How do per‑capita police killing rates compare across racial groups (2015–2024) by age and sex?
Executive summary
Per‑capita fatal police‑shooting rates from 2015–2024 show clear racial disparities: Black Americans have faced the highest per‑person risk (about 6.2 deaths per million per year), Hispanic Americans an intermediate elevated rate (≈2.8 per million), and White Americans a lower rate (≈2.4 per million) according to aggregated reporting of fatal police shootings [1] [2] [3]. The risk concentrates overwhelmingly on men and on young adults — peaking between roughly ages 20 and 35 — a pattern documented across multiple large data efforts and peer‑reviewed analyses [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. What the headline numbers say about race
National databases that track police shootings — most prominently The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force,” MappingPoliceViolence, and compilations used by researchers — report that Black Americans are killed by police at rates roughly two to three times those of White Americans across 2015–2024, with a commonly cited figure of about 6.2 fatal shootings per million Black residents per year versus about 2.4 per million for White residents [1] [2] [3]. These per‑capita contrasts persist despite White people comprising the majority of absolute deaths in many years because of population size differences [3] [7].
2. Age and sex reshape the risk picture
Age and sex are decisive modifiers of risk: more than half of people shot and killed by police are between 20 and 40 years old, with formal analyses finding peak risk between roughly 20 and 35 for both men and women [3] [4] [5]. Men account for an overwhelming majority of victims in every dataset — exceeding 90 percent in large compilations and, for 2024, roughly 904 men versus 44 women in reported police shootings to date — which means per‑capita male risk is the dominant signal in racial comparisons [6] [3].
3. Intersectional magnitudes: race × sex × age
When race is intersected with sex and age, the disparity widens: Black men constitute a small share of the overall U.S. population but a far larger share of police‑killing victims — one report notes Black males are about 6.1 percent of the population but nearly a quarter of persons killed by law enforcement in aggregate analyses — driving markedly higher lifetime and age‑specific risks for young Black men compared with peers of other races [8] [4]. Peer‑reviewed work estimating lifetime and age‑specific risks finds these concentrated differentials and quantifies the excess risk among Black men relative to other demographic groups [4].
4. Hispanic, Asian and other groups: elevated but uneven
Hispanic Americans show elevated per‑capita rates relative to Whites in many summaries — Statista‑sourced summaries report about 2.8 per million for Hispanic people versus 2.4 per million for White people — but the magnitude and year‑to‑year pattern vary and are sensitive to classification and local context [2] [1]. Publicly available cross‑group analyses for Asian, Native American, and mixed‑race populations are less consistently reported in the supplied sources, and national per‑capita estimates for these groups require careful treatment of small‑number variability and data completeness [3] [7].
5. Geography, data gaps and competing narratives
State and local variation matters: per‑capita rates differ across states and counties (for example, several states show much higher per‑capita rates than national averages), and spatial analyses tie social vulnerability and place to fatal‑force outcomes [9] [10]. The datasets used by researchers and journalists are the principal sources because federal reporting is incomplete: Congress instructed federal compilation decades ago but the FBI does not provide a comprehensive, validated national accounting, which means most analysis relies on media and nonprofit databases that have their own collection rules and potential biases [7] [11] [3]. Advocates, academics and law‑enforcement defenders each emphasize different frames — accountability and structural bias versus officer safety and crime contexts — and those agendas shape which metrics and comparisons are highlighted [10] [3].
6. Bottom line and limits of available evidence
The best available, repeatedly used series for 2015–2024 shows Black Americans face roughly two to three times the per‑capita risk of fatal police shootings compared with White Americans, with young adult men at the greatest absolute risk and Hispanic people elevated above White rates but below Black rates in many summaries [1] [2] [4] [6]. However, national estimates depend on non‑federal compilations, classification of race/ethnicity, and incomplete reporting by agencies — caveats acknowledged in the core sources — so refinements (especially for smaller racial groups, by narrower age bands, and post‑2022 spatial analyses) require continued data improvement and transparent federal collection [3] [7] [10].