Over the past two centuries, the United States government has developed
tools to accurately track annual tax revenues, but still has yet to implement
effective means to report the exact number of lives police take in any given
year. This lack of accurate record keeping suggests that tracking the number of
unarmed civilian deaths caused by police officers remains relatively low on the
government’s to-do list. Through ineffective reporting techniques, federal
officials place the death toll at approximately 400 civilians nationally per year. On the other hand, alternative sources estimate significantly higher numbers: Some records indicate that police killed as many as 1,093 and 1,146 people in the United States in 2016 and 2015 respectively.
