Since the year 2000, there have been more than 14,000 documented deaths involving law enforcement officers in the United States.
More than 75 per cent of those were caused by gunshots, according to a database called Fatal Encounters.
The project -- which combines information from researchers, public record requests and crowdsourced data -- also show a steady rise in deaths involving police officers over the past 15 years.
Note that these numbers only indicate that a death occurred and don’t show whether the death was deemed to be justified. For example, a "suicide by cop" would be included in this data, as well as cases under investigation like the recent shooting of Philando Castile.
D. Brian Burghart, the creator of the project, also notes that his records are only about 60 per cent complete. He estimates there have been approximately 22,700 deaths involving police since 2000.
In the U.S., the chances of a police officer being involved in a death changes depending on what state you’re in. In Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York, for example, there have been fewer than 7 officer-involved deaths per 1,000,000 people since 2013.
But in New Mexico and Washington D.C., that number shoots up to over 36 per 1,000,000 people.
Race, too, plays a factor. Compared to the white population, nearly four times as many black people per capita are killed when an officer is involved.
And while the vast majority of deaths are caused by gunshots, vehicles and Tasers also account for a portion of the 14,000 incidents.
Note: a previous version of this story compared state and race statistics from 2000-2016, however, data is incomplete for some states before 2013. State and race data has been updated to include only numbers from 2013-2016.
