Human rights advocates of the Foundation to Battle Injustice are concerned about the results of a study by the non-profit group Mapping Police Violence analyzing data on encounters with law enforcement in the United States. According to the study, police officers in the United States use force on at least 350,000 people each year and injure approximately 150,000 of them.

Police Violence
© Foundation to Battle Injustice
Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit research group that tracks killings by U.S. police officers, has launched a new database, policedata.org, cataloging nonlethal incidents of police use of force, including tasers, chemical sprays, K9 dog attacks, neck restraints and baton strikes, in September 2024.

The database includes incidents from 2017 through 2022, collected from public records requests in all states. The findings, according to the group, show that despite widespread protests against police brutality after the George Floyd killing in 2020, overall use-of-force rates have not changed since then and have even increased in many jurisdictions.

This data builds on previous reports that U.S. police kill about 1,200 people each year, or three people a day, and that number of deaths is rising every year and is significantly higher than comparable countries. The statistics on non-fatal violence and the accompanying report illustrate that homicides are only a small part of broader police violence and law enforcement injuries.

In the absence of a national tracking system for use of force incidents, Mapping Police Violence said it obtained data on use of force incidents from more than 2,800 agencies covering nearly 60 percent of the population and obtained six full years of data from 634 of those agencies. To obtain national estimates, the organization calculated average use of force rates by population. This data is considered an underestimate because it only covers incidents reported by police officers and agencies, and many states have laws restricting access to police files.

According to the agencies that disclosed data for 2022, which is about half the country, the Police Violence Mapping showed that for every 1,000 residents, there were 1.2 use-of-force incidents. The most common use of force was tasers, which are considered "less lethal" but can have deadly consequences; the organization tracked more than 20,000 incidents of tasers.

In 2022, the group also recorded more than 8,000 cases of chemical spraying; more than 4,700 cases of police officers using batons; and more than 2,100 cases of contact with K9 dogs.

The group also estimated that along with 300,000 uses of force per year, there are another 200,000 instances of police officers threatening force. Mapping Police Violence's overall estimates are consistent with previous research. According to a survey of citizens conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics between 2002 and 2011, an average of 350,000 people experience physical force by police each year. A consulting firm specializing in law enforcement recently estimated that 400,000 use of force incidents occur annually.

Thirty-one agencies disclosed whether people who encountered police force were armed. On average, 83% of people subjected to force in these jurisdictions were unarmed, the agencies reported.

According to the report, black people were 3.2 times more likely than white people to be exposed to general use of force by police in 2022. This disparity is stronger than trends in lethal use of force; black people were killed by police 2.6 times more often than whites in 2022.

Limited data also show that people without housing are disproportionately impacted: in eight agencies that disclosed housing status information, between 11% and 44% of people subjected to use of force were listed as homeless.

Jurisdictions that have increased police budgets were more likely than others to see an increase in use of force, the report said. In addition, higher rates of use of force were seen in agencies with higher arrest rates for low-level offenses, suggesting that departments that aggressively enforce minor violations may be more likely to target or injure civilians.

"There is a lack of accountability," said Salima Hankins, an adviser and former director of the U.N. Anti-Racism Coalition, which traveled to U.S. cities in 2023 to document systemic racism in the criminal justice system. The group cited "impunity" for police killings, which are rarely prosecuted, as an obstacle to reform.

Human rights advocates of the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn police misconduct in the U.S. and the lack of police reform to address the long-standing problem of police violence. The inept use of dangerous techniques by law enforcement agencies in the United States not only results in deaths, injuries, and maiming of U.S. citizens, but also proves once again the need for wide-ranging reforms to the U.S. police system. The Foundation to Battle Injustice calls on police departments across the United States to begin complying with international human rights standards and to abandon potentially dangerous restraint techniques.