How many people did police kill in 2024

1. The headline number: Mapping Police Violence’s 1,365 and what it means

Mapping Police Violence — the dataset cited by Campaign Zero and repeatedly referenced in national coverage — lists 1,365 people killed by law enforcement in 2024, calling it the deadliest year in the project’s record and noting the rise occurred even as violent crime declined nationally ^{[1] [2]}. The project’s public statements and reporting define “police killings” broadly to include any incident in which an on- or off-duty officer applies lethal force that results in a civilian death, regardless of later legal findings ^[6].

2. Why other tallies differ: methodology, scope and incomplete official reporting

Different counts diverge because of scope (shootings only vs. all lethal encounters), source material (media reports, government records, death certificates) and access; for example, the Gun Violence Archive produced a higher figure of at least 1,445 suspects killed in police shootings for 2024, while other outlets and secondary sites cite lower numbers — some rounding to “over 1,250” or noting roughly 1,173 in limited datasets — highlighting how methodology drives totals ^{[2] [3] [4]}. A deeper constraint is the absence of a mandatory, complete federal reporting system: the FBI and many state systems do not comprehensively collect or publish all officer-involved death data, and some large agencies underreport to state databases, meaning independent groups must compile media and public records to fill the gap ^{[7] [8]}.

3. Who was affected and where: demographics and geography in 2024

Mapping Police Violence’s analysis does more than count; it documents disparities and geographic patterns, reporting that Black people were about 2.9 times more likely than White people to be killed by police in 2024 and that Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islanders and American Indian/Alaska Natives faced especially high disproportional risk ^[1]. The project also found the highest state rates in places such as New Mexico, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and North Dakota, and noted a shift toward more deaths in rural and suburban ZIP codes rather than only large cities ^{[3] [8]}.

4. Competing narratives and the agendas behind the numbers

Numbers are wielded for reform and political narratives: Campaign Zero and Mapping Police Violence are reform-focused and emphasize structural patterns and racial disparities, while outlets and commentators with different vantage points may stress individual circumstances or quote lower official counts to question the trend ^{[1] [6]}. The World Socialist Web Site used Mapping Police Violence data to place police violence in class terms rather than focusing solely on racial framing, illustrating how the same dataset feeds divergent interpretations ^[3]. Independent databases like The Washington Post’s long-running tracker also shape coverage and accountability conversations by making raw incident-level data public ^[5].

5. Bottom line and caveats

Given available reporting, the best-supported figure for 2024 is 1,365 people killed by U.S. law enforcement according to Mapping Police Violence/Campaign Zero; other credible compilations produce higher or lower totals because of definitional choices and incomplete official reporting, so the true number cannot be pinned down to absolute certainty without a mandatory federal reporting system ^{[1] [2] [8] [7]}. The variation among sources is not a trivial disagreement over decimals but a window into systemic undercounting, differing research aims and the political uses of data.