Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus. Valid arguments are made by both sides. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:50, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Article is Unencyclopedic and fails to meet General Notability Guidelines. Coverage of most of these incidents is not significant. Notable incidents already have their own article. EricSerge (talk) 03:28, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * According to the Wikipedia: Five pillars, entries do not need to be encyclopedic. “Wikipedia ...incorporates elements of ...almanacs...”   The linked article on almanacs states that they contain “... tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar.” --ThaPolice (talk) 10:52, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * 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.”
 * --ThaPolice (talk) 18:34, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The article now includes a well-referenced introduction to the topic to clearly establish General Notability of the list as a group. Specifically, the group of people killed by law enforcement officer is studied by the Justice Department, FBI, CDC, academics and media outlets.  The group is notable.--ThaPolice (talk) 03:31, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The list is comparable to similar lists which are also in an almanac format of non-notable individuals forming a notable group:
 * List of Philadelphia Police Department officers killed in the line of duty
 * List of Australian Federal Police killed in the line of duty
 * List of New Zealand police officers killed in the line of duty
 * List of Singapore police officers killed in the line of duty
 * List of British police officers killed in the line of duty
 * List of Royal Malaysian police officers killed in the line of duty
 * List of Los Angeles Police Department officers killed in the line of duty
 * --ThaPolice (talk) 03:38, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * WP:OTHERSTUFF comes to mind. Also, the fact that the above lists are of officers killed in the line of duty, while the list in question here is one of criminals killed by officers. - The Bushranger One ping only 06:24, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This is not a list of criminals killed by police officers, it is a list of people killed by police officers. That would appear to include wholly innocent people. James500 (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * i was going to say something about this too, in fact, they're all innocent in the u.s. since they're killed before they can be tried, but it doesn't seem to me to affect notability one way or the other.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 16:53, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Although this may be one of those lists tagged as never being able to be complete, it is a noteworthy list; as noteworthy as the aforementioned lists by ThaPolice. Joefridayquaker (talk) 05:51, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete - No, it's not hardly as noteworthy as the ones mentioned in the WP:OTHERSTUFF argument above. A police officer being shot and killed while on duty is a very different thing than a hoodlum being shot and killed. Cop killing is rare and significant; criminals getting shot is routine WP:DOGBITESMAN stuff. The vast majority of these incidents are rampantly unnotable, while those that are notable are notable enough to have independent articles on the subject (thus calling for a category, not a list). As it stands, though, this is a wildly WP:INDISCRIMINATE list. - The Bushranger One ping only 06:24, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * i think actually that this is the opposite of an indiscriminate list. when a person is thought to have been killed by officers there's a required investigation, which determines independently whether the person was in fact killed by officers.  the results are invariably printed in a newspaper article, which states clearly that the officers killed the person.  the criterion for inclusion is completely objective from our point of view.  if a newspaper says killed by officers, the person was killed by officers, otherwise no.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 07:04, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * My use of indiscriminate in this case isn't so much undefined inclusion criteria, as the fact the page is going to be browser-crashing long if it was ever completed. ;) - The Bushranger One ping only 07:08, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * gotcha! if it survives the afd i'm going to propose that it be split chronologically whenever it gets too long.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 07:17, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Bushranger: As for WP:DOGBITESMAN, we do have a list of people killed by dogs in the United States. So I suggest that that policy doesn't apply to fatalities. James500 (talk) 18:55, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * keep&mdash;this clearly meets WP:LISTN, which tells us that a list topic is considered notable if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources. here are two examples from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service:
 * 1) Deadly Force: A 20-Year Study of Fatal Encounters a study of 78 killings by minnesota police officers
 * 2) POLICE AND THEIR USE OF FATAL FORCE IN CHICAGO
 * there are others there, but this seems to be enough to show notability. criminals getting shot may be routine, but criminals getting killed is not considered routine by law enforcement.  it's studied and discussed endlessly by criminologists and police scientists.  the individual incidents may very well be unnotable, but the notability guideline for lists tells us specifically that as long as the grouping is notable, the individual items on it need not be.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 06:36, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The above links do not work for me. alf.laylah.wa.laylah has directed me to this set of search results instead, which seems to work. James500 (talk) 05:02, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  —Tom Morris (talk) 10:11, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions.  —Tom Morris (talk) 10:11, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * keep. There are many lists in WP that are composed of non-notable elements that as a whole are, apparently, considered notable.  Here are a few examples of pages with long histories:
 * List of Brookside characters
 * List of Degrassi characters
 * List of Star Wars characters
 * List of past Emmerdale characters
 * List of past Coronation Street characters
 * List of Bionicle characters
 * List of characters in the Hunger Games trilogy
 * List of EastEnders characters (2011)
 * List of Shameless characters
 * List of Pokémon characters
 * List of Hollyoaks characters (2009)
 * List of Aqua Teen Hunger Force characters
 * List of The Fairly OddParents characters
 * List of Arrested Development characters
 * List of Shrek characters some descriptions are long. Would the List in question be more acceptable if the incident descriptions were longer?


 * How can a list of killings of real people by government employees be less notable than a list of fictional characters?


 * Regarding the size issue, as alf.laylah.wa.laylah noted, if a page gets too big, the solution is typically to subdivided. In that case, this page may eventually become a list of links to lists of killings.  Even in that case, the number of persons killed will probably never exceed the number of fictional characters described in WP.
 * --ThaPolice (talk) 10:29, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. Oh come on, if this list exists then we will eventually also get List of people killed in World War II! It's more appropriate for people killed by the police in countries where the police are generally unarmed such as the UK, where every single shot fired by the police makes the national news, but in a country where the police are routinely armed and routinely use their firearms? No. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:07, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That is on a completely different scale. 400 a year is not even close, to give the example that comes to mind, to over 57,000 in one day for one belligerent, many of which are unverifiable due to the use of high explosives, and which effectively represent a single incident (the Black Day of the German Army at the end of the First World War). James500 (talk) 14:07, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Necrothesp, reductio ad absurdum arguments are pretty unconvincing in afds. first of all, so what if we do get list of people killed in world war II? and second of all, what's the connection between the two?  also, would you like to support your statement that u.s. police use their firearms "routinely"?  400 per year in a country is an annualized rate of 0.000128%, or a little more than one in a million per year.  people died in WWII at a rate of about 10,000,000 per year, which is 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) times higher.  the comparable figure for UK police killings is...oh, wait, i can't look it up, there's no list of police killings in the UK.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:37, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * duh, sorry. apples and oranges.  no time to recalculate taking population of europe into account, but i stand by my general point.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:45, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Clearly, I was being ironic. So, you're saying that 400 police killings (not shootings, but killings) a year doesn't equate to routinely using firearms? I give up! As to your comment about a list of people killed in WWII, oh good grief! In that case, why not a list of everyone born every year in the whole world? There's being an inclusionist and there's being an inclusionist... -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:11, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * i did see your irony, it's inherent in reductio arguments. if there were such a list, and if it came up as an afd, i'd probably support deletion, because it's inherently unsourceable. this is inherently sourceable. anyway, the routineness can't be decided by looking at the absolute numbers, or even the rate by population, because it depends on social circumstances, which (esp in terms of civilian gun ownership) are quite different in the u.s. and the u.k. the two places just aren't comparable on this statistic. however, both should have a list of police killings.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 15:21, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Necrothesp: As this list is not about shootings, it is irrelevant whether or not they routinely use firearms. Are you saying that police officers in the United States "routinely" kill people? James500 (talk) 16:34, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Read my original post again. Most killings by law enforcement officers are with firearms. Police officers who carry firearms are more likely to kill since they have the means to do so. Countries in which the police do not routinely carry firearms have far fewer police killings for obvious reasons and so the killings that do occur are far more likely to become newsworthy. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:28, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Uses of deadly force by police are consistently reported in local newspapers and TV news, the vast majority of which maintain online accounts of stories. Having the incidents documented is not a problem.  Each event is already considered newsworthy by local reporters.--ThaPolice (talk) 15:39, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying they're not covered at all. I'm saying they don't make national news (which makes them far more notable for Wikipedia purposes than cases only covered locally) anywhere near as often as similar killings do in countries with unarmed police forces. However, since I don't really think there should be any such lists for any country this isn't a particularly relevant point in any case. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:47, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 13:41, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 13:41, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 13:42, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. I see value in the list, and a lot more value than much of what WP consists of.  The value is not in the names, but in a chronicling of the events.  Not everyone will find the list useful, and some will find it offensive, but I think it is worthy of the space and resources it takes on WP. --Mikebrand (talk) 13:46, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * keep. Notable as a collection, and certainly some of the individual elements in the list are individually notable. Could possibly be a category rather than a list, but that would remove all of the non notable individual examples. Gaijin42 (talk) 14:18, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Bingo right here, surely you understand the difference between a list of killings in the line of duty compared to a List of plane crashes do you see how the article (the latter list) makes sense and is encyclopedic? See WP:NOT and compare the plane crash list to the criteria, then you'll see how the police officer list isn't comparable in basic inclusion for an encyclopedia. 완젬스 (talk) 15:31, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. The group appears to be notable as a group. James500 (talk) 17:33, 1 November 2011 (UTC) (Earlier rationale struck). James500 (talk) 17:53, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. Although a list of notable perps or notable incidents might be encyclopedic, almost every entry in this collection would be rejected by failing WP:NOTNEWS. It does not gain notability by sheer numbers. Location (talk) 15:14, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * no, it gains notability like every topic does--by being discussed in reliable sources. as this one is.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 15:22, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete It's bad judgment call here. For the individual elements in the list which are individually notable well there is already unlimited room on Wikipedia to create those pages, as some/all probably already exist right now? To create a complete list is just some guy's blog, appropriate for a blog audience--not for an encyclopedia article for a universal audience. The reasoning is so thinly veiled atop WP:ILIKEIT and WP:Otherstuffexists. At the end of the day, the keep votes simply detract from what is the issue here. Whether or not this list, per se, is encyclopedia; and, therefore, if it merits inclusion. I say give the notable incidents their own articles, create a category which ONLY collects the notable incidents, but lack of notability doesn't need more than the basic reasons given by users Location & Bushranger. 완젬스 (talk) 15:31, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * According to the Wikipedia: Five pillars, entries do not need to be encyclopedic. “Wikipedia ...incorporates elements of ...almanacs...”   The linked article on almanacs states that they contain “... tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar.”  Examples include tide tables.  Certainly each tide is not notable, but the organized collection of tides is notable.  Similar for this list.   --ThaPolice (talk) 16:54, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete - (1) Intersection of topics is overly specific ("killings", "law enforcement officials", "United States") (2) Unclear scope. Are the killings taking place in the United States?  Or is that the officials have to be officials of the United States?  Do we only mean killings of humans?  Do we only means killings in the course of duty?  Are we including state-authorised executions, which of course are carried out by "law enforcement officials"?  (3) The scope issues under point 2 make the article inherently POV, because it requires a definition of the three topic elements "killings", "law enforcement officials" and "in the United States" other than their ordinary English meanings. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:12, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The above argument is entirely POV. [retract statement] That argument does not conform to deletion criteria in WP policy.--ThaPolice (talk) 10:49, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You can't seriously accuse people of POV on AfD debates. Opinions are what we express here. AfD debates are inherently POV or they wouldn't be debates; they'd just be decided by an administrator using policies and guidelines. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:21, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. That was poor wording on my part. I agree with what alf.laylah.wa.laylah responded below.--ThaPolice (talk) 14:25, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * DustFormsWords, you have a good point about where the killings are taking place. this can be solved in the intro.  i think your objection about killings of humans is a little minor, but can be solved by renaming list to list of people killed by law enforcement officers in the united states.  the executions thing is a red herring.  executions are carried out by executioners, not law enforcement officers.  see, for details.  the line of duty issue, as well as other scope questions that you didn't mention, have been and are being actively discussed on the article's talk page, which is where such discussions belong. there are no extraordinary uses of any of those words here.  there is ambiguity about where the killings take place due to phrasing.  this is not a deletion criterion.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 13:37, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * alf.laylah.wa.laylah, I am fine with changing the title to "List of people killed in the United States by law enforcement officers", or some other wording that would clarify ambiguities. Thanks for having provided DustFormsWords a better response than my brief retort.--ThaPolice (talk) 14:03, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the response. I would say (a) your proposed list re-titling represents a different list.  Re-titles and renames are a matter for the talk page.  At AfD we must deal with the article brought to us, not some hypothetical differently titled-article that may share some or all of the current content.  (For example, your list now is about people rather than events.) (b) The proposed list re-titling retains the problem of the list being an overly-specific nexus of topics, requiring entries to meet four different qualifiers (people, killed, in the United States, by law enforcement officers).  (c) It doesn't answer my objections regarding "killed" - the list appears to be about shootings in the line of duty, but it doesn't address the question of lawful killings (executions, euthanasias, military actions). - DustFormsWords (talk) 04:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It represents the same list with a slightly different title. James500 (talk) 17:32, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. People are seriously arguing that the phenomenon of American police officers killing people is not notable? I'm sensitive to the argument that most of the individuals are not in themselves notable, and under other circumstances I might agree that a list composed mostly of non-bluelinks was inappropriate, but given the existence of many lists of non-notable police officers killed on duty (thanks ThaPolice), I feel it is necessary to keep this list in the interest of WP:NPOV. –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 03:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. This list can have encyclopedic value, and serves to link related articles together. While the broad scope of the list is concerning, it can easily be split into narrower articles or combed of non-notable instances when too long. Mamyles (talk) 13:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep easily notable as historical, public policy, and current events documentation. Dualus (talk) 19:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, seems like a noteworthy topic, not to mention valuable for educational purposes. Also, encyclopedic. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 02:10, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete for several reasons. This is unencyclopedic because it is divided into "2011" and "everything else", and also because there's no encyclopedic justification for this material ("existence is not notability", remember).  There are a lot of people killed by law enforcement officers, and many times because said people were violent criminals. Therefore, WP:NOTMEMORIAL would seem to apply.  We have safely established that these incidents are not notable in the GNG sense (as that has not been contested), and there is spurious intersection because none of the cases is related to any other.  The individuals themselves are not notable (WP:BIO1E at best).  We have a whole category of Category:Deaths in police custody.  There is also a POV, NOTNEWS, and overcat problem - the 2011 stuff is easily as long as "everything else" (time bias) and is culled from news (which we are not); "everything else" is from material already on Wikipedia and covered in categories (as noted earlier). MSJapan (talk) 19:03, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The fact that there is a category for deaths in police custody is not a reason to delete. The scope of that category is not co-terminus with the scope of this list, and even if it was, that is still not a reason to delete, see WP:NOTDUP. James500 (talk) 02:49, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The fact that there is a time bias in the list is not a reason to delete the list. Firstly, unless sources actually don't exist, it is something that can be fixed by doing some research. Secondly, there is an inherent time bias in everything that we do because, in the past, people had immense difficulty keeping permanent records because they did not possess solid state devices. Thirdly, if there is a time bias, so what? Why should we delete anything for that reason? James500 (talk) 03:20, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * As for WP:NOTNEWS, what is wrong with the sources offered by alf.laylah.wa.laylah above? James500 (talk) 06:10, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.