TBR News June 10, 2020

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. June 10, 2020: Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not
the place to discuss it.
Comment for June 10, 2020: “I am constantly entertained by the American media. Now we have a flood of doom and death reporting on corona virius and the next drama is police brutality. When will they expose Trump as a genuine mental case or the enormous, and growing, unemployment in the United States? Or given the acuity of the airheads in charge, fretting over the issue of fish in Lake Michigan.”

Trump Approval Rating
Jun. 2-5
Morning Consult Approve Disapprove
36%        59%

The Table of Contents

• The Story Behind Bill Barr’s Unmarked Federal Agents
• Protests spread over police shootings. Police promised reforms. Every year, they still shoot and kill nearly 1,000 people.
• Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States- 2011 Part 2

The Story Behind Bill Barr’s Unmarked Federal Agents
The motley assortment of police currently occupying Washington, D.C., is a window into the vast, complicated, obscure world of federal law enforcement.
June 5, 2020
by Garrett M. Graff
Politico
Few sights from the nation’s protests in recent days have seemed more dystopian than the appearance of rows of heavily-armed riot police around Washington in drab military-style uniforms with no insignia, identifying emblems or name badges. Many of the apparently federal agents have refused to identify which agency they work for. “Tell us who you are, identify yourselves!” protesters demanded, as they stared down the helmeted, sunglass-wearing mostly white men outside the White House. Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.
The images of such military-style men in America’s capital are disconcerting, in part, because absent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cosplaying as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied eastern Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.
To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Nearly all of these agencies are headquartered in and around the capital, making it easy for Attorney General William Barr to enlist them as part of his vast effort to “flood the zone” in D.C. this week with what amounts to a federal army of occupation, overseen from the FBI Washington area command post in Chinatown. Battalions of agents were mustered in the lobby of Customs and Border Protection’s D.C. headquarters—what in normal times is the path to a food court for federal workers. The Drug Enforcement Administration has been given special powers to enable it to surveil protesters. It is the heaviest show of force in the nation’s capital since the protests and riots of the Vietnam War.
As large as the public show of force on D.C.’s streets has turned out to be—Bloomberg reported Thursday that the force includes nearly 3,000 law enforcement—it still represents only a tiny sliver of the government’s armed agents and officers. The government counts up its law enforcement personnel only every eight years, and all told, at last count in 2016, the federal government employed over 132,000 civilian law enforcement officers—only about half of which come from the major “brand name” agencies like the FBI, ATF, Secret Service, DEA and CBP. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which serves as the general academy for federal agencies who don’t have their own specialized training facilities, lists around 80 different agencies whose trainees pass through its doors in Georgia, from the IRS’ criminal investigators and the Transportation Security Administration’s air marshals to the Offices of the Inspector General for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Railroad Retirement Board. Don’t forget the armed federal officers at the Environmental Protection Agency or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement, whose 150 agents investigate conservation crime like the Tunas Convention Act of 1975 (16 USC § 971-971k) and the Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982 (16 USC § 773-773k).
In and around D.C., there are more than a score of agency-specific federal police forces, particularly downtown where protests have played out over the past week, nearly every block brings you in contact with a different police force. A morning run around the National Mall and Capitol Hill might see you cross through the jurisdictions of the federal U.S. Capitol Police, the Park Police, the National Gallery of Art police, the Smithsonian Office of Protective Services, the Postal police, Amtrak police, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing police, the Supreme Court police, the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, the Government Publishing Office police, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service. (Only recently did the Library of Congress police merge with the Capitol Police across the street into one unit.) Run a bit farther and you might encounter the FBI Police or the U.S. Mint police. And that’s not even counting the multistate Metro Transit police and the local D.C. Metropolitan Police.
The public has little understanding or appreciation for the size of some of these agencies, each of which has its own protocols, training, hiring guidelines and responsibilities. On the lighter side, few tourists know, for instance, that the National Gallery of Art—home to some of the world’s most famous artwork—has a shooting range for its police tucked away above its soaring central rotunda. On the darker side, the roughly 20,000 federal prison guards known formally as the Bureau of Prisons—whose riot units make up a sizable chunk of the officers imported to D.C. and who represent the single largest component of federal officers in the Justice Department—are concerning to see on the streets in part because they’re largely untrained in civilian law enforcement; they normally operate in a controlled environment behind bars with sharply limited civil liberties and use-of-force policies that would never fly in a civilian environment.
There are more gun-carrying agents employed across the federal government by inspectors general—the quasi-independent watchdogs responsible for rooting out fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars—than there are ATF agents nationwide; the roughly 4,000 inspector general agents nationwide, in fact, is roughly equivalent to the entire size of the DEA. The Department of Veterans Affairs’ police department, who guard the nation’s veteran hospitals, facilities and cemeteries, is larger than the entire U.S. Marshals Service.
Beyond those 132,000 federal civilian law enforcement, the U.S. has tens of thousands of military law enforcement officers, including military police units and investigators like the 2,000 agents of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the 1,200 agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service or the 900 agents of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Plus, the 40,000 armed personnel of the U.S. Coast Guard, which has broad law enforcement powers on the nation’s rivers, lakes and oceans, but is counted as part of the military.
Then there are the officers who can be spotted across Northern Virginia in white marked patrol vehicles labeled only as “United States Police,” the purposefully vague public name given to what is formally known as the CIA’s Security Protective Services, who provide security to the CIA and the Office of Director of National Intelligence. They carry weapons, but have limited law enforcement authority. (As one agent told me, only half-joking, “We can’t arrest you, but we can kill you.”)
The list of crimes these agents and officers collectively enforce is endless, so much that a tongue-in-cheek Twitter feed daily shares the most obscure federal criminal penalties. One of this week’s examples: “21 USC §331, 333, 343 & 21 CFR §150.160(b)(2) make it a federal crime to sell jam made from a combination of more than five fruits.” It’s hard to even say who might even be in charge of enforcing that one—perhaps the agents of the Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations? (You should check out its “Most Wanted” page, in case you happen to have seen Cellou Jumaine, wanted for importing 990,000 counterfeit tubes of Colgate toothpaste.)
The Justice Department can’t even come up with a reliable count of the number of federal crimes on the books to enforce; it’s somewhere north of 3,000 but federal law is so voluminous and convoluted that no one has really tried to count it since 1982. When I was writing a history of the FBI, the bureau couldn’t even tell me the total number of criminal provisions it was specifically responsible for enforcing.
Many federal agencies have broad law enforcement powers—and can end up enforcing laws that wouldn’t on the surface appear to have much to do with their stated raison d’etre. Fun fact: The vast majority of the total arrests made by the Pentagon police, formally known as the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, are for drunk driving. Roughly every two or three days, an intoxicated driver gets lost in the maze of interstate roads around the Defense Department headquarters and takes a wrong turn into one of its parking lots. Such incidents account for as many as four out of five arrests the PFPA make annually.
The rise of so many specialized federal forces—and so many federal law enforcement officers overall—is a relatively recent phenomenon; the FBI was unarmed until the mid-1930s and modern incarnations of the DEA and ATF, for example, were only founded in the 1970s, as part of President Richard Nixon’s law and order push. Historically, it’s not altogether surprising that many of the personnel on D.C.’s streets this week have come from the Border Patrol and the Bureau of Prisons, which have long served as the nation’s “surge” national police force.
What is surprising is that those two agencies now facing down Black Lives Matter and crowds protesting systemic racism historically have been enlisted by the federal government to protect blacks against white protesters. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, for instance, deputized officers from the Border Patrol and the Bureau of Prisons to work as U.S. marshals and secure the University of Mississippi in 1962 to protect James Meredith as he enrolled at the school after desegregation. Similarly, the Border Patrol once watched over the Freedom Riders in Alabama and Mississippi in the 1960s.
The biggest—and most troubling—shift in the makeup of federal law enforcement has come in the decades after 9/11, as the number of armed personnel has surged, law enforcement agencies have proliferated and oversight reins have loosened.
Whereas for years, the Department of Justice—which typically has strict oversight regimes and whose leadership is made up primarily of lawyers and prosecutors—accounted for the bulk of federal officers and agents, the post-9/11 growth of DHS has meant that it alone now accounts for nearly half of all sworn federal law enforcement officers. (There’s even a special 80-person police force within the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a component of DHS, that guards the president’s doomsday bunker at Mount Weather in Berryville, Virginia.) That shift means agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which after 9/11 replaced the Justice Department’s Immigration and Naturalization Service, are now instead led by a department less grounded in the Constitution and whose leadership is more political appointees than career prosecutors.
More broadly, though, many federal agencies exist with little sustained oversight and continue to struggle with training, recruiting and use of force incidents. The Department of the Interior’s Park Police, one of the agencies that has served as the front ranks of the riot security in Lafayette Park, has long been one of the capital region’s most troubled law enforcement entities, with complaints and questions about its use of force and even a five-year-long lawsuit over the firing of its police chief after she complained about inadequate staffing. (This week, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who thanks to the District’s odd nonstate status finds herself in the odd position of not controlling the police forces patrolling her own city, blasted the U.S. Park Police and officers from the Secret Service—normally tasked with guarding the White House and foreign embassies in D.C.—for clearing Lafayette Park Monday night to allow Trump to walk across the street for a photo op at St. John’s church.) The Federal Protective Service, which oversees security at 9,000 federal buildings across the country, has been reorganized and reshuffled numerous times since 9/11, rarely spending more than a few years in the same box on DHS org charts. And after a hiring surge caused it to lower recruiting standards, CBP has struggled with a decade of rampant crime and corruption in its own ranks—so much so that for most of the past decade, a CBP officer or agent was arrested on average every single day—and its use of force has been widely criticized, even by professional policing organizations. (For a period of time during the Obama administration, the FBI actually declared CBP’s corruption was the nation’s biggest threat at the border.)
The Bureau of Prisons has been dogged for years with questions about its management, training and tactics. Amid the protests in Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd, a federal inmate also with the last name Floyd (no relation) died this week in an encounter with guards in New York City after being pepper-sprayed in his cell.
Similarly, watchdogs have complained for years about the odd status of the U.S. Marshals Service, a federal agency with roots in the frontier and Wild West that today is in charge of protecting courts and judges, securing federal prisoners and hunting fugitives. The national service is still led across the country by 94 local politically appointed marshals whose posts are handed out as favors, not because of their law enforcement acumen. (The Boston Globe once famously surveilled for 10 days the U.S. marshal in Massachusetts, appointed after a stint on the security detail of the state’s governor, and found he worked an average of only four hours a day.)
Under the Trump administration, Cabinet officials have come under scrutiny for using the government’s law enforcement agents as a sort of Praetorian Guard: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned amid scandals that included his unprecedented 20-agent round-the-clock security detail, who picked up his dry cleaning and moisturizing lotion; Education Secretary Betsy Devos is protected by a detail of U.S. marshals at a cost of roughly $500,000 a month, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under investigation after a whistleblower complained he was using his Diplomatic Security Service agents to pick up Chinese food or look after his dog. Even obscure Cabinet secretaries who could pass all-but unnoticed on any street in the country now warrant security: Want to be the special-agent-in-charge of guarding the Agriculture secretary? The Executive Protective Operations Division of the USDA’s Office of Safety, Security and Protection is hiring right now!
Concerningly, under the Trump administration, many of these agencies have been rudderless—overseen by rotating series of acting officials. More than half of all federal civilian law enforcement right now is being led by temporary acting officials, everything from ICE and CBP to DEA. (That calculation doesn’t even count the thousands of special agents in inspectors general offices that have recently seen an administrationwide purge of the government’s watchdogs.) The Bureau of Prisons was being overseen by an acting director last summer when Jeffrey Epstein managed to commit suicide while supposedly under strict monitoring. The DEA, with its special temporary powers for the protests, is currently led by an acting administrator who has been on the job for just days.
Such leadership voids are not solely a recent problem of the Trump administration: Thanks to pressure from the National Rifle Association on Republican lawmakers about the agency’s firearms investigations, the ATF has had a Senate-confirmed director for a total of only two years since 2003. Last month, the Trump administration withdrew its most recent nominee to be ATF director, Chuck Canterbury, a former police union leader who had been deemed by Republican senators as too liberal on guns. (Yes, you read that right: The former head of the Fraternal Order of Police was considered too liberal for the GOP.)
The proliferation of federal officers across government—and the proliferation of watchdogs watching those government agencies—means that you might one day be woken up by a SWAT team-style raid by the Department of Education or the EPA. And the number keeps growing: Congress was surprised when the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction—known as SIGAR—began procuring its own ammunition, flashing lights and body armor for its special agents. Just like its laws, there are too many federal agents for the government to keep track of.
The Covid-19 pandemic has even spawned what will apparently be the nation’s newest federal investigator: The Senate confirmed on Tuesday a special inspector general to oversee the $500 billion pandemic recovery spending. He, presumably, will be recruiting his own agents and equipment soon.

Protests spread over police shootings. Police promised reforms. Every year, they still shoot and kill nearly 1,000 people.
June 9, 2020
by Mark Berman, John Sullivan, Julie Tate, and Jennifer Jenkins
The Washington Post
Protests against the use of deadly force by police swept across the country in 2015.
Demonstrators marched in Chicago, turned chaotic in Baltimore, and occupied the area outside a Minneapolis police station for weeks. Protesters repeatedly took to the streets of Ferguson, Mo., where a white police officer had killed a black teenager the previous year and fueled anew a national debate about the use of force and how police treat minorities.
That year The Washington Post began tallying how many people were shot and killed by police. By the end of 2015, officers had fatally shot nearly 1,000 people, twice as many as ever documented in one year by the federal government.
With the issue flaring in city after city, some officials vowed to reform how police use force.
The next year, however, police nationwide again shot and killed nearly 1,000 people. Then they fatally shot about the same number in 2017 — and have done so for every year after that, according to The Post’s ongoing count. Since 2015, police have shot and killed 5,400 people.
This toll has proven impervious to waves of protests, such as those now flooding American streets in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis. The number killed has remained steady despite fluctuating crime rates, changeovers in big-city police leadership and a nationwide push for criminal justice reform.
Even amid the coronavirus pandemic and orders that kept millions at home for weeks, police shot and killed 463 people through the first week of June — 49 more than the same period in 2019. In May, police shot and killed 110 people, the most in any one month since The Post began tracking it.
The year over year consistency has confounded those who have spent decades studying the issue.
“It is difficult to explain why we haven’t seen significant fluctuations in the shooting from year to year,” former Charlotte police chief Darrel Stephens said. “There’s been significant investments that have been made in de-escalation training. There’s been a lot of work.”
The overwhelming majority of people killed are armed. Nearly half of all people fatally shot by police are white. Most of these shootings draw little or no attention beyond a news story.
Some become flash points in the country’s ongoing reckoning about race and police. The ones prompting the loudest outcries often involve people who are black, unarmed, or both, shootings that have brought the harshest scrutiny onto police.
Since The Post began tracking the shootings, black people have been shot and killed by police at disproportionate rates — both in terms of overall shootings and the shootings of unarmed Americans. The number of black and unarmed people fatally shot by police has declined since 2015, but whether armed or not, black people are still shot and killed at a disproportionately higher rate than white people.
Some of the most incendiary moments in recent years involving police and race occurred without a gunshot.
Eric Garner was videotaped pleading for air with a New York police officer’s arm around his neck before his death in 2014. Freddie Gray died of a severe spinal injury in Baltimore the following year, suffered when he was transported in a police van wearing shackles but not a seat belt.
The outrage now rippling across America began when a video from Minneapolis showed Floyd, hands cuffed behind his back and prone on the ground, gasping “I can’t breathe” as a white police officer drove his knee into the black man’s neck. The officer held it there for nearly 9 minutes, prosecutors said. For almost three of those minutes, Floyd was not responsive, they said.
It was the kind of use-of-force incident that might have gone otherwise unnoticed. Minneapolis police initially reported that Floyd “physically resisted officers” and then “appeared to be suffering medical distress.” No weapons of any kind were used, police added.
Then the video footage emerged. It showed Floyd pinned on the street, begging for air, calling for his mother, for minute after minute. He was pronounced dead not long after. The officer and three others with him at the scene were fired and all face criminal charges.
His death became a spark, setting off anger that spread quickly, extending into big cities and small towns, red states and blue. Protests and unrest — mostly peaceful, sometimes violent and destructive — expanded into dozens of cities, taking aim at not just policing tactics but broader racial inequities embedded in American life.
Floyd’s death was “one event in a continuous system of oppression,” said the Rev. Graylan Hagler of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in the District. “We know some names now, but there are thousands of those we do not know.”
Hagler, who has been organizing protests and talking to activists, said the emergence of video footage showing controversial police encounters has been pivotal in transforming the national conversation.
Recordings from across the country showing some of these moments have gone viral again and again since 2015, documenting deadly encounters on city streets and during traffic stops filmed by police cameras and bystanders alike.
“White Americans generally thought police to [be] friendly protectors and . . . generally looked at stories of police misconduct cynically, and all of a sudden they have to come face-to-face with the myth that they have been living with,” Hagler said.
‘The past-due notice for unpaid debts’
The nationwide frustration with police has exploded amid a pandemic that has taken a particularly brutal toll on black Americans. It also has emerged following a spate of incidents again highlighting issues involving race and justice in America — including the death of Breonna Taylor, an aspiring nurse in Louisville killed by police serving a no-knock warrant who shot her eight times in her home; the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger chased down and shot to death in Georgia; and the viral video of a white woman wielding the police as a threat against a black birdwatcher during a confrontation in Central Park.
After Floyd’s death, these incidents and other tensions already enveloping America unleashed pent-up anger, fear and pain.
“This is generational, what we’re seeing on the streets of America,” said Phillip Atiba Goff, a professor in policing equity at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “This is the past-due notice for the unpaid debts this country owes black America. And as always, law enforcement is just the spark, right?”
Fatal police shootings are relatively rare events in a country where nearly 40,000 people die from firearms each year. Hundreds of thousands of police officers work in America, most of whom will never fire their guns on duty.
When fatal shootings occur, police officials often contend that officers, facing mortal threats, had to make split-second decisions to protect themselves and others. Police patrol a country with almost as many guns as people, and they never know if the next traffic stop, 911 call, or search warrant will be the one where someone comes out shooting.
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said he would rather his officers never have to use deadly force.
“But last year, I had officers in eight instances that were shot at,” he said. “So those are difficult circumstances in which to ask an officer to not defend himself. In fact, they’re not difficult. They’re impossible.”
Since 2015, 70 percent of the 5,400 people fatally shot by police were armed with a knife or a gun, according to The Post’s database. More than 3,000 of them had guns.
White people, who account for 60 percent of the American population, made up 45 percent of those shot and killed by police. Black people make up 13 percent of the population but have accounted for 23 percent of those shot and killed by police. Hispanic people, which account for about 18 percent of the population, make up 16 percent of the people killed. For 9 percent of people, The Post was unable to determine their race.
The Post started tracking fatal shootings by on-duty police officers after a Ferguson police officer killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, during an altercation after a convenience store reported a robbery in August 2014. That shooting set off demonstrations and sparked calls for reform.
Amid the turmoil, nobody could answer a simple question: How often do police shoot and kill someone? No one knew for sure, because no government agency kept a comprehensive count.
When The Post began tracking these shootings, it became clear that police were shooting and killing people about twice as often as numbers reported by the FBI, which collected voluntary reports from police departments. The Post’s database, which is regularly updated, relies on a collection of news media accounts, social media posts and police reports.
In 2015, the first year The Post tallied these numbers, officers killed 94 unarmed people, the largest group among them black men: 38.
The following year saw a large drop in the number of unarmed shootings, declining to 51, with 22 of those killed being white and 19 black. The number has remained relatively steady each year since. In 2019, 56 unarmed people were shot and killed by police, with white people accounting for 25 of them, while 15 of them were black.
Some numbers in the Post database have increased recently after additional research was conducted into shootings where categorization data had been unknown. For example, shootings of unarmed black people in 2019 increased from nine to 15.
“The reduction in fatal shootings of unarmed suspects is much more of an important factor than the overall number,” said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina and co-author of “Evaluating Police Uses of Force.” “That shows real progress. . . . That probably is a better barometer of what’s going on with police in the black community than the total number of fatal shootings.”
‘This is without question a murder’
The cycle kept repeating. A shooting or other deadly encounter with police would propel the issue back into the news. Graphic video of it would go viral. People would mobilize and march. Again and again, activists called for the justice system to punish those involved.
Sometimes the flash points for demonstrations have not involved police officers — such as the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager shot to death in Florida by a neighborhood watch volunteer who had followed him, an incident that helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.
In most cases, the protests, marches, pleas and painful moments followed an incident involving a person with a badge captured on video.
It happened in November 2014 in Cleveland, where a police officer shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice. A 911 caller reported a boy playing with a gun that was likely fake — information that never made it to the officers who responded. A grand jury declined to charge the officer.
Two days before that shooting, a grand jury made the same decision about Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.
After Ferguson, some prosecutors moved quickly to charge officers, though those have been the exceptions.
Michael Slager, a white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was recorded in 2015 firing bullets into the back of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man fleeing after a traffic stop.
The officer said he feared for his life. He was charged with murder. The jury deadlocked. Slager wound up pleading guilty later to a federal civil rights charge.
Not long after Slager was arrested, another video came out. This one showed Ray Tensing, a white University of Cincinnati police officer, shooting Samuel DuBose, an unarmed man black man, during a traffic stop.
Joe Deters, the Hamilton County prosecutor, said his office had reviewed more than 100 shootings by police and it was the first where they concluded, “This is without question a murder.”
Juries deadlocked twice. Deters decided against seeking a third trial.
Even when officers are prosecuted, convictions are difficult to obtain, according to Philip M. Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who tracks such cases.
Since 2005, 110 nonfederal law enforcement officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter for shooting someone on duty, Stinson’s records show. From those ranks, 42 officers were convicted of a crime — often a lesser offense — while 50 were not, their cases usually ending with acquittals or dismissals. More than a dozen cases are pending, according to Stinson.
One of the convictions happened in Chicago in 2018. Officer Jason Van Dyke had shot and killed Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old, four years earlier. When video footage eventually came out, it showed the teenager moving away when the officer started shooting. The day the video became public, Van Dyke was arrested and charged with murder. Demonstrators took to the streets.
The Chicago police superintendent was forced out, the prosecutor who waited to charge the officer lost her reelection bid, and the Justice Department investigated and assailed the police department for its use of excessive force. Van Dyke was sentenced last year to more than six years behind bars.
The more typical outcome is what happened in Minnesota and Louisiana after two police shootings on back-to-back days in 2016.
On July 5, 2016, police in Baton Rouge shot and killed Alton Sterling, who had a loaded gun in his pocket. The next day, a police officer in the suburbs outside St. Paul and Minneapolis shot and killed Philando Castile, who was licensed to carry a gun and told the officer he had one in the car.
Local and federal authorities later declined to charge the Baton Rouge officers. Prosecutors in Minnesota charged Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who killed Castile. He was acquitted.
Video footage from both cases quickly spread online and sent shock waves across the country. Marches and rallies spread from city to city, presaging the demonstrations that followed Floyd’s death.
In Dallas, one of the peaceful protests was suddenly riven by bloodshed: A gunman, who police said was angry about the recent police shootings, opened fire on officers, killing five. Less than two weeks later, a man who had called for violence against police killed three more officers in Baton Rouge. Police killed both attackers.
Policing has gotten safer in recent decades, with line-of-duty deaths dropping, records show. But police patrol a country with nearly one gun for every person, and recent studies from professors at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon universities have found that areas with higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of police shootings.
“The overwhelming majority of those shooting situations are . . . both lawful and within policy and are situations that we hope that we can minimize and avoid,” said Stephens, the former Charlotte police chief, who also used to lead the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
‘No national standards’
The outcries and criticism have led to reforms.

Some departments have issued new use-of-force policies, vowed to outfit officers with body cameras and added training to address implicit bias. After Stephon Clark was shot and killed by Sacramento officers in 2018, California adopted stricter rules for use of force.
But the momentum stalled. Some departments decided to drop or postpone their body-camera programs, concluding it was too costly to store the data.
The thousands of police departments nationwide each have their own policies covering everything from how officers use force to whether they can wear nose rings on duty.
Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which works with law enforcement officials, said there are “no national standards” regarding training or use of force.
“There is a need for some kind of national approach to retraining police,” Wexler said.
In Minneapolis, the police had been making reforms long before Floyd’s death in the custody of its officers.
The city was one of the program sites for an initiative meant to tackle mistrust of police in minority communities. Officers underwent training and education aimed at addressing implicit bias.
“Minneapolis put in a lot of work,” said Jesse Jannetta, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute, which evaluated the work. “They did the intervention. They did, and that was not sufficient to prevent George Floyd from losing his life.”
Minneapolis police shot and killed Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old black man, in November 2015. An officer said Clark was grabbing his gun. His death prompted demonstrators to occupy the area near the department’s 4th Precinct for 18 days. Some witnesses had said Clark was handcuffed when shot, which authorities denied. Prosecutors cleared the officers involved.
The extended demonstration near the police precinct was itself targeted by gunfire. Five protesters were shot by a white man authorities later said was fueled by racial animosity. He was sentenced to 15 years behind bars.
In 2017, the Minneapolis police were the subject of international criticism for another shooting. An Australian woman named Justine Damond, who was white, had called the Minneapolis police to report a possible sexual assault near her home. When police responded and she approached their car, one of the officers fired through the open car window, killing her.
The officer, Mohamed Noor, was charged with murder. He was convicted last year and sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. That case spurred additional unease among critics of the criminal justice system.
“Many saw that as kind of a mixed bag in terms of what it implied about the potential of the legal system of Minneapolis to create justice of accountability,” said Michelle Phelps, an associate sociology professor at the University of Minnesota. “Here’s the first officer who gets a real conviction in recent memory and it’s a Somali officer and a white victim.”
Fatal shootings by police drifted out of the public spotlight after President Trump’s election in 2016. What had dominated headlines day after day, now took a back seat to other news.
The Post’s database relies significantly on reporting from local media outlets on shootings in their own communities. The amount of reporting done on individual shootings has declined, likely a victim of the continued cuts by local media outlets.
But fatal shootings by police have not slowed — even though the pandemic closed businesses, shuttered schools and effectively shut down much of American life for weeks on end. In May 2019, police shot and killed 74 people. In May of this year, police shot and killed 109 people.
Another consistent statistic from The Post’s examination is the number of people killed by police while in mental distress. About one in four had some mental-health issues.
One explanation for the overall consistency in the number of fatal shootings — and the inability of reforms in individual departments to make much of a dent — comes from probability theory, which suggests that the number of rare events in huge populations will achieve stability absent larger societal changes.
Moore, the Los Angeles police chief, said police need to hear the public’s frustrations about shootings. His department has had more fatal shootings than any other in The Post’s database — 79 overall. Moore said significant time and money has been invested in training officers to de-escalate standoffs and emphasizing the sanctity of life in public interactions.
The number of fatal shootings by his department has declined annually, from 21 in 2015 to 11 in 2019, according to The Post’s data.
“It makes me frustrated because there will be a tendency to think nothing has changed, when I know so many instances of police chiefs that have told me that six months ago we would have shot that guy, and we didn’t because of the training that they’ve received,” Wexler said.
Advocates of police reform said part of the problem is the lack of a full, nationwide accounting of police use of force.
Government officials pledged years ago to start collecting more data on the use of force, but that effort has not produced any better awareness.
After The Post demonstrated a dramatic undercount by the FBI of fatal police shootings, the bureau’s then-director, James B. Comey, called the lack of federal data “embarrassing and ridiculous.”
An FBI policy board recommended that the agency track fatal and nonfatal shootings. The new effort was soon widened to catalogue all use-of-force incidents that result in serious bodily harm or death.
That data collection only began in earnest in January 2019. The program also suffers from some of the same shortfalls as the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program — chiefly that participation is voluntary. So far, only 40 percent of the 18,000 police departments nationwide submit data on police use-of-force incidents, according to the FBI.
No nationwide data on use of force
Fatal shootings by police are a limited metric for answering larger questions about how police use their powers, experts said. Whether a shooting is fatal may depend entirely on a few centimeters in the trajectory of a bullet.
No nationwide data exists on how often police shoot and wound someone, or how often they fire and miss. And no comprehensive national data exists on how other kinds of force — like chokeholds or the use of batons or Tasers — are used.
“The fatalities is a very good measure of some things, but doesn’t include the kinds of events and activities that we’re seeing all over the country that normally don’t lead to death,” said Alpert, the criminology professor. “Unless there’s an injury or unless there’s a complaint that gets traction, either we don’t know, or it doesn’t matter.”
Floyd’s death is a prime example of that, Alpert said.
“If this were to happen and he hadn’t died, you’d read the report: ‘He was resisting, we had to control him,’ ” Alpert said. “ ‘We use our trained tactic . . . and he was taken to jail.’ End of story, no one would know, no one would care.”
Janeé Harteau, the ex-Minneapolis police chief ousted after Damond’s death, said watching the Floyd footage “makes me question what could we have missed” in other instances involving police that were not captured on video.
During the current wave of protests, police have been filmed again and again using force against people.
“We’re in the middle of an international pandemic,” said Goff, the professor. “People are risking their lives to have their voice heard.”
Dominic Archibald, a retired Army colonel whose son was killed by a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy in Barstow, Calif., said she hopes the outcome of the current wave of demonstrations will be different.
“What bothers a lot of families . . . unless something is sensationalized, perhaps in the media largely, we’re just fighting the battle alone,” Archibald said.
Her son, 29-year-old Nathaniel Harris Pickett Jr., was shot and killed in 2015 after an altercation with the deputy. He was unarmed. In 2018, a jury in a federal civil rights trial awarded his family $33.5 million over the killing. Authorities concluded the shooting was justified. The deputy faced no charges. The sheriff’s department did not respond to a request for comment.
“No action has been taken,” she said. “They haven’t even pretended as if they are considering action. Have I given that up? No. I have not given up pressing this. But I shouldn’t have to.”
Note: This article was updated to reflect that some numbers in the Post police shootings database have increased recently after additional research, as police, oversight agencies and media released more information about ambiguous shootings.
Ted Mellnik and Steven Rich contributed to this report.

Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States- 2011
Part 2

Below are lists of people killed by law enforcement in the United States, both on duty and off duty for 2010. Other years are in preparation
Although Congress instructed the Attorney General in 1994 to compile and publish annual statistics on police use of excessive force, this was never carried out, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation does not collect these data either
The annual average number of justifiable homicides alone was previously estimated to be near 400. Updated estimates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics released in 2015 estimate the number to be around 930 per year, or 1240 if assuming that non-reporting local agencies kill people at the same rate as reporting agencies
2011
2011-10-27
Williams, Elliott Earl Oklahoma (Tulsa) Williams died in Tulsa County Jail, OK. He died from “complications of vertebrospinal injuries due to blunt force trauma” and dehydration following several days of neglect by prison authorities.
2011-12-31
Capano, John, McGoey, James,New York (Seaford)
Capano, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was shot in the chest by a retired officer while struggling with McGoey, who had just robbed a pharmacy where Capano was a customer. The officer had mistaken Capano for an armed assailant. McGoey was then shot and killed by an off-duty officer who came to the scene.
2011-12-25 Barnette, Jameela Cecila, Georgia (Marietta) Shot after assaulting police officer with weapons.
2011-12-20 Williams, Dawntree Ta’Shawn Georgia (Buford) Shot after refusing commands to drop machete. Police were called to residence when the 15-year-old boy threatened to kill his family with the machete.
2011-12-16 Gilyard, Michael Louisiana (Shreveport) Shot during struggle with officer after Gilyard reached for the officer’s handgun. The officer had stopped Gilyard as he was leaving an area where there had been reports of narcotics activity. The coroner’s report indicates that the cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the chest with a trajectory from back to front.
2011-12-14 Waiters, Ariston Georgia (Union City) Shot during a physical altercation with police. Officers were responding to a report of a fight between teenage girls and young adults. Neighbors report that the man was not involved in the fight and when shot, the man was running from police to avoid arrest on outstanding warrants. Autopsy confirmed Waiters was shot in the back.
2011-12-12 Gibson, Stanley (43) Nevada (Las Vegas)Stanley Gibson was shot and killed by Metro Officer Jesus Arevalo as police responded to a burglary report. Gibson, a veteran, was allegedly suffering from PTSD and brain cancer and was disoriented when he struck a police cruiser with his car. Officers boxed him in with their vehicles, commanding Gibson to exit his vehicle as he continued to attempt to drive away. Police reportedly made a plan to break Gibson’s window with a beanbag round and use pepper spray to force him out. When the beanbag round was fired, Arevalo fired seven rounds of live ammunition at Gibson, who was unarmed. In October 2012, the Clark County District Attorney’s office announced an indictment against Arevalo and is seeking a grand jury hearing of the case. In May 2013, following an internal review, the Critical Incident Review Board recommended the termination of Arevalo’s position with the Metro Police.
2011-12-08 Muncie, Damien Jefferson (36) Oklahoma (Oklahoma City) Muncie was shot and killed after allegedly wounding three police officers and attempting to break into the Valley Brook Municipal Building.
2011-12-08
Black, Thomas Anthony Washington (Suquamish) Officers were serving an arrest warrant when they shot 44-year-old Black to death. Police retracted their original statement that Black had shot at officers after no handgun was recovered at the scene and no evidence supported Black’s firing at them. Detectives said they did find a toy gun in the vicinity.
2011-12-05 Malone, Stephen Texas (Dallas) Shot during enforcement action by Dallas Police on board Amtrak’s Texas Eagle train.
2011-12-03 Thao, Vang California (Merced) 21-year-old Thao was killed by a stray bullet as officers fired at 18-year-old Kong Xiong, who was pointing a gun at them. Thao was not their intended target, and the Merced Police Department stated that Xiong was responsible for Thao’s death.
2011-11-28 Hines, Carulus Georgia (Atlanta) Shot while stabbing her own four-year-old daughter to death and refusing commands to put down a knife. Police were responding to report of abuse of Hines’ son.
2011-11-27 Welling, Austin Washington (Tacoma) 18-year-old Welling was shot and critically injured after an officer pulled him over on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle. Welling allegedly put the car in reverse and drove toward the officer, who fired at him several times. The 18-year-old was taken off of life support on January 31, 2012.
2011-11-25 Ramirez, Pablo Perez (25) California (Sebastopol)Shot and killed by a Sebastopol Police Department officer after pulling a revolver from his waistband. Police came to Ramirez’s ex-girlfriend’s apartment complex in response to a domestic disturbance. Ramirez took out a revolver and police fired three shots at Ramirez, from 10 to 15 feet away.
2011-11-21 Pate, Bernard (37) Nevada (Las Vegas) Shot and killed while running from and pointing a gun at an officer. Officers approached Pate because they suspected he was a gang member and began pursuing him when he ran from them.
2011-11-17 Person, Dwight Georgia (East Point) Shot after making a threatening gesture at police. Officers were conducting a “knock and announce” search warrant, looking for drugs.
2011-11-19 Chamberlain Sr., Kenneth New York (White Plains) Shot in his home by police responding to an automated medical alert.
2011-11-19 Crowley-Smilek, Justin Maine (Farmington) Shot in police parking lot when the man came at the officer with a knife.
2011-11-13 Crahay, Holly Washington (SeaTac) Shot after shooting at police. Officers were attempting to stop Crahay for reckless driving. Crahay led officers on chase who performed PIT maneuver causing Crahay’s vehicle to spin to a stop at which point she began shooting.
2011-11-12
Bergstrasser, Sean Washington (Colville) Shot without further details released. A stolen handgun was recovered at scene. Police were responding to a report of a “vehicle prowling”.
2011-11-10 Moore, Glen Edward Georgia (Macon) Shot after aiming gun at police. Police were responding to report of a screaming nude man banging on doors and windows of residences. Before police arrived Moore kicked the door of one home and shot a man to death. Moore was standing over the body of his victim when he pointed the gun at police.
2011-11-05 Elderts, Kollin Hawaii (Waikiki) Kollin Elderts was shot in a McDonald’s restaurant by an off-duty State Department special agent, Christopher Deedy. Elderts was shot during a confrontation between him and Deedy after Deedy intervened when Elderts and another man had been accosting customers. Elderts did not have any weapon in his possession during the confrontation but was drunk and on drugs at the time of the incident. Deedy was charged with second-degree murder and acquitted in 2014 The killing and ensuing trial are discussed in a ten-episode season of Off Shore Podcast, a podcast run by Honolulu Civil Beat and PRX.
2011-10-31 Bitz, Jason California (Lakewood)Shot by off-duty police officer while apparently trying to steal a van outside the officer’s home. He had permission to use the van, but was using a screwdriver to open the door. He ran after being confronted by the officer, who shot him multiple times after Bitz reached for his waistband. No weapon was found at the scene.
2011-10-30
Colbert, DeJuan Kansas (Wichita) Officers were responding to a robbery alarm at a Dollar General store. 27-year-old Colbert was allegedly standing at the door with a knife, and approached the officer who commanded him to drop it. That officer shot and killed Colbert.
2011-10-28 Collins, Jason Paul Colorado (Greeley) Shot after touching his own gun during a meeting to exchange child pornography with undercover federal officials.
2011-10-25 mHilaire, Herson; Hilaire, Hedson Florida (Miami-Dade) Shot after striking a police officer with vehicle while fleeing home during a drug probe.
2011-10-24 Peterson, Josh California (Antioch) The 33-year-old man was shot to death less than a block from him home after refusing to drop his gun. Police were responding to a report of a fugitive in the area; Peterson was wanted on two arrest warrants.
2011-10-24 mCeja, Pedro Salgado Washington (Royal City) Shot while chasing police with shovel in hand. Officer was responding to report of domestic violence and was attempting to arrest Ceja for investigation of second-degree assault and unlawful imprisonment.
2011-10-23 Evans, Eric Blaine Washington (Seattle) Shot after physically attacking a police detective. The officer was tracking Evans as a prime suspect in a recent stabbing murder.
2011-10-22 Westby, Aaron Washington (Tacoma) Shot after reaching for gun in glove box after resisting arrest. Police had approached Westby regarding the stolen pickup he was inside.
2011-10-22 II Nida, Michael California (Downey) The night of the shooting, Downey PD officers detained Nida because he matched the description of a suspect in an armed robbery, but Nida fought them and escaped. Nida was detained a second time, only to escape and run again. According to sheriff’s investigators, Nida then turned toward police in an aggressive manner, and was shot 5 times in the chest and back. Nida was unarmed, likely running from police because of a small amount of marijuana in his possession and a known distrust for police.
2011-10-20 Newsome, Kotrell Omar Maryland (Lexington Park)Shot after violently resisting arrest for domestic disturbance. Stun gun was ineffective.
2011-10-18 Sepulveda, Mark Anthony Colorado (Denver) Shot while attempting a carjacking. Police were responding to report of armed robbery of store.
2011-10-17
Pinkney, Adolphus Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) Shot after ignoring command to drop weapon and then firing on police.
2011-10-16 Marksbury, Kennen Texas (Cibolo) Shot after threatening police with a weapon. Police were responding to report of a suicidal person.
2011-10-15 Valenzuela, David Arizona (Phoenix) Shot after ignoring commands to drop weapon and pointing gun at police. Police were responding to reports of gunshots and assault at bus terminal.
2011-10-15 mParera, Leonardo New Jersey (Mountain Lakes) Shot after firing on police. Police were responding to Parera’s call to 911 after Parera killed co-worker and threatened to escalate violence if approached.
2011-10-15 Stafford, Joetavius Georgia (Atlanta) Shot during confrontation with transit system police officer.
2011-10-13 LaFave Jr, Derryl Cheyne, Kristopher Michigan (Muskegon) Shot after robbing bank, killing an officer with vehicle while fleeing, and firing on police.
2011-10-12 Post, Charles Arthur Pennsylvania (Lower Burrell) Shot after fatally shooting police officer. Post was wanted on felony charges of shooting at his boss.
2011-10-12 Bocock, John Oregon (Myrtle Creek) Shot after non-fatally shooting associate and refusing to drop weapon.
2011-10-11 Aguilar, Jesus Colorado (Golden) Shot while attempting escape from police custody in a medical facility. Aguilar was serving jail sentence for multiple violent offenses.
2011-10-11 unnamed male Florida (Miami-Dade) Shot after stealing a police car and attempting to use it to run over a police officer. Deceased had recently fled scene of accident where he was driving vehicle that struck a taxi killing the driver.
2011-10-03 unnamed female New York (New York) Shot after refusing to drop knife and lunging at police officers. Police were responding to report of fight involving the deceased at a homeless shelter.
2011-10-01 Bassler, Aaron California (Fort Bragg) Shot after extensive month-long manhunt. Bassler was primary suspect in two recent murders and had fired on police during the manhunt
2011-09-29 Blackmon, Jerome Colorado (Aurora) Shot after pointing a handgun at police. Police were responding to a report of a man and woman arguing in the street. Blackmon fled from police and Taser was ineffective.
2011-09-26 Rogers, James Washington (Spokane) Shot after two-hour standoff with police and pointing shotgun at police. Police were responding to report of suicidal man.
2011-09-24 Fritze, Paul Maine (Farmingdale) Shot after incident that lasted several hours that began when Fritze reported began shooting at occupants of house.
2011-09-24 Ficker, Ronald Washington (Issaquah) Shot after shooting near school and shooting at police.
2011-09-22 Deloatch, Barry New Jersey (New Brunswick)
Deloatch was shot by an officer while struggling on the ground with a second officer. The officer who fired the fatal shot was found to be in violation of the departments equipment policy by not having Oleoresin Capiscum (O.C.) spray on him. The officer resigned from the department following the internal investigation.
2011-09-20 ,Edwards, Alnur Georgia (Norcross) Shot during shootout with police following bank robbery, car jacking and chase.[
2011-09-18 Martin, Kenneth Dwayne Georgia (Jefferson) Shot after ignoring deputy commands and setting room on fire. Police were responding to report that Martin threatened to set his wife on fire. Martin had doused her and their home with gasoline.
2011-09-17 Moore, Jason (31) Missouri (Ferguson) Shot three times with a Taser and died. Family told media he had a mental illness. Civil suit was filed by his family in Federal court in 2014.
2011-09-15 Neel, Dale[63] Washington (Fircrest) Died after being struck by police cruiser. The 62-year-old man was in the center turn lane on a moped. A deputy was responding to a call for backup from another deputy who was searching for people who had fled a traffic stop. The responding deputy was traveling in the center turn lane.
2011-09-13 Vargas, Christen Colorado (Colorado Springs) Shot after driving over a deputies foot and fleeing in vehicle. Deputies had approached vehicle in parking lot while looking for a different person with an outstanding warrant. A deputy shot at the vehicle as it sped away.
2011-09-11 Wolford, William Colorado (Pueblo)
Died from injuries sustained when struck by police cruiser. Officer was stopped at red light and struck Wolford as he crossed intersection at crosswalk. Officer was initially cited for careless driving causing bodily injury.
2011-09-09 Hull, Marc (25) Nevada (Las Vegas) Hull was shot to death after shooting and injuring a police officer inside a Walmart store where he was trying to purchase $5000 worth of electronics with a credit card that was being declined.
2011-09-07 Bruce, Jasmen Georgia (Atlanta) Shot while burglarizing the home of an Atlanta police officer.
2011-09-06 Collado, John (43) New York (New York) Collado, who was unarmed, was shot when he intervened in a fight between 2 men on the street. Unknown to Collado, the fight was actually an attempted marijuana arrest by NYPD plainclothes detective James Connolly, a cop for 5 years, who had abandoned his NYPD narcotics team to attempt this arrest alone. Collado died hours later. At civil trial in 2018, a jury unanimously found that Connolly used excessive force when he shot Collado and delivered a verdict against him including substantial punitive damages. Collado is the second person killed by Connolly while on duty. Connolly killed another man while he was alone and in plainclothes in 2009 with 3 years on the job.
2011-09-06 Tolbert, Alranhiem Carr, Tony Georgia (Columbus) Shot as vehicle backed up towards officer. The officer had observed a masked man run out of a credit union. Tolbert ran to a truck in which Carr was sitting in the passenger side.
2011-09-05 Peterson, Walter Georgia (Moultrie) Shot after attempting to stab a police officer. Police had gone to Peterson’s home to investigate a report of a broken window at a local store. Police unsuccessfully used a Taser before firing the fatal shot.
2011-09-01 Bishop, Tiffany Georgia (Jackson)
Shot accidentally by instructor during firearms training class. Bishop was attending the class as a probation officer for the Georgia Diagnostic Prison in Jacson.
2011-08-29 Doerbecker, Kurt New York (Point Lookout) Shot after refusing to drop knife and approaching police in a threatening manner. Police were responding to reports of a disturbance at a bar.
2011-08-25 Shumway, Keith New York (Ithaca) Shot after attacking and grabbing an officer’s gun. Another officer told the assailant to drop the gun. The assailant instead pointed the gun at the other officer who then shot him.
2011-08-12 unnamed male Georgia (DeKalb County) Shot by SWAT team during standoff. The man had shot at a neighbor who called police. As the police arrived, the man shot at them, then barricaded himself inside his home.
2011-08-11 Hayse, Arthur Georgia (Conyers) Died from injuries after being struck by police cruiser. Officers were chasing Hayse and another person as prime suspects in a recent bank robbery.
2011-08-10 Albrecht, David Washington (Shoreline) Shot after refusing to drop knife and shotgun. Police were responding to report of suicidal person.
2011-08-10 Allen, Jimmy Georgia (Atlanta) Shot after turning toward police officer during armed robbery of restaurant. After being wounded, Allen fled outside the restaurant were the officer fired at least seven more times.
2011-08-06 Maestas, David Jerome Colorado (Denver) Shot while fleeing in stolen vehicle the scene of Home Invasion. Maestas had tied up and beat the occupants, before stealing their Jeep. Police tracked the vehicle and attempted to stop it. When Maestas attempted to drive towards one of the officers, the police shot and killed him.
2011-08-03 Elmo, Vivian Colorado (Colorado Springs) Died in auto accident when off-duty sheriff’s deputy ran a red light striking Elmo’s vehicle. The deputy had two prior reckless driving convictions and was fired on September 23, 2011.
2011-08-01 Shafer, Richard Lee Oregon (Elgin) Shot while holding a rifle. Police were responding to a report of domestic violence.
2011-08-01 Bosley, Johntwa E Ohio (Columbus) Shot after having a said shootout with police while holding a pistol and attempting to escape in a car. Swat team shot and killed the wanted felon.
2011-08-01 Maggiorini, Carl (39) California (Fresno) Shot by a Fresno Police officer when the officer saw him running down the street waving a knife and chasing a man.
2011-07-26 Leskinen, Daniel Colorado (Black Forest) Shot after firing at sheriff’s deputies. Officers were responding to report of domestic disturbance involving a gun.
2011-07-24 Redick, Larry Tennessee (Memphis) Shot after firing at police who were responding to reports of a domestic disturbance.
2011-07-23 Contreras, Juan Colorado (Aurora) Shot after punching plainclothes officer several times and reaching for knife. Officer was investigating an extortion charge where a man had demanded $50 for return of stolen car keys.
2011-07-22 Alfred, Leon Georgia (Douglas County) Shot after refusing to drop knife. Police arrived after Alfred had stabbed another man to death.
2011-07-21 Leon, Ricardo Virginia (Centreville) Shot after refusing to drop shotgun and approaching officers. Police were responding to report of a domestic disturbance.
2011-07-21 Waters, Jedidiah J. Washington (Federal Way) Shot while reaching for handgun while being chased by police. Officers were responding to report of man shoplifting in store.
2011-07-20 Moon, Eric Dewayne Jr Georgia (Marietta) Shot after posing a threat to officers. Police had attempted to stop the vehicle Moon was driving. Moon fled at high speed, crashed his vehicle and fled on foot into an apartment complex.
2011-07-18 Ashley, Alonzo Colorado (Denver) Died of “Physiologic stresses involved in subduing and restraining the decedent”. Police were responding to reports of a domestic violence incident at the Denver Zoo.
2011-07-17 Husband, Niko Illinois (Chicago) Shot after struggle with police and reaching for gun in waistband. Police were responding to report of man with gun outside bar.
2011-07-16 Hawkins, Lynell Illinois (Chicago) Shot after shooting at police. Police were pursuing suspect after reports of gunshots in the area.
2011-07-16 Gaswint, Justin Washington (Lynnwood) Shot after charging deputy and threatening to kill him. The deputy had stopped on an overpass to talk to a pedestrian. As the deputy exited his vehicle Gaswint attacked and the two fought.
2011-07-16 Harding, Kenneth California (San Francisco Bay View District)
Shot after shooting at police who were attempting to cite Harding for light-rail fare evasion.
2011-07-15 unnamed male Georgia (Avondale) Shot during struggle with officer when officer thought man was reaching for a gun. The officer was responding to a report of a man acting strangely. The man ran from the officer into the woods were the struggle ensued. The unnamed male’s .38 caliber handgun was located at the scene.
2011-07-14 Olivas, Rafael Alonso Nevada (Las Vegas) Officers were responding to a report of a “man acting erratically” and found Olivas walking down a street with a knife. After Olivas refused to drop the knife and continued advancing toward officers despite being shot with beanbags, officers shot the man to death.
2011-07-11 Pearce, John Georgia (Gainesville Shot after charging at deputies. Officer were responding to a report of a man attacking two women, one of whom died, at the Harbour Point Yacht Club subdivision. When the officers arrived Pearce was walking outside the home naked and covered in blood and described his demeanor as “deranged.”
2011-07-10 Brown, Brandon Ray Washington (Bothell) Shot while advancing on deputy while holding a cane overhead. Deputies were responding to a report of a domestic disturbance.
2011-07-10 Turner, David Lee California (Bakersfield) Shot after striking deputy in back of head with bag containing two 24-ounce cans of beer. Turner was being questioned regarding purchase of alcohol for minors at a store. After initially complying with officers an altercation ensued when Turner attempted to leave.
2011-07-05 Thomas, Kelly California (Fullerton) Died from blunt force injuries after altercation with police. See Death of Kelly Thomas. Two police officers, Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, were charged with second degree murder but were later acquitted. Charges of excessive force and involuntary manslaughter against a third officer, Joseph Wolfe, were dropped after the acquittals of the other two officers.
2011-07-04 Silva, Luis Nevada (Las Vegas) Shot to death by officers after allegedly pointing a gun at them. Police had responded to the home to find Silva with a gun to his head.
2011-06-30 Hampton, Maurice Georgia (Atlanta) Shot during altercation with police. The officer was conducting a traffic stop when Hampton fled on foot. The altercation and shooting followed. Hampton was not armed.
2011-06-29 Ararao, Bernardo D. California (Suisun City) Killed in a senior center after showing a gun a woman there and telling her he was “going on assignment.” Officers shot the 55-year-old man to death when he refused to drop his weapon.
2011-06-29 Newland, Kevin Wayne Washington (Clallam Bay) Shot during attempted prison escape. Drove a forklift through one set of doors then into the prison’s perimeter fences.
2011-06-28 Christopher Seksinsky (39) New Hampshire (Winchester) Shot after threatening police with a knife. Police were responding to report of armed suicidal person and attempted to disarm man with Taser.
2011-06-26 Haynes, Michael R Tennessee (Memphis) Shot after shooting at officers. Police were responding to reported of armed mentally ill person.
2011-06-25 Brennan, Carl Torrance Georgia (Jacksonville Beach) Shot after refusing to drop weapon. Brennan was approached as the prime suspect in the recent robbery of several people in a hotel parking lot.
2011-06-20 Steven V. PeterseWashington (Napavine) Shot after refusing to take hands out of pockets and while charging at deputy. Police were responding to report of man armed with knife attempting to break into a home.
2011-06-15 Papineau, Brooks Washington (Gig Harbor) Shot during a traffic stop. Police say he pointed a gun at the officer.
2011-06-09 O’Loughlin, Ryan Rhode Island (Westerly) Fatally beaten in an alley by Westerly police Officer Greg Barna, Officer Terence Malaghan, and/or Sgt. David E. Turano while passively resisting arrest. O’Loughlin, age 34, of Mystic CT died 16 hours after being arrested. The Connecticut medical examiner ruled the death a homicide due to blunt abdominal trauma.
2011-06-08 Duenez, Ernest California (Manteca) Shot by John Moody who was watching and waiting down the street for Ernest to arrive home while riding in a pickup. Moody was cleared of criminal charges by San Joaquin County district attorney James Willett, but the Duenez family pursued a civil case against him. The case was to go to trial in April 2014, but the Duenez family settled the lawsuit for $2.2 million, claiming they had lost faith in the system after the acquittals of the officers in the death of Kelly Thomas and Nick Bennallack in the death of Manuel Diaz in Anaheim. Although Moody was cleared of criminal wrongding, the Duenez family and their supporters have maintained that Moody is a murderer. In January 2013, a supporter of the Duenez family was charged with “threatening” Moody in a Facebook post.
2011-06-07 Farmer, Flint Illinois (Chicago) Shot after fleeing police responding to report of domestic violence.
2011-06-05 Schultz, James Dean Washington (Richland) Shot during confrontation with police who were responding to report of a suspicious person.
2011-06-03 Oliver, Phillip (28) California (Galt) Shot to death by officers after assaulting his mother, carrying a knife, and threatening officers, police say.
2011-06-01 Hortter, Adam (32) California (Bakersfield) Kern County Sheriffs Deputy Mike Blue was trying to detain Hortter as a suspected car burglar. They struggled and went to the ground. Deputy Blue pulled his weapon and shot Hortter who died at a local hospital.
2011-05-30 Carter, Byron (20) Texas (Austin) Carter was a passenger in a car that police say sped toward and hit an officer. Another officer fired at the car, injuring the driver and killing Carter. A civil suit filed by Carter’s family was still in the courts as of May 2013.
2011-05-30 Herisse, Raymond Florida (Miami Beach) Shot in vehicle after striking multiple officers and other vehicles with vehicle. Police were in the area due to annual Urban Beach Week celebration.
2011-05-29 Medrano, Rodolfo “Rudy” (35) California (Bakersfield) About 9:30 p.m. Madrano called 911 from his motel room, threatening suicide. He claimed to have several guns. Four deputies from the Kern County Sheriff’s Department responded. The deputies negotiated with Medrano for about 45 minutes while he was in his wheelchair in the motel parking lot and holding a large knife. When he charged the deputies, in his wheelchair, with the knife in his hand, the four deputies shot and killed him.In June 2011, the Kern County Sheriff’s Incident Review Board ruled the shooting justified.
2011-05-27 Castillo, Alberto Nevada (Las Vegas) Police responded to a 911 call and found Castillo holding a silver object to his wife’s neck. Castillo allegedly kicked an officer and grabbed his Taser, and the officer shot Castillo to death.
2011-05-27 Taylor, Roxanne Georgia (DeKalb) Shot after car chase and firing a shot. Police were pursuing Taylor as the prime suspect in recent armed robberies of stores.
2011-05-19 Murdock, Matthew R Georgia (Mableton) Shot after scuffling with police officer and when it appeared Murdock was reaching for a weapon. Police had stopped Murdock as a “suspicious person”.
2011-05-18 Morris, Timothy Steven Georgia (Newton County) Shot after threatening to kill officer while having his hands in his pockets. A state trooper had attempted to stop Morris for speeding. Morris abandoned his vehicle and fled into a heavily wooded area where the trooper cornered him. Knives were found on Morris.
2011-05-18 Nager, Ross Washington (Selah) Shot after exiting vehicle with shotgun or rifle in hand. Police were responding to report that Nager was making threats to people inside a home and firing his weapon. After SWAT team arrive Nager attempted to leave in a vehicle but was blocked.
2011-05-16 Reeves, Bert South Carolina (Cottageville) Shot during an aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer.
2011-05-13 mBueno, Manuel Florida (Miami-Dade) Shot after brandishing a knife.
2011-05-11 Wilson, Jeff Illinois (Chicago)
Shot during armed robbery of store and after shooting at police.
2011-05-10 Garrett, Dale California (Los Angeles) Shot twice in the back by Los Angeles Police Department Detective Arthur Gamboa. Det. Gamboa claimed that Garrett pulled a knife and threatened to kill him during an attempted drug bust. The Los Angeles Police Commission ruled that the shooting violated the LAPD’s policy on lethal force.
2011-05-10 Allen Kephart Lake Arrowhead California After allegedly running a stop sign, Allen Kephart was beaten and tasered two dozen times by three San Bernardino County Sheriff Deputies in a parking lot in the unincorporated area of the San Bernardino Mountains near Lake Arrowhead.
2011-05-09 Adrian Perez (26) California (Bakersfield) Bakersfield police officers, responding to a residence for a report of trespassing found Adrian Perez. During the encounter Perez drew a handgun from his pocket and fired on the officers. Three officers returned fire, killing Perez.
2011-05-05 Guerena, Jose Arizona (Tucson) Marine and Iraq war veteran shot by SWAT team conducting forced-entry search of home involving a marijuana smuggling investigation. No drugs nor anything illegal was found and widow and children received $3.4 million settlement from agencies involved in raid.
2011-05-04 Raucci, Robert Washington (Kent) Shot while pulling a long gun out of a taxi cab at a transit center. Police were responding to a report from the cab driver that his passenger had a shotgun or rifle across his knees.
2011-05-03 Tyler, Antonio Georgia (Marietta) Shot after refusing to drop weapon. Police had confronted Tyler regarding the two people Tyler and two other men had forced into their home at gunpoint.
2011-04-30 Campuzano, Jose Carlos Washington (Sunnyside) Shot after pulling out a gun and shooting at officers. Police has pulled over a vehicle containing three people, including Campuzano, as suspects in a recent nearby shooting.
2011-05-02 Bailey, Bernard (54) South Carolina (Eutawville) A police chief for the town of Eutawville shot and killed Bernard Bailey who came to Town Hall to complain about his daughter’s traffic ticket. Police chief Richard Combs tried to arrest Bailey for a charge of obstruction of justice, and Bailey walked towards his truck and they both briefly fought each other. Combs then shot Bailey twice in the chest in Bailey’s truck. On December 4, 2014, prosecutors charged Combs with murder.
2011-04-23 Denyakin, Kirill Virginia (Portsmouth) Shot outside of an apartment building where he was staying with friends; was intoxicated and did not respond to police commands to lie down on the ground. A 9-1-1 call had erroneously reported a burglary in progress at that address after Denyakin pounded on the door and asked to be let back into the building.
2011-04-18 Ourada, Anthony Washington (Kent) Shot after ramming into several cars while attempting to elude deputies. Deputies were pursuing Ourada for several instances of reckless driving and eluding police over the previous week.
2011-04-18 mWilliams, Jerome Illinois (Chicago) Shot during armed robbery of store and after shooting at police.
2011-04-18 Hebert, David Ohio (Cincinnati) Shot after a report of an armed robbery with a sword. Hebert had a small knife but no sword. Acting against their training, officers got dangerously close and failed to have a plan before approaching Hebert, precipitating the use of deadly force. A wrongful death lawsuit by his estate alleges Hebert was complying with orders when he was shot.
2011-04-16 Parks, Horace Lorenzo Georgia (Morgan County) Shot after pointing gun at state trooper. Parks was being chased for driving a vehicle which matched the description from a recent shooting at a restaurant. The chase ended when Parks rammed a police vehicle
2011-04-07 Denton, Albert Maryland (Glenn Dale) Shot after lunging at officers with axe. Police were responding to report of disturbance at child daycare facility.
2011-04-06 Fuller, Darryl Georgia (Norcross) Shot after pointing a handgun at officers. Police were patrolling an area known for gang activity and approached a group of three men when Fuller drew a weapon.
2011-04-03 Woods, Timothy Georgia (Fairburn) Shot went a gun, not in the officers possession, “went off” while the officer and Woods struggled over a gun.
2011-03-27 Paulson, Katherine Maine (Kennebunk) mShot after advancing on police with knife in hand and refusing commands to drop weapon. Officers were responding to report of a domestic disturbance in which Paulson’s mother reported she was afraid for her own well-being regarding daughter with history of psychiatric illness.
2011-03-20 Gidenko, Oleg Colorado (Aurora) Shot while fleeing in vehicle from police who were investigating report of stolen vehicle. City settled with Gidenko’s family for $150,000]
2011-03-19 Sampson, Eric G.Washington (Ravensdale) Shot after refusing to lay down a machete Sampson had used to strike an officer’s cart. Sampson was pulled over in a routine traffic stop then fled in vehicle. Sampson was found near registration address of vehicle. Use of Tasers was ineffective.
2011-03-17 Williams, Aaron Colorado (Aurora) Shot after firing on police, wounding officer and taking a family of four hostage. Police had chased the man into an apartment complex following a traffic stop. The police released gas into the apartment and the man climbed out of a window holding a gun. Was shot by SWAT team at that point.
2011-03-17 Gardner, Marvin California (Fresno) Fresno Police responded to reported burglary at a quick cash store. There were employees in the store and the two suspects were reported to be armed. An officer pursued Gardner who climbed over a fence back of the store before stopping at the officer’s orders. Gardner began to lift his coat using both his hands. The officer, thinking Gardner was going for a weapon, shot and killed him.
2011-03-16 munnamed male Idaho (Bonners Ferry-area) Died due to an “unknown medical event” after deputy used a Taser while attempting to subdue the man. Deputy was responding to a report of a naked man and his vehicle blocking a road.
2011-03-15 Garcia, Daniel Colorado (Aurora) Shot in vehicle after shooting at police to include one shot to police officer’s arm. Police were approaching vehicle in which Garcia had taken two hostages.
2011-03-12 Breitkopf, Geoffrey New York (Massapequa Park) Nassau County Police officer, accidentally shot by MTA Police officer who mistook Breitkopf for an armed suspect.
2011-03-14 DiGeronimo, Anthony New York (Massapequa Park) Shot by two Nassau County Police officers when he lunged at them with knives.
2011-03-09 Hammond, Michael Georgia (Buckhead) Shot after producing a weapon. Police had followed Hammond in his vehicle as the prime suspect in a recent bank robbery.
2011-03-08 Rowton, William Wayne Washington (Kelso) Shot from a distance of about 200 ft after pointing revolver out a sliding glass door towards police. Police were responding to report of a suicidal person.
2011-03-03 Le, Van Dinh (47)
California (Escondido) Le was shot once in the forehead by an Escondid Police Department officer, after police came to his home to respond to Le being suicidal and mentally unstable. According to officers, Le was in a bathroom and had a pair of 8-inch scissors, and refused to drop it when demanded to by police, and then advanced towards the officers with the scissors.
2011-02-28 Martinez, Alejandro P Washington (Lynden) Shot after striking deputy in head with a hammer. Officers were responding to a report of a man with mental health issues damaging a home.
2011-02-24 Elmore, Danny Colorado (Pueblo) Shot after answering door with gun in hand and pointing it at officer. Police were responding to report of a loud disturbance at Elmore’s home.
2011-02-19 Amos, Shelley Blount-Burton, Cheryl Georgia (Avondale Estates) Died from injuries sustained during motor vehicle accident. Police officer was estimated to be driving at twice the speed limit while not on an emergency call when she collided with another vehicle. The officer was later indicted on two counts of vehicular homicide and reckless driving.
2011-02-14 Montgomery Jr., Chastain Tennessee (Mason) Shot after firing on police with two pistols. Police were pursuing Montgomery in relation to a carjacking in Nashville.
2011-02-14 Moran-Hernandez, Carolyn Washington (Lakewood) Shot after raising gun at officers. Police were responding to a report of domestic violence. Moran told the police “shoot me, shoot me” then raised what turned out to be a BB pistol that looked like a handgun.
2011-02-10 Arreola, Richard Colorado (Aurora) Shot while walking “with purpose” with handgun and rifle towards undercover police officer. Officer was performing surveillance on Arreola in an undercover police vehicle prior to serving of warrant for drug distribution.
2011-02-10 Dawkins, David Anthon Georgia (Augusta) Shot after point a handgun at officer. Police had pulled over Dawkins’ vehicle on suspicion of being stolen.
2011-02-08 Giddens, Brian Keith Georgia (Barnesville) Shot after confronting deputy with a shotgun. Officer was responding to a report of domestic dispute.
2011-02-08 Little, Christine Ann Idaho (Kootenai) Shot as passenger in vehicle that was approaching trooper following chase. The driver had rammed a police cruiser during a chase. Their vehicle was stopped for a traffic violation, then fled.
2011-02-08 Johnson, Daniell Washington (Lakewood) Shot in vehicle by SWAT team after “seeing movement in the car”. Police had stopped Johnson in relation to a report of domestic violence when a shot was fired inside the vehicle. Police report the first shot was self-inflicted. The medical examiner later determined that the fatal shot was fired by the SWAT team.
2011-01-30 Curler, John A Washington (Spokane) Died from injuries after being struck by police cruiser. Curler was crossing an intersection on foot as the officer was responding to a “trouble unknown” report with lights and siren off.
2011-01-30 Cisneros, Yueri Acevedo Washington (Yakima) Shot after refusing to stop stabbing another man on the ground. The victim was stabbed 159 times with a pocketknife.
2011-01-28 O’Connell, Robert David Washington (Tacoma) Shot after shooting three times at police. Officers were approaching man for acting suspiciously at a gas station.
2011-01-24 Lacy Jr., Hydra Florida (St. Petersburg) Shot after fatally shooting two police officers, Thomas John “Tom” Baitinger and Jeffrey Adam Yaslowitz, who were serving an arrest warrant for aggravated battery and two other felony charges.
2011-01-24 Robert Kendrick Chambers Georgia (Warner Robins) Shot while attempting to pull a weapon out of a coat pocket. The man was approached as a possible suspect in a recent burglary. When the man was ordered to remove his hands from his pockets a scuffle ensued.
2011-01-23 Fuller, Norman Tennessee (Memphis) Shot after pointing gun at police. Police were responding to report of a shooting and encountered the armed Fuller walking down the street.
2011-01-22 Sloan, Latricka Georgia (Decatur CountyDied from injuries following police use of a PIT maneuver on Sloan’s vehicle. Sloan had made a U-turn after approaching a police safety check point. Witness report Sloan was not driving fast. Police later determined that Sloan was not licensed to drive in Georgia.
2011-01-20 Simms, Johnny Miami-Dade County, Florida Died in a shootout that also killed two Miami-Dade Police Department detectives, Amanda Lynn Haworth and Roger Castillo.
2011-01-16 Dennis, Kenneth Washington (Spokane) Shot during investigation of report of domestic violence. Police report Dennis was armed with a knife.
2011-01-15 Landry, Andrew Maine (Lyman) Shot after brandishing two knives. Officers were responding to a call for assistance and first attempted to disarm Landry with a Taser.
2011-01-14 Doucet, Reggie California (Los Angeles) Shot after repeatedgly striking police officers and attempting to take their guns. Police were responding to a disturbing the peace call after Doucet had removed his clothes and was running around naked.In December 2016 the City of Los Angeles settled with Doucet’s family for $1.65 million.
2011-01-13 Perez, Enrique (21) California (Malaga) Thursday, about 8 AM, an officer of the California Highway Patrol was investigating the theft of a dump truck near Malaga. The officer found the truck in a citrus grove. The suspect came out of the grove and fought with the officer. The officer was able to pull his weapon and shot the suspect, who was later identified as Enrique Perez of Fresno.
2011-01-11 Stamps, Eurie (68) Massachusetts (Framingham) Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone testified Officer Paul Duncan’s rifle went off accidentally, killing Stamps who was handcuffed and lying facedown in his home during a midnight SWAT raid. Police were searching for his stepson and Stamps was not a suspect.
2011-01-07 Pinex, Darius L. Illinois (Chicago) Shot in vehicle after dragging police officer with vehicle. Police had stopped Pinex because he was driving a vehicle similar to one implicated in earlier gunfire.
2011-01-06 Fox, Andrew Washington (Bellevue)Shot as approaching officer with knife raised in overhand grip. Police were responding to report of a hostage taking at a gas station.
2011-01-01 Ferryman, Michael (57) Ohio (Enon) Shot during a shootout with police, prior to which he had shot and killed Deputy Suzanne Hopper.
2011-01-01 Weatherspoon, Lynn Florida (Miami) Shot after fleeing SWAT team and reportedly pointing gun at them. The SWAT team was inside a black SUV and noted that Weatherspoon was armed with a handgun. Witnesses report that men jumped out of the SUV and opened fire as Weatherspoon ran away.