_Fatal Force

Amid outrage over the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man in Ferguson, Mo., The Washington Post began to log every fatal shooting by an on-duty police officer in the United States since Jan 1, 2015. Seven years later, The Post has cataloged more than 6,735 fatal shootings by police.

Fatal Force is a public service that uncovers the hidden toll of police violence; it is consistently updated year after year and made available to explore through visualizations and an interactive database. The Post began tracking more than a dozen details about each killing, gathering data through local news reports, law enforcement websites, social media, and monitoring independent databases. The Post conducted additional reporting in many cases. It has been documenting only those shootings in which a police officer shoots and kills a civilian in the line of duty. These circumstances most closely parallel the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, which began the protest movement culminating in Black Lives Matter and an increased focus on police accountability nationwide. The Post’s investigation found that the FBI undercounted fatal police shootings by more than half.

The comprehensive collected data has been consistently made accessible through graphics that reveal how the victims are disproportionately Black and overwhelmingly young and male. This complete database is searchable and filterable, making it useful for further research and analysis. It garners over one million page views a year.

Fatal Force won a Peabody Interactive and Digital Legacy Award in 2022 for creating this salient and impactful public service.