Police officers fire more shots than civilians in homicides, research shows

An analysis using data from the US National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) has found that in homicides with police shooters, victims have been shot far more times than in homicides with civilians as shooters. The new study, appearing in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, showed that individuals aged 25 to 44, Black people, and those living outside the Northeast region of the US tend to be disproportionately killed by police as well as sustain a higher number of bullet wounds.

Lead investigator Vageesh Jain, MBBS, MPH, FFPH, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says, “The US has a far higher homicide rate of both police killing and police getting killed compared to other high-income countries. Although many articles have been published on this topic, much of the basic descriptive epidemiology is still unknown.

“There is anecdotal evidence that police appear intent on killing those trying to resist arrest. We wanted to make the most of existing data by looking at the number of gunshot wounds—rather than just whether someone was shot—as a way of measuring lethality among police shootings.”

The researchers used data available from the NVDRS for 2005–2020 to analyze rates of police homicide and number of gunshot wounds among police homicides, across populations in 45 states and the District of Columbia (data were not available for California, Florida, Hawaii, South Dakota, and Texas, as they did not fully participate in NVDRS). About 6% of US firearm victims were shot by police. About 80% of police victims were shot multiple times, with a mean of six bullet wounds and a median of four bullet wounds.

By contrast, about two-thirds of homicide victims shot by civilians were shot multiple times, with a mean of four bullet wounds and a median of two bullet wounds.

Key findings of the study are:

• The overall rate of firearm homicide by police was 2.51 per million.
• Across age groups, the rates were highest for 25–34-year-olds (5.89 per million) and lowest for 55+ (1.03).
• By gender, the rate was 26 times higher for males compared to females (4.91 vs. 0.19).
• Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native individuals had more than twice the rate of firearm homicides than white individuals.
• Residents of the West were four times more likely than those of the Northeast to be victims of police firearm homicide (4.65 vs. 1.15).
• Most victims used a weapon during the incident (76%), although the proportion of weapon use was significantly lower among Black victims relative to white (69.3% vs. 78%).
• The variation in the number of gunshot wounds per victim across these groups was far less than the variation in rates of death.
• After accounting for weapon use, which could affect the number of gunshot wounds, victims aged 35–44 had significantly more gunshot wounds than those aged 15–24 (6.41 vs. 5.73), Hispanic individuals had significantly more gunshot wounds than white individuals (6.61 vs. 5.68 respectively), and victims in the Northeast had significantly fewer gunshot wounds than victims in any other region (4.68 vs. 5.69–6.55).

Co-author David Hemenway, Ph.D., Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says, “Our study shows that the number of bullet wounds in victims shot and killed by police is much higher than the number of bullet wounds when the victim is shot and killed by other civilians. Our findings suggest that rates of gun-related crime as well as police practice on firearms differ greatly across regions, underscoring the complex interplay of factors involved in police killings.”

Dr. Jain notes, “Fatal police violence is an urgent public health crisis in the United States. Law enforcement kills more than 1,000 civilians each year, the highest rate of any developed nation. Over half of these approximately 1,000 annual victims of police shootings have more than four gunshot wounds, indicating that generally far more than four shots were fired. The number of gunshot wounds is one of five factors that affect the lethality of a shooting. Studies generally find that getting shot multiple times is more lethal than getting shot once.”

Individual incidents such as the shooting of Jacob Blake in 2020, who was unarmed and shot in the back seven times by the police, raise questions about whether the number of shots officers fired was warranted, with resulting national protests over police brutality and systemic racism. Despite approximately 1,000 police firearm killings per year, from 2005 to 2019 only four police officers were convicted of murder and 18 convicted of manslaughter.

Dr. Jain concludes, “Efforts to address inequities in risk of police homicide must consider both the prevention and management of such incidents, to effectively build trust with the communities most affected. In the past decade, camera recordings of police killing civilians have led to much national concern, unrest and attempts at reform. While receiving an increasing amount of research and programmatic and policy attention, the number of US police homicides has remained level, with around 1,000 civilians killed annually.

“These findings provide some new descriptive data on one aspect of lethality in US policing. Further research is needed to understand whether the high number of shots fired by police is justified, why there is variation across populations, albeit limited, and what the implications of this are.”