Requiem for the Uncounted Dead: No Official Tally of Mundanes Killed by Police

William Norman Grigg
Dec. 03, 2014

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer ordered that flags be displayed at half-mast on December 2 in memory of Ernest Montoya, a 54-year-old police officer who died in a car crash two days earlier. Montoya, who served 20 years as a tribal officer with the conquered Navajo Nation, apparently had a heart attack while transporting a prisoner to jail.

Montoya's death is a tragedy for his family and loved ones. Because of his occupation, it was treated as a moment of civic solemnity, and his name will be inscribed among those who "gave their lives" in the service of the public. The same wouldn't be done if he had suffered a fatal heart attack while driving a truck -- an occupation that is statistically much more dangerous than being a police officer, and that unlike law enforcement actually provides a useful public service.

Every on-duty death of a police officer is officially recognized, and most are commemorated in large-scale displays of official mourning that summon memories of state funerals in the old Soviet Union. On-duty deaths of police officers -- including those resulting from accidents and natural causes -- are increasingly uncommon, as are deaths inflicted through violence. Last year, 27 police officers were killed in on-duty homicides, the fewest of any year in the past half-century. Although there was an upward trend during the first half of 2014, this year's casualty count will probably be less than half of what was seen in the typical year four decades ago.

As police "work" has become safer for cops, it has become increasingly deadly for the public at large. No official tally is kept of "civilian" deaths at the hands of police, but estimates of police shootings range from 400 to more than 1,000 a year. Local police departments self-report officer-involved shootings to the FBI, and many of them don't keep extensive records of "justified" shootings. As demonstrated in the case of Darren Wilson and Michael Brown, a police shooting is typically investigated as an "assault on law enforcement," rather than a suspected criminal homicide; this means that such killings are presumptively "justified.”

Nor is it necessary for the victim of a police shooting to be a criminal suspect in order for the killing to be “justified.” As we were recently reminded, "justified" police killings can include the summary execution of a 12-year-old "armed" with a BB gun that had been identified as a toy in the 911 call.

The Wall Street Journal reports that hundreds of police homicides went unreported between 2007 and 2012. Alexia Cooper, a statistician with the Bureau of Justice, told the paper that fewer than 800 of the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies provided lethal force statistics to the FBI.

If the police actually provided a service to the public, they would at the very least keep track of the number of "customers" they kill.