track of how many American citizens are shot by their police. This is crazy. This is governmental malpractice on a national scale. We’d like your help in changing this.
Jim Fisher compiled a comprehensive set of data on police shootings in 2011, and his project appears to be an inspiration for this Deadspin effort.