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Deaths during police encounters
47,047 deaths recorded between 2000 and 2026, attached to the agencies involved. Police Census publishes counts only and does not name the people who died.
Read this before the table. A death recorded here is not a finding of wrongdoing, and this page is not a ranking of which police forces are dangerous. Many of these deaths involved armed confrontations; some involved none. The figures record what happened, not who was at fault.
There is no comprehensive federal record of deaths during police encounters. The FBI’s own use-of-force collection is voluntary and reports at state level only. These records are compiled from news reports and public records by Mapping Police Violence, an independent research organisation, and are used with their permission. They are not official statistics.
8,617 of the 47,047 records could not be attached to an agency in the FBI’s current register — usually because the agency identifier they carry has since been retired. Those deaths are counted in the national total above but do not appear on any agency page.
Highest rate per head of population policed
Raw counts are not a ranking on this site: the largest forces will always top a raw list because they police the most people. This table uses deaths per 100,000 of the population each agency reports for, restricted to agencies policing at least 100,000 people and recording at least five deaths — below that, one death produces an arithmetically true but meaningless rate.
Population is the figure each agency itself reports to the FBI as the population it serves, taken from its most recent return. Jurisdictions overlap, so a death in a city may involve a county or state agency as well as the city force.
Source
Mapping Police Violence, 2000–2026, reproduced with permission. Records are attached to agencies using the agency identifier MPV publishes alongside each incident. Causes and official dispositions are reproduced as published and are never paraphrased.