{
  "version": "v0.4.0",
  "dataset": "counting-the-killings",
  "subject": "How the United States counts people killed by police, and who does the counting, as reconciled open data",
  "tier": "public",
  "provenance": "Derived aggregate counts only. Reconciled from five independent, cited public efforts (see the sources table). This release publishes per-dataset annual totals, definitional scope, and federal coverage. It does NOT re-host any person-level records. Each upstream dataset keeps its own license and is linked, never mirrored.",
  "scope": "Derived aggregates, national United States, not a re-hosted roster of the people who died.",
  "canonical": "/research/police-shootings",
  "tables": [
    {
      "table": "datasets",
      "rows": 5,
      "about": "The five independent efforts that count people killed by police in the United States, and the definition each one chose."
    },
    {
      "table": "annual",
      "rows": 24,
      "about": "Per-dataset annual counts. WaPo (2015-2024) and MPV (2013-2024) are aggregated directly from each project's primary dataset; the Guardian's two years are its own published totals."
    },
    {
      "table": "officer_coverage",
      "rows": 4,
      "about": "The FBI Use-of-Force collection's share of sworn officers employed by participating agencies, by year, against the 80 percent threshold it needs before it can publish national totals."
    },
    {
      "table": "agency_coverage",
      "rows": 1,
      "about": "The FBI collection's share of agencies that participate at all, a distinct and much lower series than officer coverage."
    },
    {
      "table": "overlap",
      "rows": 10,
      "about": "The record-level overlap by year, from MPV's own WaPo-ID and Fatal-Encounters-ID linkage: how the three civilian lists nest, and the MPV-only killings split into non-shooting (definitional) and shooting."
    },
    {
      "table": "federal_validation",
      "rows": 2,
      "about": "The government's own test of the open-source method: the BJS assessment that found its Arrest-Related Deaths program captured at best 49 percent (suspended 2014), and the redesigned media-review pilot that then estimated about 1,900 arrest-related deaths in a year."
    },
    {
      "table": "stratified_undercount",
      "rows": 5,
      "about": "The Lancet/GBD death-certificate misclassification broken out by group, 1980-2018. A measurement finding: whose deaths the official records failed to attribute to police violence. Group rows reconcile to the study's overall totals."
    },
    {
      "table": "international",
      "rows": 10,
      "about": "Killings by law enforcement per 10 million people across ten countries (Prison Policy Initiative, 2017-2019 data years), carried with the caveat that every country counts under its own definition."
    },
    {
      "table": "disparity",
      "rows": 3,
      "about": "The Black-vs-white rate disparity as each counter itself publishes it, under its own rule and era: the Post's per-million shooting rates (2015-2024), MPV's 2024 likelihood ratio, and the Lancet/GBD age-standardized reconstruction (1980-2019). A measurement finding; no causal position."
    },
    {
      "table": "sources",
      "rows": 13,
      "about": "The provenance ledger. Every figure in the release resolves to one of these entries."
    }
  ],
  "counts": {
    "datasets": 5,
    "annual": 24,
    "officer_coverage": 4,
    "agency_coverage": 1,
    "overlap": 10,
    "federal_validation": 2,
    "stratified_undercount": 5,
    "international": 10,
    "disparity": 3,
    "sources": 13,
    "total": 77
  },
  "license": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "files": [
    "datasets.json",
    "datasets.csv",
    "annual.json",
    "annual.csv",
    "officer_coverage.json",
    "officer_coverage.csv",
    "agency_coverage.json",
    "agency_coverage.csv",
    "overlap.json",
    "overlap.csv",
    "federal_validation.json",
    "federal_validation.csv",
    "stratified_undercount.json",
    "stratified_undercount.csv",
    "international.json",
    "international.csv",
    "disparity.json",
    "disparity.csv",
    "sources.json",
    "sources.csv"
  ],
  "citation": "Lawrence, J. (2026). Counting the Killings: how the United States counts people killed by police, as open data (v0.4.0). jakelawrence.xyz/research/police-shootings.",
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