FBI should collect data on police shootings

Governments are usually obsessed with statistics, compiling data on virtually everything, including crime, health care, education and the economy.

But if you're interested in detailed data on police shootings, or on how many people have been killed by police, your search will not be simple. A Review-Journal investigation of officer-involved shootings and police use of deadly force found no one tracks such incidents on a national basis.

"We don't have a mandate to do that," said William Carr, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which collects crime data from every corner of the country.

Because of this lack of national information, the Review-Journal surveyed 24 major, urban police departments to determine whether Southern Nevada officers discharge their firearms more than cops in comparable jurisdictions. Sixteen departments provided data on shootings over the past decade.

Those figures revealed that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department ranked third among those cities in officer-involved shootings per capita, behind Houston and Chicago, and third in shootings per reported violent crime, behind Denver and Seattle.

Another telling statistic: Las Vegas police killed eight people in 2010. The New York Police Department, with 13 times more officers covering a population six times larger, also killed eight people. (The five-part investigation, published last week, is available at www.lvrj.com/deadlyforce.)

The police departments that declined to participate in the Review-Journal investigation track officer-involved shootings on some level, but they refused to provide their information to the newspaper.

It is to the credit of Southern Nevada police departments (and Nevada's strong public records law) that they collect such information and make it available to the public. The Los Angeles and San Diego police departments, among others, also examine their officer-involved shootings.

The collection and analysis of this information revealed that many Las Vegas police shootings could have been prevented with better training and changes to policies, and that the department needs a more comprehensive approach to reviewing incidents of deadly force and dealing with problem cops. The system lacks transparency and accountability.

How many lives might be saved if taxpayers everywhere were better informed about police shootings? How can they know about a potential local problem without information?

"It would take a request from Congress for us to collect that data," said Mr. Carr of the FBI, adding that budgetary constraints would likely prevent the collection of detailed data on police shootings.

That's a red herring. Police already track everything from domestic violence to child abuse to murder, and police routinely lobby state and federal lawmakers to put new crimes into statute. The budgetary impact of adding another reporting category to local police forces would be minuscule. The social impact of such an addition, however, would be huge.

The absence of such a reporting mandate creates the appearance of protecting police from scrutiny. It would be instructive to see how the public safety lobby would respond to a bill that requires the FBI to collect and report data about police shootings.

Congress should want local police to be more transparent and accountable. Congress should want to prevent unnecessary shootings and deaths, and to instill greater public confidence in law enforcement. Federal lawmakers should pass a bill that requires all police departments to report all officer-involved shootings to the FBI.