What are the most recent FBI statistics on police shootings by race?

Executive Summary — FBI counts are incomplete; independent databases show higher and racially disparate totals. The FBI’s public collection efforts on fatal police shootings are patchy and underreport compared with independent trackers; contemporary tallies from the Washington Post and Statista indicate police shot hundreds to over a thousand civilians annually through 2024, with Black Americans shot at substantially higher per‑capita rates ^{[1] [2]}. Academic reviews and government notes warn that the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting and early National Use-of-Force Data Collection suffered from low participation and reporting lags, so researchers rely on media-compiled databases and academic studies to estimate racial disparities ^{[3] [4]}. This analysis synthesizes the source set provided to state what the FBI has and has not produced, and how alternative sources quantify racial patterns through 2024. Key takeaway: FBI figures undercount the phenomenon, and multiple independent datasets consistently show racial disparities in fatal and nonfatal officer shootings ^{[1] [2] [5]}.

1. Why the FBI numbers leave gaps that matter to the racial picture

The FBI’s public statements and program descriptions show a transition in reporting systems but do not produce a complete national picture of police shootings by race through 2024; the FBI’s National Use‑of‑Force Data Collection and UCR tools rely on voluntary agency reporting and have historically had limited participation, producing partial snapshots rather than a census of incidents ^{[3] [6]}. Researchers and journalists repeatedly flag that only a fraction of local agencies submitted full data in early years of the FBI’s initiative, meaning the FBI’s totals understate actual counts and can distort racial breakdowns if nonreporting agencies differ systematically by jurisdiction or community demographics ^[3]. That reporting gap is the central reason other groups built independent databases—because FBI counts alone cannot answer “by race” reliably for recent years ^[3].

2. Independent tallies paint a higher and racially skewed reality

The Washington Post’s long‑running database, covering 2015–2024, records every person shot and killed by on‑duty police, and reports that Black Americans are killed at more than twice the rate of White Americans while comprising roughly 14 percent of the population; the Post’s database also noted 2024 as the highest annual total on record ^[1]. Statista’s compilation for 2024 indicates 1,173 civilians shot by police that year with 248 Black victims, and computes a Black fatality rate of 6.1 per million per year over 2015–2024—well above other groups ^[2]. These independent tallies converge on a consistent finding: independent data show substantially higher counts than the FBI’s incomplete returns and a persistent Black‑White disparity in killings by police ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Academic studies confirm racial disparities but add nuance about fatal vs. nonfatal outcomes

Peer‑reviewed and institutional studies note racial disparities in both fatal and nonfatal police shootings while identifying context that complicates simple comparisons. A Johns Hopkins study covering 2015–2020 found non‑Hispanic Black people comprised a large share of nonfatal shooting victims and that, in that dataset, Black victims had lower odds of fatal outcomes when shot compared with White victims—suggesting differential injury severity, medical response, or situational factors ^[5]. Earlier NVDRS work and methodological critiques stress the need for standardized denominators, alternative benchmarks (like stops or arrests), and attention to incident context; these factors affect interpretations of raw fatality counts by race ^{[4] [7]}. Thus, while disparities are robust across sources, the mechanisms and the role of exposure, weaponization, and situational factors remain contested in scholarly work ^{[5] [7]}.

4. Comparing timelines and credibility: what each data source actually delivers

The FBI’s official program pages describe the UCR and NIBRS frameworks but the most recent FBI public releases cited in these materials do not provide a continuous, race‑complete series through 2024; early FBI releases up to 2022 explicitly acknowledged reporting limitations ^{[3] [6]}. By contrast, the Washington Post’s database is continuously compiled and verified by newsroom methods and was current through 2024 in this dataset; Statista’s aggregates rely on those and other reporting sources to present 2024 totals ^{[1] [2]}. Academic pieces included here either examine earlier windows (2009–2012) or provide analytical frames for interpreting patterns ^{[4] [8]}. The pragmatic implication: use the FBI for methodology and official program context, but rely on independent trackers and peer‑reviewed analyses for the most complete and race‑disaggregated incident counts through 2024 ^{[3] [1] [5]}.

5. What remains unresolved and what policymakers should watch

Key unresolved issues include the completeness of nonfatal shooting reporting, jurisdictional variation in reporting behaviors, and how to standardize denominators (population vs. police contact rates) to fairly compare racial groups; the literature and datasets provided show consensus that raw FBI counts undercount and that Black Americans face a disproportionately high fatality rate per capita, but they diverge on causal interpretation and on whether fatality risk conditional on being shot is higher for any group ^{[1] [2] [5] [7]}. Policymakers should prioritize mandatory, standardized federal reporting for use‑of‑force incidents and fund independent validation studies to reconcile media databases, academic estimates, and FBI returns—and thereby produce a single, transparent national accounting by race ^{[3] [4]}.