Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, 2013


 * 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   keep. Even nom appears to have withdrawn their nomination. However, additional arguments - although wise and policy-based - are not strong enough to overcome the apparent consensus to keep the panda ₯’  23:04, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, 2013

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This article fails notability requirements, lacks references and appears to be original research. Also, the article seems to have been written for the sole purpose of bashing American law enforcement. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 01:10, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment: This list may be unsourced, but the sub-lists "List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, [month] 2013" are referenced. &mdash; KuyaBriBri Talk 01:53, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete all Looking at one of the months, November, it just reads as a news report of people who were killed. "Unidentified male" shot dead "Unnamed male" shot dead. All WP:ROUTINE local news coverage will list any of these events, and I see no real notability in compiling list after list of these articles. There is scope to have a stand-alone article on one individual, if their death had a long-lasting impact, but these are just POV-pushing lists. You don't need to record every single death in list form on WP. I know that none of the sub-pages are tagged for deletion, but this can be used as a test-case for establishing if these articles should be included here. Unless the nominator wishes to add them all to make a group nomination, of course.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 06:45, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep I don't think that the list pushes a POV.  The top of each list specifically states that the list has no implication of wrong-doing and honestly looking through the list most of the killings look pretty reasonable to me.  I would argue that this list is not WP:ROUTINE as anytime that a law enforcement agent kills someone it generates a flurry of news coverage.  The items on the list might not be notable globally, but they are generally very locally notable and at least a few of them have led to long-standing coverage.  If you take for example in the January list there is a mention of a guy named Saylor.  His death has had long-standing repercussions in the community that I live in.  Every few months he appears in a newspaper around here.  People still talk about the incident and events are organised around preventing it from happening again.  While I don't know for sure whether or not every killing by a law enforcement officer generates the same reaction, I imagine that most generate a reasonable amount of long-standing buzz.  These events are relatively rare compared to other types of killings and I don't think they qualify as routine.  I would argue that each of them is at least notable enough to merit a sentence or two on a list even if not notable enough to get an entire article each of their own.  Zell Faze (talk) 11:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment Despite the title states, this isn't actually a list of killing by law enforcement officers. All of the actual listed killings are in other articles. All this article contains is a table showing the number killed per month. The accuracy of this table is in question, as article lacks sources and has a "This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness" tag. It seems like the table was made by the author adding up all of the killing with sources s/he could not, which is inherently inaccurate. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 21:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment The reason that the table exists the way that it does is that it is meant to act as an index in order to access the other pages. Originally there was a single page per year, but as that page got to be too large it was split into pages for each individual month.  You can see that discussion here.  You are correct in how this table is created.  Currently as people add items to the list the number is manually updated.  (Personally, I would love to see a bot do this so that it would be more accurate, as people are indeed prone to miscounting.)  I could add all of the sources to that table if you would like, but I think that would be WP:POINT as the each row in the list would have between 6 and 45 sources at a minimum.  The sources for each of the items listed in the individual lists are on their pages.  According to WP:CITE "sources are required for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged".  I don't really see the number of items in the list (which according to the table header is what the number in the table contains) being material that is likely to be challenged.  I think that having the sources in their respective articles is enough.  If it is decided that the sources either need to appear in this list or be removed entirely then I think it might be best to just remove the number and keep this article as a series of links to the respective lists for each month. Zell Faze (talk) 13:19, 7 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep, per Zell Faze. -- do ncr  am  00:13, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep An unbiased source list of LEO (Law Enforcement Officer) related killings is a valuable item. [Date, Location (City, State), Officer Name, Deceased Name, Information Source] would be ideal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HenryCasch (talk • contribs) 13:55, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Nomination Withdrawn/Keep In light of arguments put forward by Zell faze, I realize that my nomination was in error. I still recommend a clean-up of the entire killings by law enforcement section (seriously, we have 7 lists from months that haven't even happened yet and the table on this article should really highlight where the numbers came from), but deletion is not clean-up. Notability (or at least the point having this page) has been proven, so I no longer endorse page deletion. This would normally mean a speedy keep for this page, but someone besides me has voted delete. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 15:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm of the opinion that the months that haven't happened yet should probably be deleted. I'll raise a separate AfD for that though and link to it from here.  I also agree that as a whole the lists could use cleanup.  Zell Faze (talk) 19:09, 7 May 2014 (UTC)  Other AfD filed.  You can find it here if you'd like to comment. Zell Faze (talk) 20:06, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:39, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:39, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:39, 7 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete It is original research and synthesis to state that 6 people were killed by law enforcement officers in December 2013, for instance, when the listing for each month is admittedly incomplete. This monthly numerical tally makes it look like far fewer were killed in December than in some other months.The numbers stated are inherently wrong and misleading. It is like having an article called "Number of churches in each US state," with a tally based on how many church articles there are for each state.(Not every killing or every church gets included in Wikipedia, so they should not be tallied). The coverage is uneven and is based on the interest of editors in adding killings they read about in media they see. If some reliable and authoritative source exists, such as the Justice Department, some news source, or some society watchdog group, which purports to be comprehensive, and they furnish such a tally, then it could be in an article. Edison (talk) 23:23, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment The article does not state though that 6 people were killed by law enforcement officers in December 2013. It says that the December 2013 article contains 6 entries.  The difference between the two is quite profound.  If there is issue with having the numbers there though they can be removed and the article retained.  The coverage is in fact uneven and based on the editors noticing and being interested in adding items to the list, but that is how Wikipedia works in general.  It is well known that in general coverage of topics on Wikipedia is uneven and based off of the interest of editors.  This doesn't seem to be a problem in other topics and personally I don't think it is applicable here.  Lists on Wikipedia don't need to be comprehensive either.  The fact that the Template:Dynamic list, which is at the top of each article in the series, even exists is testament to that. Zell Faze (talk) 11:29, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment The fact that the December list has 6 items in it is certainly not notable itself and is not something that needs to be published in a secondary Wikipedia article. We do not generally go around writing articles in mainspace about other Wikipedia articles, and it is inappropriate to have a list which merely totals up items of some sort in other articles, when there has been no coverage in independent and reliable sources of how many such killings Wikipedia editors have added for various months. If editors lose interest in the subject, then it will look like such killings have decreased, so far as the general reader is concerned.  If we had a   list by year which did the same thing this one does for months of 2013, per List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States prior to 2009 it would show none for 1983 through 1989, then 2 in 1990. It would show only ONE for the entire 19th century, and NONE for the 18th century., which would also be quite misleading.If that would be unencyclopedic, then this numerical tally is unencyclopedo\ic.  Please DO  take out the deceptive and unencyclopedic numbers of deaths per month from this listing. It is misleading synthesis. There is a clear implication, to the typical reader, that the number in this article is representative of the number of killings in each month. If you want a list of how many entries are in some articles, then add it as a subpage for the relevant project, for the information of project members. It is too self-referential and naval gazing for main space. Do we have any other lists which merely list how many entries have been put in some set of articles? They should also be examined carefully if they exist. If the numbers are removed, is there anything left then, other than the fact that there are 12 distinct months in a year? Let the listings for each month or by year stand on their own merits. Edison (talk) 02:56, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment - notable? yes. WP:SOAP? maybe. Bearian (talk) 19:59, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. Satisfies LISTN. The topic of this list is not inherently POV despite suggestions to the contrary. See the failed AfD for the parent list for more details. James500 (talk) 13:26, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep, as has been pointed out above, the list topic doesn't have inherent POV, although it will have to be watched to make sure that none creeps in. The lack of sources here in this list of articles doesn't strike me as particularly problematic, in much the same way that a lack of sources on a disambig page is acceptable.  Lankiveil (speak to me) 13:28, 17 May 2014 (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.