When the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer sparked weeks of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, many Americans were shocked to learn for the first time that there was no accurate, comprehensive data available on shootings by police officers around the country.
Despite decades of complaints about police brutality, despite allegations of disproportionate violence against people of color and stories of trigger-happy cops shooting unarmed black men, the FBI, which compiles crime statistics, did not require local police to provide the bureau with complete information.
That gaping lack of data meant that Americans were in the dark about the scope of the problem – and that police were that much less accountable for their actions.
That’s when The Washington Post, to its credit, stepped in to gather information about every fatal shooting by police, including the race, gender and age of the person killed and the circumstances of the shootings.
Last week, as the Black Lives Matter protests continued and the debates over defunding the police were beginning, that information became painfully relevant again, and the Post updated its analysis of what it has collected in its now 5 1/2-year-old database.