US police killings reached record high in 2022 making it deadliest year on record

Police in the United States killed an estimated 1,176 people in 2022, an average of more than three people a day and 100 people every month last year 2022, making it the deadliest year with respect to police brutality and violence, according to the new data published by the non-profit research group, Mapping Police Violence. Law enforcement authorities in California are twice as likely to use force and coercion on people of colour compared with the white population, the analysis revealed. 

There were 31 additional police violence-related fatalities in the year 2022 than the previous year 2021 when nearly 1,145 people were killed. In 2020 police killed 1,152 people. In 2019 an estimated 1,097 people were killed, 1,140 in 2018, and 1,089 in 2017. The data was first tracked in the year 2013. The cause of the death was either fatally shot dead, tortured, beaten, restrained or Tasered. The database that tracks police brutality listed 2022 as a year with record killings in the United States. Police violence came under the radar after the murder of George Floyd which sparked the Black Lives Matter demonstrations calling for racial justice and police reforms by defunding. 

"Trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 1,060 civilians having been shot, 220 of whom were Black, as of December 20, 2022," said Statistica in its analysis. 

1,055 fatal police shootings recorded in 2022

At least 1,055 fatal police shootings were recorded in 2022, 1,020 fatal shootings the year prior, as per the Statistica analysis. "Rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 5.9 fatal shootings per million of the population per year between 2015 and December 2022," the agency stated. It analyzed that most of the shootings intensified after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. Violence by the police particularly rose in the Hampton Roads area, hitting a new high in 2022, according to local broadcaster 13newsnow's data that cited trove of data gathered from the police departments, and the FBI. "That is double the amount from just a decade ago and the worst year on record for the region, according to FBI data which dates back to 1985," the outlet noted. 

The project linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, Mapping Police Violence, stated that there were 12 days without a single police killing last year in 2022. Of the total killings recorded, at least 132 victims hadn’t been suspected of a crime, and 98  were killed at the traffic signals. While Black constitute just 13% of the total population in the US, 24% of them were killed. A total of 323 officers were also shot in the line of duty across the US in 2022, the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) report stated.