What trends show in FBI police shooting data by race over the last 10 years?

1. What the headline numbers say: many private trackers, steady annual totals

Independent projects that compile on-duty police shootings (e.g., The Washington Post’s Fatal Force, which is summarized in the Statista graph cited here) report roughly 958–1,176 fatal shootings in single years across the 2015–2024 span and aggregate totals that imply roughly 900–1,200 deaths annually; Statista cites 1,164 fatal shootings in 2023 specifically ^{[1] [5] [4]}. Analysts and reviewers note the annual totals "have remained remarkably steady" since 2015 in those private tallies ^[4].

2. Race patterns in those tallies: overrepresentation of Black victims by rate, not always by count

Most public trackers report that in absolute numbers more white people are killed by police (reflecting population size), but Black Americans are killed at higher rates per capita — often cited as roughly 2–3 times the white rate in earlier years and about 6.1 fatal shootings per million over 2015–2024 in the Statista/WaPo-derived figure referenced here ^{[1] [5]}. That rate-based disparity is a consistent headline in the academic and reporting literature built from these datasets ^{[1] [6]}.

3. Why datasets diverge: different sources, coverage gaps, and voluntary federal reporting

The FBI’s National Use-of-Force Data Collection and other UCR programs exist, but participation is voluntary and reporting is incomplete; by 2021 only about a third of departments’ fatal shootings appeared in the FBI database, according to Washington Post reporting summarized in the dataset descriptions ^{[2] [3]}. Journalists and researchers therefore rely on media-compiled or NGO databases (WaPo, Mapping Police Violence, Gun Violence Archive) to get fuller counts — which produces better coverage but also differences in definitions and methods across sources ^{[2] [7] [4]}.

4. Method matters: benchmarks change the story about racial disparity

Researchers warn that whether Black people are “more likely” to be shot depends on the denominator you choose — general population, arrests, or crime-involvement benchmarks. Studies using different denominators can reach different conclusions; some academic work finds disparities relative to the general population while other analyses that benchmark against measures of offending or police contact reduce or eliminate some disparities ^{[8] [9]}. The choice of denominator is therefore an explicit methodological debate in the literature ^[8].

5. Nonfatal shootings and broader injury data amplify disparities

When researchers include nonfatal injurious police shootings (e.g., a Johns Hopkins/Vanderbilt study using Gun Violence Archive data for 2015–2020), they report thousands more incidents and note Black people comprised a large share of nonfatal victims (29% of race-identified nonfatal injuries in that study), underscoring that focusing solely on fatalities can understate racial patterns in total use-of-force harm ^[7].

6. Geographic, age, and context interactions complicate simple racial summaries

Academic analyses show that disparities vary by region, age, and perceived mental illness status: for example, younger people and people perceived as mentally ill face higher police use-of-force overall, and the intersection of race with these factors changes relative risk ^[6]. State-level research also links variation in fatal shooting rates to local factors like firearm availability and arrest rates, showing race patterns interact with geography and policing practices ^{[9] [10]}.

7. Limits and competing interpretations you must weigh

Key limitations: federal collections are incomplete and voluntary, private databases use different inclusion rules, and choice of denominator (population vs. arrests vs. crime involvement) materially affects conclusions ^{[2] [3] [8] [4]}. Analysts who emphasize different benchmarks or data sources present competing interpretations — some emphasize a persistent Black overrepresentation per capita, others emphasize how benchmark choice can change the magnitude or presence of disparities ^{[1] [8] [4]}.

8. Bottom line for readers and researchers

Available reporting consistently finds that private trackers document roughly 900–1,200 fatal police shootings per year since 2015 and that Black Americans face a higher fatal-shooting rate per capita in those datasets ^{[1] [4]}. Yet data gaps, voluntary federal reporting, and divergent methodological choices mean conclusions about causes and the exact size of racial disparities depend on which dataset and benchmark are used — so any firm claim must be tied to the specific source and denominator being cited ^{[2] [3] [8]}.