U.S. Police Firearm Usage Statistics

April 17, 2007 12:43 PM

Where can one find good statistics on the use of firearms by police officers in the line of duty for the States?

A friend and I were discussing the recent events in Virginia. He is from Denmark and quoted an interesting statistic concerning the use of guns by police in his home country. He stated that in a recent year, only 70 rounds of ammunition were used by police officers in the line of duty for the entire year.

I suggested that contrary to popular belief the same is probably true in most U. S. cities as well. I feel that gun usage by police is a last resort situation and very uncommon.

Any thoughts on where I could educate myself more on the subject? Google, it does nothing.

posted by NotMyself to law & government (6 comments total)

I haven't time to look through all their publications right now, but, if such statistics exist, the U.S. DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics is probably the place to look.
posted by cerebus19 at 1:01 PM on April 17, 2007

Well it might be tough to find out how many rounds were shot in the line of duty, it might not be difficult to find out how many incidents of the police using their weapons. The operative search terms are "Officer involved shooting" or "Officer related shooting". For example, here is an article on Las Vegas shootings that gives an idea of what has happened in previous years.
posted by mmascolino at 1:13 PM on April 17, 2007

Also, this probably won't help with statistics but there is a book, Into the Kill Zone: A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force which contains primary source interviews with dozens of cops that have been involved in shootings. Basically it covers their thoughts on deadly force before becoming police officers, their training, accounts of when they pulled the trigger, when they didn't pull the trigger eventhough their rules would have allowed it and then the aftermath of those decisions. The first two sections (prior thoughts and training are very dry and not enlightening but the rest of the book was very educational.
posted by mmascolino at 1:20 PM on April 17, 2007

This article indicates that about 600 people are killed by US police each year. (2nd paragraph of the first answer)

I would assume that the majority of those would be from gun shots, and that in most incidents more than one round is fired, though I have nothing to base that on.
posted by jjb at 2:33 PM on April 17, 2007

Denmark:
5,450,661 population 70 rounds
USA:
298,444,215 population probably around 6000 rounds (10 shots per shooting)

77,867 people per shot

49,741 people per shot

not all that huge a difference
posted by Megafly at 3:17 PM on April 17, 2007

Someone was just telling me the other day that the average beat cop will fire his gun only once in his career.

No stats to back this up, though :(
posted by Afroblanco at 4:20 PM on April 17, 2007