Over half of police-involved deaths in U.S. since 1980 not reported: study

The study also said that Black Americans were 3.5 times more likely to die from police violence than white Americans.

A new study claims that more than half the deaths caused by police violence over nearly four decades were not reported in the U.S.

The Lancet, a peer-reviewed journal, found that the US National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), which collects and organizes all death certificates in the U.S., failed to accurately classify and report 17,100 deaths caused by police violence out of a total 30,800 deaths between 1980-2018 — or 55.5 per cent of all deaths at the hands of police.

The study also said that Black Americans were 3.5 times more likely to die from police violence than white Americans over that same time period, and are the race most likely to face fatal police violence.

It came to its conclusions by comparing the NVSS’s data with three non-governmental, open-sourced databases — Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence and The Counted — which collect their data from news reports and public record requests.

“Recent high-profile police killings of Black people have drawn worldwide attention to this urgent public health crisis, but the magnitude of this problem can’t be fully understood without reliable data,” said co-lead author Fablina Sharara in a statement.

“Inaccurately reporting or misclassifying these deaths further obscures the larger issue of systemic racism that is embedded in many US institutions, including law enforcement. Currently, the same government responsible for this violence is also responsible for reporting on it.”

Sharara praised the value of open-sourced data and recommended that it be used to influence policies, rather than solely relying on government data.

The study doesn’t give a clear reason as to why the deaths have been unreported but did note that often medical examiners and coroners are embedded within police departments, which can lead to “substantial conflicts of interest,” in which certifiers do not label the cause of death as from police violence.