How have annual rates of police shootings per 100,000 people varied by race over the last decade?
Executive summary
Across multiple datasets and studies the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database — widely used in research — shows persistent racial differences in annual fatal police-shooting rates: for 2015–2024 the aggregate rate reported for Black people was about 6.2 per million per year versus about 2.4 per million per year for white people (WaPo / Statista summary) [1]. Researchers using WaPo and Mapping Police Violence data also find place, social vulnerability and income inequality strongly shape those racial patterns, with higher rates concentrated in more socially vulnerable or unequal areas [2] [3] [4].
1. What the headline numbers show — Black Americans face higher per-capita fatal shooting rates
Researchers and data aggregators relying on the Washington Post Fatal Force database report sizable racial gaps in fatal police shootings: an overview figure for 2015–2024 cites roughly 6.2 deaths per million per year for Black people and 2.4 per million per year for white people [1]. Multiple projects (WaPo, Mapping Police Violence) and secondary compilations (Statista) use the same underlying counts, so the headline racial gap is consistently observed across those public-facing summaries [5] [6] [1].
2. Trends over the last decade — variation, not uniform change
Available public summaries cover 2015–2024 and show year-to-year fluctuations rather than a monotonic rise or fall; Statista/WaPo charts plot annual counts by race through 2017–2024 and the WaPo database covers 2015–2024 for case-level analysis [5] [6] [1]. Specific year-to-year rate trajectories are in those interactive databases and charts; the high-level finding from compiled rates is that racial disparities persist across the decade rather than disappearing [5] [1]. Available sources do not provide a single sentence summary of the exact annual trajectory for every race across every year in the last decade — readers should consult the WaPo interactive for year-by-year values [5].
3. Why place and social vulnerability matter — zip codes and counties explain part of the gap
Peer-reviewed analyses combining WaPo and Mapping Police Violence with census data show that place and social vulnerability strongly predict where fatal police shootings occur. Zip-code-level models find higher fatal shooting counts in areas with greater social vulnerability and different racial compositions [2]. County-level work likewise shows fatal shootings rise with county vulnerability: between low- and high-SVI counties deaths increased several-fold, with larger relative increases for Black and Hispanic residents [3]. These studies argue that race interacts with place and socioeconomic factors to produce observed per-capita rate differences [2] [3].
4. Income inequality and structural predictors — an additional explanatory layer
Research linking county-level income inequality (Gini coefficient) to fatal police shootings reports more shootings in counties with greater inequality and finds Black and Hispanic communities bear higher risk in those contexts [4]. This suggests structural factors — not only individual encounters — contribute to the racial patterning of rates [4].
5. Data limits and differing estimates — why numbers vary across sources
Major caveats undercut simple interpretation: federal reporting from the FBI and CDC is incomplete, and independent databases (WaPo, Mapping Police Violence, The Counted) differ in inclusion rules, so totals and rates depend on data source and classification choices [5] [7]. The Washington Post notes its database often documents more fatal shootings than federal systems and updates records as facts emerge [5]. Academic researchers explicitly combine datasets and census denominators to generate per-capita rates; methodologies (time windows, race categorization, denominator population) affect reported rates [2] [3] [4].
6. Competing interpretations — bias in policing vs. structural context
Some scholarship emphasizes racial bias or perception-driven decision-making in use of force (cited literature on visual stereotyping and race effects), while other empirical analyses (including classic econometric studies) find mixed or nuanced results depending on method and outcome measured [8] [9] [10]. Recent zip-code and county work frames the issue as an interaction of race with place, social vulnerability, policing density, and crime indicators — a structural explanation that supplements, not replaces, questions about officer behavior [2] [3] [4].
7. What to consult next — data and study-ready sources
For year-by-year rates by race consult the Washington Post Fatal Force interactive and the Statista reproductions which graph WaPo counts by race for 2017–2024; for analyses of place and structural drivers read the zip-code and county studies in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and related ScienceDirect articles [5] [6] [2] [3]. If you want an independent cross-check, Mapping Police Violence provides parallel counts and downloadable race-denominator linkages [11].
Limitations: this summary relies on the WaPo-centered datasets and peer-reviewed analyses that use them; available sources here do not present a single, unified annual table of per-100,000 (or per-million) rates by race across every year, so exact year-to-year numerical comparisons should be read from the primary WaPo/MPV visualizations and underlying files [5] [11].