Talk:Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States/Archive 2

Lack of notability for individual occurrences
From Notability with bold added:


 * ”Notability guidelines apply to the inclusion of stand-alone lists and tables. Notability of lists (whether titled as "List of Xs" or "Xs") is based on the group. A list topic is considered notable if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, per the above guidelines; notable list topics are appropriate for a stand-alone list. The entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources for notability, only that the grouping or set in general has been. Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable, although editors may, at their discretion, choose to limit large lists by only including entries for independently notable items or those with Wikipedia articles.”

This list aims for completeness. The editors of this list are not choosing to limit the list to include only entries for independently notable occurrences. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThaPolice (talk • contribs) 02:36, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Race/Gender/Age columns?
Given the ongoing public debate over law enforcement killings of African-Americans, it seems appropriate to add a column for racial identification of the victim (and, since we're at it, might as well add columns for age and gender). This would require massive amounts of back-filling, but the info would be very useful and worth the effort (if enough people made the effort to back-fill data).

.. and what about columns for age/race/gender of the officers involved?

Umberto (talk) 17:27, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Any objections to list &rarr; lists?
This is a list of lists, so wouldn't Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States be the more appropriate name? I think this would be uncontroversial, but it's not a page I've followed the discussions for so don't want to step on toes. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 18:53, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

While I also think the grammar is a little weird, I see some value in keeping consistency with the counterpart (much shorter) List of American police officers killed in the line of duty. Also, there are a lot of templates involved - less in the master list than in the others, for sure - but at least for me the potential effort to fix what might break (and might not be obvious) isn't worth an s. To help the singular make sense, I see this as a single multipage list, just as a printed list would require multiple pages. They all (should) follow the same format and having it take multiple pages is primarily about helping manage load and edit times. --ProtectorServant (talk) 12:32, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

POV issue, redux
I created List of American police officers killed in the line of duty a while back, to create an NPOV balance in these lists. I will note, however, that all of the lists here include huge numbers of people who dont have articles, while the list i created is almost exclusively people with articles. I am not suggesting we trim back these lists, and i am not asking anyone to edit "my" article to include more names. I simply find it odd, and somewhat poignant, that we focus so much more (as a society) on police killing people, which if shown to be justifiable is a legal act, whereas nearly every killing of a police officer is an illegal act. I am NOT implying personal bias by anyone here, and i find these lists very compelling and well documented.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:35, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for making that page. However, as described on that page, according to the FBI, only about half of those eligible for the list "killed in the line of duty" died because another person 'feloniously' killed them. There are accidents: you could have a patrol car in normal non-emergency transit skid on ice and hit a tree, for example. That is not an illegal act at least in jurisdictions I'm familiar with, but would put an officer on the List of American police officers killed in the line of duty. That cause of death doesn't lessen the sacrifice they made in service, and their memories should be honored, but the unqualified "every...is an illegal act" just isn't quite true. Similarly, not every killing by a law enforcement officer is illegal (nor legal), and this list doesn't try to judge with respect to inclusion. Thanks again for your edits. --ProtectorServant (talk) 12:43, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

The Guardian is planning to count all police killings
This will be a good resource:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2015/jun/01/the-counted-keeping-count-police

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/the-counted-reaction

75.83.209.135 (talk) 04:08, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Added to the article in this edit. --ProtectorServant (talk) 13:23, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

US Senators propose mandatory tracking of police killings
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/us-senators-call-for-mandatory-reporting-police-killings --75.83.209.135 (talk) 00:02, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Added to the article in this edit. Thanks for finding that! --ProtectorServant (talk) 14:38, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Another important Guardian article today
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/18/police-killings-government-data-count 75.83.209.135 (talk) 15:48, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Added to article as part of this edit. Thanks for the pointer! --ProtectorServant (talk) 14:43, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Upside-down
There is no reason for these lists to be upside-down. All other timeline lists on Wikipedia that I can remember seeing, and even blog-like pages like talk pages, use normal chronological order and I say these should be done the same way. --50.100.188.72 (talk) 20:37, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Most recent at the top - no point scrolling down for most relevant and recent. Trickaphobe (talk) 21:27, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Adding at the top makes editing easier, and you're editing closer to the comment with instructions. A single click on the up arrow in the Date column header will sort in chronological order for anyone who wants that. --ProtectorServant (talk) 13:31, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

My comment seems to follow the same logic as that used in Flow. --ProtectorServant (talk) 15:03, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Date reformat / consistency
Given the year / month structure of the lists, can the date have the year removed and the month/day be in a consistent format? - RoyBoy 15:35, 11 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I've also gone through the articles to set the date format consistently to YYYY-MM-DD for consistency and logical sorting (e.g. see January, February, March, April, May 2015). See my comment immediately below for why it might still be a good idea to keep the month and year parts of the date. --ProtectorServant (talk) 15:00, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I propose merging and creating future lists by quarters to make them much easier to review / navigate? - RoyBoy 16:57, 12 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Months are a better fit for size guidelines and very widely understood time boundaries. However, if anybody wants to see multiple months' tables aggregated together, they are now set up so that you can transclude the tables into quarterly or other periods as you wish.   I've made it especially easy to get the set for a full year (with or without article framing) by dropping one of the following single lines onto [ your sandbox] or a subpage of your User pages:


 * (all monthly tables for a given year, template page here)


 * OR


 * (includes some framing, template page here).
 * --ProtectorServant (talk) 15:04, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

This article discussed at Politico
This page was discussed in the following article on Politico:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/diy-effort-police-shootings-118796.html?hp=m3

They say, among other stuff, this (they think this page is called "Officer-involved shootings"):

Regardless, Burghart’s Fatal Encounters, the officer-involved shootings Wikipedia page and the Killed by Police Facebook page are sources frequently mentioned in news reports as the most reliable alternatives to official data. 75.83.209.135 (talk) 22:44, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Suicides?
I noticed some suicides by law enforcement officers on these lists. While they were undoubtedly killed by law enforcement officers, I'm not quite sure if they really make sense in the context of this list. Titanium Dragon (talk) 07:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

The Counted: the definitive map of US police killings in 2015 | US news | The Guardian
This seems like this would be an excellent resource for this article. I have not been editing this article (yet), but I thought I would pass this along.

Peaceray (talk) 15:27, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

FBI to start counting killings properly
You guys are doing good work here. Maybe you can use this: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/09/fbi-launch-new-system-count-people-killed-police-officers-the-counted 75.83.209.135 (talk) 04:16, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Confusing sentence
This is unclear: " In these states, the rate of killings by law enforcement officers were higher above national averages than any other cause of death considered." Maurreen (talk) 06:23, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Improper casing
The second paragraph has some improper casing, but I can't figure out how to get to it to fix the problem. Maurreen (talk) 05:05, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to add, there is a sentence "The Guardian is runs The Counted", which is also inaccessible because the content is stored in another page somewhere. This is problematic. --99.245.155.181 (talk) 21:51, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

arab american "race" and other assorted issues with this garbage
This seems to be some garbage cooked up by the guardian and nothing mroe than self-referenced trash pretending to be relevant. White or mixed race people are called black. Black hispanics are called black. And arab american magically becomes a race. This article should be nuked since it's nothing more than racist political BS trying to pretend to be anything but. And what is exactly encyclopedic about this anyway? 99% of these are not even notable by wikipedia's own supposed standards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.89.113.102 (talk) 21:46, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Editing issue
I tried editing by clicking on Edit at the top of the page, but it does not appear to show the actual text.

I wanted to correct this line "The Guardian newspaper is runs database,The Counted," which is grammatically incorrect, however that line appears nowhere in the text displayed in the editor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.0.92.43 (talk) 20:06, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Washington Post counts
Have you seen this page at the Washington Post? They report 990 people for 2015. --Big_iron (talk) 15:33, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

How are these lists?
I don't understand how these are lists when they don't actually ... list anything. Hires an editor (talk) 11:47, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
 * If I had to guess, there's a secret spot you can click to open the list... hidden somewhere in the nonsensical blather used to drown the issue. (If you'd like to challenge my assertion, please start by explaining why "puppycide" is relevant to a list of killings - human killings, if you want to play disingenuous word games - by LEOs?)
 * That way, whoever is camping/owning these articles can claim they didn't POV-wallpaper over the originals. 2001:558:600A:4B:78C0:A7BD:D471:9409 (talk) 17:20, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah, my mistake. I see now that the lists were split into trees to make them much less embarrassingly long. If you click on the tiny little months in blue (how clever), you get to see them.
 * This shows a sad lack of effort, though. If the owners want to keep these articles completely irrelevant, they should probably start auto-generating pages to list people killed by day and maybe even by hour. Bonus points: Giant pain in the butt for anyone trying to add an entry to find the exact moment of death, the owners get to wear down neutral editors for months with faux arguments over which minute a killing should be categorized under (shot or died? SRS BSNS!), and maybe they can persuade an uninvolved admin to deep-six them permanently. 2001:558:600A:4B:78C0:A7BD:D471:9409 (talk) 17:34, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Before anyone starts explaining good faith and how we're all working together toward the same goal, please don't waste your time. I believe in a pillar WP lost long ago: The duck principle.
 * If it looks like a pile of BS, smells like a pile of BS, attracts flies like a pile of BS, and squishes like a pile of BS, I'm not going to demand mass spectroscopy and a 500-page report requiring 3 months before I boot the guy who keeps carting it into my house. 2001:558:600A:4B:78C0:A7BD:D471:9409 (talk) 17:45, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Unclear comments about specific states
The statement ''..killings by law enforcement officers (not including legal executions) was the most distinctive cause of death in Nevada, New Mexico, and Oregon from 2001 to 2010. In these states, the rate of killings by law enforcement officers was higher above national averages.. '' is problematic in two aspects and requires clarification.
 * What is meant by "most distinctive"?
 * It is not surprising that some states would be "higher above (sic) national average. Unless all states had the exact same rate, some state(s) would have to be above average.
 * Please explain if this is significant, and provide the actual rates so readers can understand if this is just a statistical anomaly, or if there is a meaningful difference.
 * There is inevitably a link between criminality and encounters with law enforcement. It would help to put any differences in rates of police shooting someone into context by providing information on crime rates, esp. violent crime, or crimes where suspects are apprehended with firearms or other weapons.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.1.89 (talk) 05:51, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

You need to look at this article in the guardian today
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/04/police-killed-people-fbi-data-justifiable-homicides 75.83.209.135 (talk) 00:33, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Why?
Please don't just paste links and tell people they need to visit some web site. It is very lazy and is difficult to distinguish from spam. Please provide some notion of why one would follow your order/instruction to go to a non-Wikipedia web site. I.e. Provide a short synopsis and cite the orional source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.1.89 (talk) 05:56, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Move up "Lists of Killings" section
I'd like to move the section "Lists of Killings" from the bottom of the article up to the top, directly below the introduction. Right now they look like some extra stuff at the bottom, instead of the actual content of the article. Thoughts? -Michellecornelison (talk) 03:23, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Go for it. WP:BOLD DIY Editor (talk) 07:10, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Database Cohesiveness & Overall Review
In the very beginning of the article, it is noted that The Guardian runs its own newspaper database denoting all the deaths caused by law enforcement. In their database, they include state, gender, race of victim, age, classification, etc. It also notes whether the victim was armed or not when they were killed. I think it would be extremely beneficial to add additional columns information to your List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States so that readers can gather all the information at one glance. For the ease of the reader, it would be helpful to synchronize the lists from The Guardian to the lists embedded on this page.

Additionally, the statement "Within the limits set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Tennessee v. Garner, authority to use deadly force in the line of duty is granted by state law to state and local law enforcement agencies" is somewhat confusing. Yes, the supreme court ruling gave clarification to states about using deadly force in the line of duty. However, this permission of action was not granted by state law, it was granted by the supreme court (federal law), and is enforced by the state law.

Overall, I found this article to be very interesting and well researched. However, I think that it could use a little bit of updating. I think that it would be worth creating a section on new legislation that states or organizations are trying to enact to better protect citizens from law enforcement deadly force. Also, another aspect that I think should be considered is the role of social media in the cases of death - were the law enforcement officers wearing a body cam, or was it captured on a dash cam? Were there any witnesses that captured the act on their personal device(s)? These aspects should be considered because they often play a big role in these cases.

Meaghanfrost (talk) 20:02, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Article Commentary
Really appreciated how neutral this article was throughout. It's no secret that this is a very sensitive topic for many and with our political division at the height that it is it's nice to see a well-written non-biased article on such a controversial issue. I did feel that there was a lack of follow-up on the 2015 bill that was introduced to the senate. What came of it? Also, seeing as how divisive this issue is I think the mentioning of the introducer of the bill would be in order. As well as highlighting its strong supporters or dissenters, specifically because new visitors to this page are most likely going to want some understanding of the current situation in congress. Thanks everyone for your contribution. Jonesmal (talk) 04:04, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Overall Review of the Article
One of the things that I was impressed by was the level of neutrality that appeared throughout the article. Since this is such a controversial topic it is important that the information being provided is as neutral as possible. I also found this article to be very informative. I feel like the information being provided is well researched and is coming from appropriate sources. One area though that I think needs a bit more information is the government data collection section. I feel like more information could be added about why the United States did not keep track of excessive force by police for so long. Were there any reasons why only starting in the 90s Congress decided to mandate that a department start collecting data? I will also add that when I clicked on the URL for footnote 7 in the references section, that website said that the information had been moved. So, another source for that information will need to be cited. Other than these couple of things, thank you everyone for your hard work.Thomascovenant (talk) 15:38, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

This is a very neutral article that is well written. In the summary at the beginning, please understand that sex and gender are two different things. The writer refers to gender, which is man/woman, but states sex (male/female). This can be very offensive to your readers. Also, it talks about the database being updated through 2016. Since we are in a new year, is the database still being updated? Is 2016 still accurate or is the database being updated through 2017? Try to keep articles updated. Dezhadial (talk) 16:13, 2 February 2017 (UTC)DezhaDial

Article Commentary
As mentioned above, I really appreciate the neutrality of this article. The further away we move from bias, the closer we get to solving these types of issues at their roots. One general edit that I would make to this article is to change slightly the scope of the research. While this is difficult without a full host of valid, transparent, and reliable information, I believe that these instances should be filtered by cause, or apparent cause. By separating instances in which a "Kill Order" was given to a law enforcement officer with those in which the cause of death is less known, we can differentiate between cases in which we know the agents of the state acted with the purpose or the intent to kill and those in which we cannot determine intent. Csamc (talk) 19:25, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Illustration
The figures in the illustration should be explained better. I am sure, they have their logic, but at the moment they are highly confusing. E.g. in North Dacota, as I read the figures, from 2/1/2015 to 8/11/2016, there were killed 0.000001671 to 0.000003266 percent of the population — a fraction of a ten-millionth of a population of less than 750'000. So, did police officers in ND kill 2% of a single person in that time span? Did they do it with the balls or with the soul? Thanks for clarification. yours, Ciciban (talk) 06:27, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Source suggestions
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/

Lsangmin (talk) 07:40, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

https://fatalencounters.org/spreadsheets/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Degiovanni (talk • contribs) 22:38, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Degiovanni 22:40, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Misleading
The numbers in the table are a bit misleading if you read the article too quickly: it suggests huge spikes in the killings where there is a sad consistency. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/. Basically the number of killings has been stable around 1000 per year for a while. 429 people have been killed in 2020 so far. However, because our lists are not even close to complete, reporting those counts sends a wrong signal. We should instead use a source like WaPo and report those monthly statistics. (I don't object to maintaining the lists, but the numbers) effeietsanders 22:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems to be a common issue, a few others and I have updated things so that it states the numbers are what we are reporting, not the official counts. Primefac (talk) 19:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Much appreciated. effeietsanders 19:45, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Title
Since this is a list of lists, shouldn't the title be "List of lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:8C3:C000:3D00:C44D:5D73:7E38:E3FC (talk) 06:03, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Not likely. Just going off a similar group of pages (from a field I'm involved in) this is pretty standard naming; to put a rather confusing spin on it, the "list of" in your proposal is essentially redundant. Primefac (talk) 13:43, 12 December 2020 (UTC)