The number of police-involved lethal force incidents in the U.S. dropped 24% from 2021 to 2023, according to research from the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The Cline Center's SPOTLITE project has compiled nearly a decade's worth of data to track and identify police uses of lethal force across the U.S.
The SPOTLITE dataset is the most comprehensive nationwide accounting of police uses of lethal force available today, said Scott Althaus, the Merriam Professor of Political Science at Illinois and the director of the Cline Center. It includes any incident in which police used a firearm - including those with nonfatal outcomes - as well as any other use of force that resulted in a death.
No other database captures police uses of lethal force with both fatal and nonfatal outcomes at national scale, according to the researchers.
In 2021, SPOTLITE data showed 3,474 uses of lethal force by police in the U.S. In 2022, that number had decreased to 2,842 incidents; and in 2023, the number dropped further to 2,631. The 2,631 incidents of police uses of lethal force tracked by SPOTLITE in 2023 represented the smallest annual number since 2015, when there were 2,612 incidents nationwide.
"Police uses of lethal force have decreased dramatically since 2021," Althaus said. "We don't know why we're seeing this decrease. Our role is to rigorously document these incidents so that others can use SPOTLITE data to better understand what is happening around the country and why."
SPOTLITE was designed to fill an important gap in the American public's understanding of policing in the U.S., as there is no official dataset compiled by governmental sources that documents the full range of such incidents at national scale, the researchers said.
Instead of relying on data supplied by law enforcement agencies, the SPOTLITE project culls information from local news reports of police shooting incidents, police pursuits and other uses of police force that result in a death to provide initial details of what happened, where and to whom. The researchers also leveraged artificial intelligence and machine learning to augment the work of human analysts.
The interdisciplinary team of scholars and experts spearheading the SPOTLITE project includes Althaus; Joseph Bajjalieh, a senior research manager at the Cline Center; Jay Jennings, the assistant director of research and a research scientist at the Cline Center; Michael Martin, a senior research coordinator at the Cline Center; Jennifer K. Robbennolt, the Alice Curtis Campbell Professor of Law at Illinois; Ajay Singh, the assistant director of strategic research initiatives and a research scientist at the Cline Center; and dozens of undergraduate and graduate student researchers who have worked since 2017 to compile the database.
This latest release of SPOTLITE data also offers for the first time a comprehensive picture of the demographic characteristics of civilians involved in police uses of lethal force across the U.S.
Combining incident records from 2022 and 2023, the racial composition of all civilians involved in police uses of lethal force across the country who could be identified using name and image information breaks down as follows, in order of frequency:
- 47.1% white (1,926 individuals).
- 35.1% Black (1,437 individuals).
- 16.6% Hispanic (681 individuals).
- 1.2% Asian/Pacific Islander (48 individuals).
No Native American individuals were identified, but this is likely due to news reporting practices in tribal jurisdictions and the difficulty of identifying Native American individuals based on name and image data alone, the researchers noted.
The civilians involved in police uses of lethal force in the U.S. from 2022-23 and for whom gender could be ascribed using name and image information were overwhelming male (91.1% or 3,965 individuals).
"Our team reviewed more than 50,000 news reports to produce these data," Singh said. "It's a huge amount of work because it spans every one of the 3,144 counties in the U.S."
The SPOTLITE project seeks to improve police accountability and rebuild public trust in law enforcement.
"More than a thousand people die in encounters with law enforcement every year, and some studies have suggested that at least that number have survived being shot by police each year as well," Jennings said. "But in most areas of the country we haven't really known how many shooting incidents might have occurred that didn't result in deaths."
The SPOTLITE project originates from calls for police accountability and reform in the aftermath of fatal police shootings involving unarmed Black citizens. Ultimately, it will afford communities throughout the U.S. access to data that supports evidenced-based police reform - a pivotal first step in addressing long-standing concerns about racial inequities in policing and rebuilding trust between police and the communities they serve, Althaus said.
"The SPOLITE project is nonadvocacy and nonpartisan," Althaus said. "We don't call for change or reform. Our role is to authoritatively document what is happening in ways that can benefit communities around the country. In addition to improving accountability between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve, we aim to help law enforcement agencies by providing rich incident details that can be used to improve training, develop model use of force policies and increase the safety of both officers and civilians who are involved in policing encounters."
"SPOTLITE remains a work in progress. We have compiled data up through 2023 so far, but we're not done yet," Robbennolt said. "We're actively looking for funding to bring SPOTLITE data up to the present, with national data that can be released in nearly real time, and with a level of detail that helps to inform research and conversations about policing across the country."
The SPOTLITE project was partially funded by the Chancellor's Call to Action to Address Racism & Social Injustice Research Program as part of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion's antiracism initiatives. Other support was provided by the Center for Social & Behavioral Science; the Joyce Foundation; Microsoft; the Nerad Student Research Fund; the David F. Linowes Fellows Fund; Paul O'Connor and Karin Dommermuth O'Connor; the David C. Colby Endowment Fund; and from private donors in support of the Cline Center's mission.
The interactive SPOTLITE dashboard is available at http://www.spotlite.illinois.edu/.
