Talk:Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States/Archive 1

Format

The format adopted is to list killings in reverse chronological order (most recent at top) with date in YYYY-MM-DD format. Each entry lists date, name(s), state (city), brief factual description as reported in the media and at least one reference. The reference is either 1) a link to a standalone Wikipedia article, 2) a direct reference to a reliable source or 3) a link to another list in Wikipedia and a direct reference to a reliable source.--LUOF (talk) 13:39, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

1) A person died in the United States.
2) The occurrence of the death is published in a reputable media source.
3) The source explicitly reports that a law enforcement officer was the proximate cause of the death or the article is written in such a manner that a reasonable person would interpret that to be the case.
4) The occurrence is uniquely identifiable. Ideally the date, deceased's name and location (city and state) are known. If all three factors are not known, an entry can meet inclusion criteria if enough data about the occurrence are known to differentiate it from other occurrences in the list. If two similar occurrences cannot be positively differentiated, they should be treated as one occurrence until enough information is known about both occurrences to differentiate them.

Editing Navbox Templates

The links below can be used to access the code of the NavBox templates:
Template:List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, NavBox
Template:List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States 2012, NavBox
Template:List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States 2013, NavBox
Template:List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States 2014, NavBox

Update to links in archived discussion: These templates have since been replaced by a parameterized one, Template:List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, Yearly NavBox. --ProtectorServant (talk) 15:22, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Search terms

Many search engines and newspaper websites allow a Boolean search that can be used to return more relevant results than would a simple search. Searching for articles relevant to this list involves at least two groups of search terms. One set involves the killing of a person, the other set involves the involvement of a law enforcement officer.

• The killing of a person can be described by any one or more of the following terms:
  • died
  • dead
  • death
  • fatal
  • fatally
  • homicide
  • kill
  • killed
  • killing
  • lethal
  • manslaughter

• The involvement of law enforcement can be described by any one or more of the following terms:
  • agent
  • constable
  • custody
  • deputy
  • detective
  • investigator
  • officer
  • police
  • sheriff
  • "special operations"
  • SWAT
  • trooper
  • warden

Google's Advanced Search can be accessed at http://www.google.com/advanced_search or by typing specific syntax into the standard Google search. Terms which are snynonyms are seperataed by an OR and sets of terms that much each be included are separated by an AND. A search phrase that requires one or more terms from both sets of search terms described above looks like this:

(died OR dead OR death OR fatal OR fatally OR homicide OR kill OR killed OR killing OR lethal OR manslaughter) AND (agent OR constable OR custody OR deputy OR detective OR investigator OR officer OR police OR sheriff OR "special operations" OR SWAT OR trooper OR warden)

Limiting to a specific news source

A general Google search for the above terms seems to return results that are judged by Google to be the most interesting to a general audience. Such a search captures the most sensational occurrences, but does a poor job of returning all occurrences. For that reason it is better to search the websites of individual news sources such newspapers and TV news stations. While many news sites allow Boolean searches using their search capabilities, not all sites use the same syntax. For that reason it is probably easier to use Google's search of a site using the syntax site:site_name such as site:denverpost.com.

A search of a news website often returns results which include the search terms but the topic is in regards to an event in another country, or in a movie or book, or within blog or editorial entries. If the newspaper's website is structured to differentiate between the types of articles within the site's URL, then it is possible to refine the search without sacrificing completeness of results. For example, the Denver Post places news articles about the Denver area and the Western United States in the subdirectory /news. Therefore, a search with the term site:denverpost.com/news will return the relevant articles while eliminating many irrelevant articles. For smaller news sites, narrowing of the search to subdirectories is often not possible or may eliminate relevant articles.

The AND term is Google's default, and so is optional. A combined search of all the above concepts of the Denver Post looks like this:

site:denverpost.com/news (died OR dead OR death OR fatal OR fatally OR homicide OR kill OR killed OR killing OR lethal OR manslaughter) (agent OR constable OR custody OR deputy OR detective OR investigator OR officer OR police OR sheriff OR "special operations" OR SWAT OR trooper OR warden)

Rationale for Deletion

I am proposing that this article be deleted. This is a highly inflammatory list that may be subject to individuals choosing to vent their anger at the police. Even the name of this article is inflammatory because it suggests that the deaths of the individuals are the direct result of law enforcement officers. In short, it may be used for retaliation for some perceived wrong doing.

The value of this list is also in question. Some of the information on individuals on the list are so vague that its difficult to say this case is notable or verifiable. For example, on October 15, 2011, an unnamed individual in a wheelchair died. There's no indication we will ever know this person's name. What we do know is the man in the wheelchair pulled a handgun, and after the police made several commands to drop the gun, they shot the man. There's no information on any police investigation or even what police officers involved. Given the lack of information, there's no way to update or verify this information, however, this information is presented in a way to presume the officers are guilty.

In some cases, the deaths of individuals are notable. In those cases, there are Wikipedia articles about these deaths and their follow-up, which makes this list unnecessary.DivaNtrainin (talk) 14:47, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

You raise several issues with this article. I will address them individually:

• Poorly sourced. In the Proposed Deletion tag you flagged the list as poorly sourced. Every entry includes either a link to a WP article on the incident or a direct reference to the online version of a reputable print newspaper or TV news station. The list of references takes up more screen space than the list itself. Can we agree that it is well sourced?
• Provocation to wrongdoing. If someone is going to be provoked to retaliate, it will not be because of this listing. Any aggrieved relations to the deceased will have known of the incidences through reports in local media. It is the incident, not a list, that may provoke people to wrongdoing. It is my hope that a listing such as this one will result in less wrongdoing (see "value of the list" below).
• Inflammatory article title. In every one of the entries, the cause of death is not in question. An aspect of law enforcement is the possibility that a life may need to be taken. Police are trained for such situations and the police departments report the incidents to the public through the media. When a newspaper article title reads "Police fatally shoot robbery suspect," there is no implication as to what happened. The causal chain is explicit. The police officer is the direct result of the persons death. There are probably many other indirect causes, such as the fact that the person was involved in an armed robbery, but the listing addresses only direct causes of death.
• Guilt of officers involved. The introduction to the article states that the listings are without regard to justification. Inclusion in the list does not imply guilt or innocence by either the deceased or the officer. I have added two sentences to the intro to make this more clear. In the vast majority of the cases, the incident is determined to be a justifiable homicide and the officer was found to not be guilty of anything involving the incident. In those few cases where the officer is guilty of a crime, the incident deserves an entry in the List of cases of police brutality in the United States and a full paragraph description in that article.
• Notability. It is true that most entries in the list are not sufficiently notable to justify an entire article on the incident. Howerever, almost all entries are sufficiently notable, with multiple articles available through the media, to justify a paragraph in an article. Given their external, highly reliable sources, all of the entries are certainly sufficiently notable to justify a single phrase inclusion in a list.
• Identifiability of persons killed. This is a list of person's killed, not a list of names of persons killed. Whether or not their name was published, the reference makes clear that a person was killed. In those few cases were the name of the deceased was not published in the media, sufficient information is supplied to make the incident uniquely identifiable and therefor not confused with any other similar incident. For example, unless two men in wheelchairs where fatally shot by police in Arizona on Oct 15, 2011, the individual killed is uniquely identified. If the person's name is ever published, the descriptive phrase could be replaced by the name.
• Value of the list. The US Congress considers such a list to be of such high value that they required the Justice Department to maintain such a list through Police Accountability Act. The act didn't give the JD authority to require local police departments to report incidents to the JD, so the list is incomplete. The authors of the study cited in the intro state that many public insurrections are sparked by perceived excessive use of force by law enforcement. If the frequency of incidents can be made clear to policy makers, it is possible that police could develop means of subduing some persons without putting the officers lives at risk and without resorting to lethal force. The eventual result should be less provocation and incitement to violence, not more

--ThaPolice (talk) 19:30, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I lean towards agreeing with deletion since it highlights 2011. It does not appear to be manageable. A list of every assumed notable incident (if it has a blue wikilink) might be an option. I assume it would still be biased towards recent events with the lack of coverage from Wikipedia on events before the age of the Internet.Cptnono (talk) 19:57, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

In response to ThaPolice's comments, I would like to respond:

Poorly sourced: The fact that there is a link to the news article does not mean it is well sourced. For example, take a look at my example I cite earlier (anonymous guy shot in wheelchair). There is no real identifying information to the article. It's not an inaccurate article. It's just a not a supportive article.

Guilt of officers involved: Are you really trying to argue this point? Why did you choose to call this article "killings by law enforcement officer". Why not call it "deaths that involve law enforcement officers". If you read the introduction to this article it is clear there is some bias in the nature of the authorship.

Value of the list: Just because the US Congress feels a list like this to the Justice Department doesn't mean that the list is useful to readers of Wikipedia. Wikipedia and the Justice Department have completely different mandates and priorities. I would suggest you review Wikipedia's guidelines to evaluate what Wikipedia's purpose is.

There is another solution. Merge this page with List of cases of police brutality in the United States. This page is a much better example of how a list should be put together. Instead of just being a random collection of names, it gives a brief description of the incident and what the outcome of the case was. Since the page List of cases of police brutality in the United States, this Wikipedia page is redundant.DivaNtrainin (talk) 21:32, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Guilt of officers involved and Inflammatory article title—i'll argue this point too. "killings" is neutral. "killing" means "causing the death of." it means the same thing as "homicide," which you can see here too. homicide/killing is a manner of death, and not in itself a crime; in this context it's perfectly neutral regarding the innocence or guilt of the killers (also not an inflammatory word, just not a pretty one). "list of murders by law enforcement officers" would be inflammatory, "list of voluntary/involuntary manslaughters by law enforcement officers" would be inflammatory, "list of negligent homicides by law enforcement officers" would be inflammatory, but this is not inflammatory, it's just clear and direct writing. the suggestion "deaths that involve law enforcement officers" is also not inflammatory, but it's euphemistic and unclear because the deaths here are caused by the law enforcement officers, which is not actually expressed by that phrase. one could call it "list of deaths caused by law enforcement officers" but why use three words where one will do? it's not appropriate to merge this with police brutality, since the vast majority of killings by law enforcement officers are not brutality, they're justifiable homicide. brutality implies that the officer committed a crime, and this is quite rare among killings by officers. in fact, one could easily argue that listing killings amongst brutality cases is ... inflammatory?— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 06:04, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

"Value of the list" An editor linked to a really long article Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not without giving any indication of what part of that article is in any way relevant to this discussion. Can anyone elaborate?

"Poorly Sourced" On Oct 15, 2011, Two police officers shot a man in Arizona. The man died as a result of his wounds. This incident was reported by at least three different reputable news outlets. In what way is it poorly sourced? As another editor said, this is a list of events, it is not a list of names. The names of the officers and the deceased will be included where available, but they are in no way necessary for an event to be listed here. Peboki (talk) 21:36, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Convert to category

I don't think a list per se is useful, and suggest it be turned into one or more categories, and that this article be changed to direct to such, rather than just tossed down the memory hole. --Pawyilee (talk) 05:42, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Keep article and improve

I think the listing has value. I read the references for the first several entries and none seemed like cases of police brutality. There would be little point in merging this list with the list of cases of police brutality because then most of the entries in this list would be removed.

Most listings in Wikipedia are either collections of links to full articles or the listings include more information in each entry than these entries currently include. I think the list would benefit from a brief description of each incident. I'm not imagining a paragraph like in the listing of cases of police brutality. I'm imagining something very brief such as “Shot after pointing gun at police and ignoring commands to drop weapon.” Even without that description, the article has value, but with it, the list would be more useful.

DaPolice, when you created the page there were about 40 entries for 2011 but the intro says there are about 400 such cases each year. How were those 40 selected? --Mikebrand (talk) 21:38, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I think a brief description would be helpful as well, a concise short sentence like the given example. Meatsgains (talk) 22:02, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

That's a good suggestion. I tried that with the first three entries and it looks like this:

• 2011-10-25, Herson Hilaire, Florida. Shot, along with brother Hedson Hilaire, after striking a police officer with vehicle as fleeing home during a drug probe.
  
• 2011-10-25, Hedson Hilaire, Florida. Shot, along with brother Herson Hilaire, after striking a police officer with vehicle as fleeing home during a drug probe
  
• 2011-10-22, Aaron Westby, Washington. Shot after reaching for gun in glove box after struggling with police who approached Westby regarding the stole pickup he was inside.
  

If that is the direction this list is going to take, then it would probably be better in a table with columns for date, name, state and description. Here's what it looks like in table format:

caption

Date	Name	State	Description
2011-10-25	Hilaire, Herson	Florida	Shot, along with brother Hedson Hilaire, after striking a police officer with vehicle as fleeing home during a drug probe.
2011-10-25	Hilaire, Hedson	Florida	Shot, along with brother Herson Hilaire, after striking a police officer with vehicle as fleeing home during a drug probe
2011-10-22	Westby, Aaron	Washington	Shot after reaching for gun in glove box after struggling with police who approached Westby regarding the stole pickup he was inside.

Any suggestions before I convert the current list to a table? I have never before created a table with the WP code. It seems fairly straight forward.

Mikebrand, the original non-linked entries are arbitrary. I checked a major newspaper for four cities (Seattle, Chicago, Memphis and Miami) and came up with that list. I was surprised how local the reports are. That is, these incidents are not national news. They are local news. For the most part, an incident in any one of the four cities does not appear in the papers for the other three. I checked those four as a pilot study to see what would result. I posted the article when I decided that it seemed to be worth sharing and in the hope that others would contribute incidents from their localities. I will continue to post more reports myself.

--ThaPolice (talk) 01:22, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

The value of category Individuals killed by law enforcement officers would be that an article on, or mentioning, the individual(s) would already exist. As thousands are killed every year, such a category would soon be unmanageable unless subdivided by by area and jurisdiction designation. The same applies to a table. This one lists only killing in US jurisdictions, and does not link to articles on who or whom killed, other than clicking on articles that link here. Often, such a list is hundreds of pages long, and this article could link to millions. Also, state actors killing people over here in Thailand in a law-enforcement scenario are as apt to by a branch of the military, as in the recent discovery of 11 alleged Chinese bodies floating down the river after allegedly encountering a riverine navy patrol. You'd best think this through before you put any more work into it. --Pawyilee (talk) 03:02, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

This article is limited to incidents in the US which number about 400 annually. That is large, but manageable. --ThaPolice (talk) 11:05, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

just including my suggestion at the afd for the record here. if it gets too long, we split it into chronological sublists and use this page as a list of those. not really a problem.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:55, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

table format

ThaPolice, the table format looks much better. It looks like the listing in the article uses one line per person killed. In table format, it would be better to have one row per encounter. When more than one person was killed, their names could be listed individually, but the description is needed only once. The other change in the example below is that I placed a non-break space between the last and first name so that on more narrow screens the name column is not the one that shrinks. I removed the caption. The article title describes what the table is about.--Mikebrand (talk) 19:27, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Date	Name	State	Description
2011-10-25	Hilaire, Herson Hilaire, Hedson	Florida	Shot after striking a police officer with vehicle as fleeing home during a drug probe.
2011-10-22	Westby, Aaron	Washington	Shot after reaching for gun in glove box after struggling with police who approached Westby regarding the stole pickup he was inside.

Thanks for the pointers. I've converted the list to a table and started the process of adding descriptions.--ThaPolice (talk) 03:24, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

i made the list sortable, which i think is especially useful for date and state, but it means that it'll be best to list all names LAST, FIRST and stick to "unnamed" for unnamed people. if there's no consensus for this, feel free to revert, but i think it'll be more useful sortable by name, state and date. there's probably some way to make the last column not sortable, but it doesn't seem worth the trouble. i'll try to get to changing all the names if there seems to be consensus that sortable is a good way to go.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 06:19, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm in favor of sortable. I also support last-name, first-name, which is how I made the example above.--Mikebrand (talk) 13:35, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

speaking of sortable, it strikes me that it might be more useful to have all years in one list for purpose of grouping by state. on the other hand, the length will get out of hand. is there some way to resolve this dilemma? for now, maybe it would be ok to put them all in a list? or maybe it'd be good to have two lists, one broken up chronologically, one broken up by state? i wanted to ask before i start making the rest of the list into a table.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 17:33, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

My feeling is that the list will be most complete for the most recent dates. I hope that by the end of 2012, the list for 2012 will be fairly complete on a national level (with around 400 records). If that is the case, the table will probably need to be broken up into subgroups. I noticed that if the table is sorted by some criteria other than date, then edited, the underlying records are still in the date sort. That means it will be easy to later break the table into smaller tables (or separate pages) based on date. In that case, as long as date is the primary sort criteria (when the entries are made) and as long as the listing is eventually broken up by date, it probably doesn't matter whether the table in combined into one list at this point. There are not too many records for one table and it will be easy to break up once the list does get long. I rambled quite a bit. Did I answer your question?--ThaPolice (talk) 20:28, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

i was thinking that it would be useful to be able to sort by state across years also, was the main thing.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 20:31, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

scope of list

is this list meant to include killings by law enforcement officers, on or off duty, but claimed to be in the line of duty? i think that that would be best, as there are doubtless a certain number of killings by law enforcement officers which are just plain old killings for personal reasons, e.g. cop in jealous rage shoots spouse. i'm not sure how these are treated in crime stats, but it seems as if they implicitly don't belong on this list. also, the way the criteria are stated now, officer suicides could arguably be included, and that's obviously a separate thing. do we need perhaps to rewrite the lead to make this clearer? we could solve the issue of suicide by moving the list to "list of homicides by law enforcement officers" but above discussion shows that that'd be hard to justify without some painful and probably pointless discussions.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:53, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

My thinking behind the very broad inclusion of on or off duty is that it makes it easier to decide (they all are included) and when a police officer commits a crime, they sometimes get special treatment. For example, one of the entries for 2011 that doesn't yet include a description is a person killed due to a DWI/DUI driver who was a police officer, but the responding officers didn't treat the scene as a crime scene. Since a primary reason for tracking the killings is to maintain accountability, I think it would be better to keep all killings in the list, not just those in the line of duty.--ThaPolice (talk) 20:35, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Suicides, I think, are a different matter. The intro sentence could be changed to say “killings of other persons” to clarify that situation.--ThaPolice (talk) 20:38, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

fair enough. i think that as far as line-of-duty or not, your position is better for verifiability since there may be cases where it's hazy, and this way, if the newspaper says the killer was a cop, it goes on the list no matter what the reasons were. i do think it's worth putting "other persons" into the intro, just to make things clear.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 20:41, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

i would like to change the lead slightly to make it clear that we're talking about civilian law enforcement officers here, unless someone objects. my general feeling is that the military can't reasonably be described as law enforcement officers in the USA, because the constitution prevents it from enforcing domestic laws. military police can act inside the usa, but they're limited to enforcing the uniform code of military justice as it applies to military personnel only. however, i think that the price of one word is low in order to make that absolutely clear. thoughts?— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 19:58, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with all your points.--ThaPolice (talk) 23:49, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

ok, i'll go ahead and do the edit then.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Intro section

Below are the two paragraphs in the intro to the article. The only difference is that here the references are inline. Any edits should be to the article, not here. This section can probably be deleted if the inline refs are not useful.--ThaPolice (talk) 22:52, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Text in intro

Within the limits set by the US Supreme Court in Tennessee v. Garner, authority to use deadly force in the line of duty is granted by state law to state and local law enforcement agencies. Individual agencies set policies and procedures regarding when and how to use deadly force. <:ref>Roy, Roger (May 23, 2004). "Deadly But Legal". Orlando Sentinel.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)</ref> When deadly force is used within the prescribed manner, the killing is deemed a justifiable homicide. Some law enforcement agencies routinely investigate all uses of deadly force while others investigate only cases involving extenuating circumstances. Other causes of death to suspects include accidents and police brutality. When the circumstances surrounding a death are questionable, a state and/or federal agency may investigate. <:ref>"FBI: Frequently Asked Questions". The Federal Bureau of Investigation.</ref>

Through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the US Congress mandated the Attorney General to collect data on the use of excessive force by police and to publish an annual report from the data.<:ref>McEwen, Tom (1996). "NATIONAL DATA COLLECTION ON POLICE USE OF FORCE". U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.</ref> Two national systems collect data which include homicides committed by law enforcement officers in the line of duty. The National Center for Health Statistics maintains the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) which aggregates data from locally filed death certificates. State laws require that death certificates be filed with local registrars, but the certificates do not systematically document whether a killing was legally justified nor whether a law enforcement officer was involved.<:ref name="Loftin2003">Loftin, Colin (2003). "Underreporting of Justifiable Homicides Committed by Police Officers in the United States, 1976–1998". Am J Public Health. 93 (7): 1117–1121. PMID PMC1447919. {{cite journal}}: Check |pmid= value (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)</ref> The FBI maintains the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) which relies on the voluntary participation of state and local law enforcement agencies in submitting reports about crimes.<:ref name=Loftin2003/> A study of the years 1976 to 1998 found that both national systems underreport justifiable homicides by police officers, but for different reasons.<:ref name=Loftin2003/> Records in the NVSS did not consistently include documentation of police officer involvement. The UCR database did not receive reports of all applicable incidents. The authors concluded that "reliable estimates of the number of justifiable homicides committed by police officers in the United States do not exist."<:ref name=Loftin2003/> A study of killings by police from 1999 to 2002 in the Central Florida region found that the national databases included only one-fourth of the number of persons killed by police as reported in the local news media. <:ref>Roy, Roger (May 24, 2004). "Killings by Police Underreported". Orlando Sentinel.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)</ref>

This intro goes way beyond the scope of the wikipedia article. This article should be a listing of people who's death somehow involves police officers. However, this introduction seems to assume some guilt on the part of the police officer. This article should meet Wikipedia's guidelines on neutrality. In general, this introduction assumes the guilt of police officers and the corruption of certain data collection techniques. I do realize that you throw in a few tidbits of neutral words, but this introduction is full of weasel words. I realize, you may want to add information regarding the police to Wikipedia, but this is not the only wikipedia page regarding the US police. Please consider looking at other Wikipedia pages when considering which is the best Wikipedia page to edit. DivaNtrainin (talk) 01:59, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

can you give some examples of non-neutral language here? also some examples of assuming guilt? it's clearly stated in the intro here that guilt of anything is not the issue. people can go on this list if a newspaper says that they were killed by a law enforcement officer. most killings by law enforcement officers are not crimes, so there is nothing for anyone to be guilty of. can you also give some examples of "weasel words" in the material? it's hard to know how to meet your objections if you aren't specific.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 02:36, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

You want some examples of non-neutral language, how about using the word "killing", or the discussion on justifiable homicide. That word "killing" has a lot of implication that the death was intention or wrong. What's wrong with using the word death, and then provide further explanation later in each of the cases as to the circumstances regarding how the person died and let the reader decide how this death should be viewed. I do realize that there is the disclaimer that there shouldn't be the assumption of guilt, but then the remainder of the article reads like there is some guilt on the part of the police.

In relation to removing the alleged statistics as to how many deaths involve the police annually, since it is in dispute, let's remove it from this page, or find a better page that this belongs in it. This article is titled "List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States", it should be a listing, and shouldn't necessarily cover everything as I said before maybe some of these issues belong on another page.DivaNtrainin (talk) 03:44, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

see below for why I think the word "killing" is the most neutral choice. If we use the word "death", we have to say "death caused by", since that's the scope of the list. Why use three words when one will do? Also, it would help me understand what you're getting at if you talked in detail about which part of the discussion on justifiable homicide bothers you. I tend to agree with you about the length of the material that ThaPolice added to the intro. I was happier with it before, but I'm still thinking about it. What dispute is there about the statistics that you don't feel was covered in a balanced way? I think that it's important to include reliable estimates of the number of killings involved in the lead, and if the number is in dispute, we should add all points of view, not leave that information out.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 04:06, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Regarding amount of info in intro: I was originally happy with the short version, but I got the impression that editors in the delete discussion were not understanding the notability of the group. I added that info to establish group notability. I originally did not include it because I thought the group was clearly notable. Since it was not so clear to everyone, I made it explicit. It is possible that the group notability could be made clear with a shorter intro than the current version (as of Nov 7). It's also possible that most of the text in the intro could be moved to an article with in-text links between this list and the article. Now that I think more about it, another article with links between the two is probably the best location for that info.

Regarding the scope of the list: I am leaning towards broadening the scope to include law enforcement officers killed. From a practical standpoint, it would be easy as the searches which produce the deaths of civilians also turn up deaths of officers. If we go that route, the title could be changed to “List of deaths resulting from law enforcement encounters” or something similar. Within the table, the current Name column could be changed to “Civilian deaths” and a new “Officer deaths” column could be added (or similar names). Most entries would be blank in the Officer cell. Some entries would have names in both Civilian and Officer cells. And some entries would include a name only in the Officer cell. From memory, of the 50 or so non-linked entries, at least three encounters involve officer deaths with a total of at least four officers killed in those 50 encounters.--ThaPolice (talk) 19:27, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I was happy with the short version too. I think maybe we should go back to the short version, since most of those at the afd discussion who want to delete the article aren't participating here, I don't think we need to worry about what they think as far as editing the article. Also, I think that including law enforcement officers here would make the list too haphazard. I think it might be nice to have a separate list for that, though, which would expand on the various city ones that already exist.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 01:03, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

PS I forgot to say that I think that the extra material you wrote for the lead would be better in its own article, since it's quite good material, but I think it's too detailed for the lead of a list.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 01:04, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

This looks like a good location for the content currently in the intro: Police#Use_of_force. It would take a little work to fit it in with the existing text of that section. My main concern would be to then link that content to this list. I'll think about how to do that. --ThaPolice (talk) 03:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

deaths that include??

look, i'm not sure that all the material that was added to the intro belongs in there; that's why we're discussing it on this page. on the other hand, if you're going to make sweeping changes with vague edit summaries, we're never going to be able to figure out good language. most importantly, "killings by law enforcement officers" is neutral, especially when the word "killings" is piped to "homicide". please read the article on homicide to get an idea of why that is actually the most neutral word. it is a specific legal term meaning the killing of one person by another without any imputation that a crime has been committed. there are some criminal homicides and some non-criminal homicides. your substitute phrase, "deaths that include law enforcement officers" doesn't accurately describe the scope of the list. killings *of* law enforcement officers include them too, right?— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 02:45, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The word killing is a non-neutral word. It implies blame. I've read the homicide page and it doesn't in anyway discuss the feelings and emotions when the word killing is used. Let's use the word death instead of killing. It's a more neutral word and it is completely accurate. In each of these cases, someone died and law enforcement officers were involved. If you actually look at what is being listed on this page with more detail, you see a variety of situations and a variety of deaths and circumstances. Using the word "killing" takes away from the variety of circumstances and issues that are being described in this page. It's better to have an extremely vague heading and introduction and let the reader discover the variety of different deaths that are covered. This is better than forcing the circumstances fit the title of this Wikipedia page.DivaNtrainin (talk) 03:51, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I see your point about the connotations of the word "killing", but I think we're safer if we go by dictionary definitions. The dictionary definition of the word "killing" doesn't include an imputation of blame. This word is used in newspapers all over the world for the action of causing death, precisely because it is neutral as to blame. see this google news search to see what I mean. I think it's important to stick to this word so that we can tell which deaths belong on the list and which do not. For instance, there are cases of deaths in police custody which do not involve any law enforcement officers causing them. They don't belong on this list, and with your wording, I don't see how we can keep them off. I piped the word "killing" to homicide because it's a legal term, and thus painstakingly defined to be neutral. I think that if we're going to stick to the sources, we have to use the terminology that's commonly used in the sources.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 04:01, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Alf.laylah.wa.laylah's points. The list is intended to include all deaths were a law enforcement officer is the proximate cause of death. That is the notable group. Deaths should not be included in the list if someone happens to die while in police custody due to circumstances such as a pre-existing illness or a traffic accident caused by a third party. Such people who happen to die while in police custody, as far as I am aware, are not a notable group that receives special study.--ThaPolice (talk) 03:10, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Geographic description

In the five updates I just posted, I included the city in State, City format. That will still allow sorting by state, but also provides more precision in knowing where the incident occurred. In large states, it is not especially helpful to know that something happened in California or Texas. The city seems like a useful piece of information that is easy to include. --ThaPolice (talk) 03:50, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I noticed that. I think it's a good idea, and I wish I could think of some way to make the list sensibly sortable by city as well, But I can't think of one. Maybe when we get enough data to break it out into lists by state as well as by date. Anyway, the only change I'd prefer is to use parens rather than a comma to separate city from state, e.g. Colorado (Golden). Somehow the comma isn't so clear to me at first glance. Also maybe we should change the name of the column to State (City) or State, City, so that there's some way for the reader to be sure what it means.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 04:00, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

State (City) looks good. I converted to that format. I think the city sort takes care of itself since the state is listed first. Sorting by state results in a natural state-then-city sort.--ThaPolice (talk) 10:43, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Right, except when the list is full, there may be lots of entries in populous states, and then it'd be nice to sort by city within state in different segments of the lists by date. Anyway, it's not a problem for now. Thanks for your good work on this.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 15:22, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

unnamed people

User:DivaNtrainin took out the unnamed people with this edit summary: removed entries where no name is given. Unnamed person not notable enough for entry.

My feeling is that unnamed people belong on this list, so that we can tell how many people are killed by law enforcement officers in a given state, or according to other criteria. It's already established in the inclusion criteria of this list that individual people on it are not notable, so whether people whose names aren't known are notable or not is beside the point. Also, it's a matter of chance whether their names are known or not. If their names are known, their names will be included in news stories and then here. We can't have a neutral list if we leave off people who randomly forgot to take their driver's license with them before getting killed by a law enforcement officer. Thoughts?— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 02:08, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with alf.laylah.wa.laylah. Although names are important, the value of the list is as a comprehensive source of documented events. There are already several examples where editors have been able to find and add names to unnamed deaths. That is in the spirit of Wikipedia. Also, as I understand it, the notability criterion is for deciding whether a person is worthy of an article, not whether they should be mentioned at all.Phantomnubian (talk) 21:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Average Number of Killings per year

In regard to this diff, I think User:DivaNtrainin has a point. I can't see anything in that source that says the average is 400 per year. Also, whatever the source says, it only covers 1976 to 1998, so even if it did include an average number, we'd have to make it clear that it only applied to those years. Thoughts?— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 02:14, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The referenced study dealt in totals for the 23 year span, so I had used a calculator to get an annual average. I just now updated with a more recent article that has a graph showing the average hovering around 400 from 1994 to 2007.--ThaPolice (talk) 16:40, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I figured it was something like that (calculator). The problem with that kind of thing, and I'm tempted often to do it myself, is that it's either WP:SYNTH or WP:OR, and not really accepted at wp. Sometimes those policies get in my way, but overall I'm really, really glad we have them, because of the stuff I've seen less scrupulous people do with a calculator and a source. Anyway, the new reference is much, much better. Thanks.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 16:46, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Erroneous reports

I'm wondering why Martinez is struck out instead of removed from the list if forensics show that he shot himself? Also, there is this article on Harding, where it's stated that forensics show that he shot himself. This case seems more complex, somehow. I'm not sure how to handle it.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:54, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

When I first came across the Martinez story it seemed as though both media and police were afraid that Valdivia was accidentally hit by an officer. I spent about 30 minutes trying to find a more recent news account that cleared that up. About 90% of the news reports are early on and assign the killing of Martinez to an officer. I finally found an article that cleared it all up with forensics putting both deaths on Martinez. My first thought was to just delete it, but then someone else would probably add Martinez back in because most news reports state he was killed by an officer. Then I thought about putting it in a list of known-false-police-killings in the discussion section. But few would read that. Putting it in the list with a strikthrough does make it clear, but it is visually less appealing. I do not feel strongly about either approach. Whichever approach we take with Martinez should apply to Harding.--LUOF (talk) 02:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that I'd rather not have either of them on the list. It's an interesting problem, though, as there are always going to be cases that are reported initially as killings by law enforcement officers, which then turn out not to have been, but which people will add to the list. I'm not sure how to deal with it. I think that strike-throughs are a bad idea, though. I'm not sure how to articulate why that is, though. I guess I think it'd be best to leave them out. People will be checking the sources when names are added, so if wrong ones end up on here, they'll get removed. It may also be a good idea to keep a list on the talk page here, possibly even up at the top, of people whose deaths were initially reported in a way that would put them on the list but later evidence showed that they didn't. That way, as there got to be more of them, we wouldn't have to go back to the newspapers each time one got re-added. How does that sound?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 02:32, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The strike-through are effective, but they don't look good. It's probably also not standard WP practice to use them in an article. I had another idea. I left the Martinez record in chronological order but hid it using HTML < !-- -->. Someone else, possibly you, had done that with the instructions at the top of the article. That seemed liked a good idea. We could also have a section in the discussion with a table something like the following. I'm not sure what to call it. "Known erroneous reports"? [table moved to new section near top of page]

Yeah, the html hiding is a brilliant solution. Anyone who wants to add it will see it there, and more probably not put it in. Known erroneous reports would also be a good solution, actually better. That way we would have a place to drop any that got added and then turned out to be erroneous. You want to start it? If not, I'll set it up tomorrow. I like your proposed format.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 04:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I added a new section. Feel free to move or modify to your preference.--LUOF (talk) 12:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

That looks good, except it either has to go into the actual article as content, or just be a checklist here so we don't have to recheck every one. It's not good to have content per se on the talk page. I'm going to move it over into the article, but take it out if you don't like and we'll talk more. I think it'd be better to keep the info in this article, because I think it'd be harder to justify "known erroneous reports" as a notable category should there be any disagreement about that.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:17, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Having the table in the article seems like a good solution to me.--LUOF (talk) 00:53, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Security guards

Based on the common definitions of each, it is clear that security guards are not law enforcement officers. As I understand the legal situation, security guards have no more rights to use of force than do any other citizens. If the guard is an off-duty law enforcement officer working another job, then the occurrence meets the current inclusion criteria. But, the security guard's day job is not necessarily reported in the media account. I suppose that “List of killings by security guards” would need to be another article, or the current article title would need to be changed. I am not inclined to change this article's title or focus. At present I am not inclined to start a new article. My current thought is that killings by security guards do not meet inclusion criteria for this list, unless the published account specifically identifies the security guard as a law enforcement officer working a security job. Any other thoughts?--LUOF (talk) 14:10, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, let's talk about inclusion. There seems to be a definition problem here, where anything in a paper involving LEOs in any circumstance is fair game. For example, if the entry states clearly the suspect killed himself, then it wasn't a killing by an LEO, but it was here anyway. There was an entry on an officer who was involved in the death of another when both were off-duty, which is again, a stretch of the definition. There are also several Taser-related cardiac arrest deaths, which are also stretching things a bit, because the "LEO killing" part is not a normal occurrence of Taser use. 98% of the entries here show clearly that the death was caused directly by the LEO and while on duty, and I think that is the intent of the List title - it's not deaths "involving", or "as the result of a non-lethal weapon". Similarly, security guards are generally retired LEO, or they never were LEOs; their job does not make them such automatically, and those security personnel who do carry LEO badges are generally "Special Deputies" and are not in the same category as an active police officer. The relatively rare off-duty LEO who is a guard is at that point a guard, not an LEO, and points directly at the "involving" aspect I mentioned above. MSJapan (talk) 04:59, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Include names where available?

What are your thoughts on including names of police as well as deceased where these are available from the sources?Phantomnubian (talk) 21:42, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I would oppose this idea. The name of the victim is normally the highly noted name. names of officers are not as much discussed, in part due to PD's wanting to avoid publicising what is, in theory, an unfortunate but necessary aspect of their work. publishing the names here makes it too easy to target the officers for blame. If the names are highly noted, as in they're being convicted of unlawful killing, etc, the names can be in the description section when they have articles. an example of a notable name is johannes meserle, from BART Police shooting of Oscar Grant, and even he hasnt gotten his own article yet.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:58, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I was actually just thinking that this ought to be done. In any other "killing" situation, the "killer" (intending to be neutral here) is just as notable as the person killed. I feel that (in most states) in at least half of killings, if enough days have passed, the names of police are included in news articles. This action also seems granted by the title of this article. Why wouldn't a list of killings by law enforcement officers include the names of killed persons as well as officers? Also, if the officers names are published elsewhere (in news media), which they must be otherwise they wouldn't be published here, then I don't see how blame comes into it. Notability should also not come into it as there has been plenty of discussion here about that and it seems everyone can agree that nearly all of the persons listed here are not notable by a wikipedia definition. Michellecornelison (talk) 14:50, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

The victims of these murders don't have an advocate to stand up and say "include the name of my murderer". The police unions will bend over backwards to not include names, so they can't be held accountable. Include the names.Wjhonson (talk) 18:00, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Weird POV

Why is there no list of US law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty? since this list has "see alsos" which are heavily slanted towards police brutality, i dont see why we are not making sure that we are NPOV by also listing the opposite, which is just as notable. I am not questioning the appropriateness of the current see alsos, just their focus and lack of balance, as reflected in articles we have already. oh, just found 3 lists of officer deaths by department, added them to the see also section, as well as adding this list to those articles. seems fair. even better, created a stub article, List of American police officers killed in the line of duty, from the category, for parity. needs work of course.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 08:05, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Sure, seems like a good idea. Michellecornelison (talk) 14:43, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Title of Page

I moved the page back to its original title for the reasons discussed ad nauseam on this talk page last year. "Fatal shootings" is inaccurate because the list doesn't only include deaths by shootings. "Killings" is the actual word we need here. Its neutrality is attested to by its consistent use by newspapers and magazines to describe an incident where someone is killed. — alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 19:17, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Time to WP:SPLIT this article up?

It's WP:TOOLONG to load comfortably at this point. I'm thinking it would be best to WP:SPLIT it along the lines of the sections we have now, but no smaller than one year (2 tables) per subarticle. We could leave the intro as is, have links to the child articles, and have a short summary introduction that would be the same for each child, which would include a hatnote linking back to the main article. Thoughts? I'm willing to do the work, but, obviously, there may be better ways to do it than I've thought of, and I want to get a discussion going here for a week or so to make sure there's some kind of consensus. Something will eventually have to be done, though, since it's already unwieldy and is only getting worse (which means getting better, of course).— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 02:23, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Your plans to split sound good to me. --Mikebrand (talk) 02:30, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

For titles, I'm thinking List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States YYYY or YYYY1-YYYY2 as the case may be. I was originally thinking List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States in YYYY but it occurred to me that that wouldn't work so well for multiyear spans and I prefer uniformity. Opinions? Suggestions? — alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 03:19, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I am currently working on splitting up this article, using the title suggested by alf.laylah.wa.laylah starting with 2012. The list is definitely too long and the Jan-June/July-December thing is muddling things a bit. I do think that probably everything before 2008 will just remain on the same article, and be titled List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States prior to 2008. I know this is a little awkward, because it seems to make some distinction as though police killings somehow changed after 2008, when really it's just very difficult to find that many news articles online that far back. But if people are able to find enough entries for years prior to 2008 then more new articles can be created. Pretty much all I did was copy what we've got from 2012 so far and some of the introductory text (the background text can be added too) and make a new article. Should we try to submit articles for the years 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008 all at the same time? I wasn't sure of the best way to go about it, but I figured there was no harm in going ahead and making a 2012 one. I've been helping to update this article for several months now, and so far all of the July entries were added by me--well over 20 in the last 10 days (that's a whole lot!). I plan to try and really keep up with this for the rest of the year, and that's why I wanted to start with 2012. Anyway, here is the link to the new 2012 article I submitted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States_in_2012 It has been submitted even though the box at the top says it hasn't; there's another box at the bottom. Now that I am reading through the WP:SPLIT page, I'm not entirely sure I went about this correctly. But if that's the case, no harm done probably. Michellecornelison (talk) 14:32, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we need to submit these to articles for creation. We can just do it ourselves if we agree, although now that you've submitted that one I'm not sure if it's OK to go ahead and create it. Would you be opposed to putting them in someone's userspace until they were all set up and then moving them into article space all at once on our own? Also, I think it'd be better to keep the main article with its current title as a guide to the subarticles, rather than having *only* articles with dates in the titles.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:51, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, that all sounds great. I might need some help doing this as I am pretty new here. Whose userspace should I move the 2012 one into? I can delete the content from the one I submitted, right? (I submitted it because I didn't know another way to do it, but this obviously seems much better. Sorry for jumping the gun; I didn't even know about this talk page and since I hadn't seen many other edits besides mine lately I didn't know other people had ideas about this. Again, I'm pretty new here..) So what do you think about having individual subarticles for 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009 (I don't think there are enough in 2008 right now for a separate one) and then one for "prior to 2009." Or do you have other ideas of how to title them? If we could get enough data for the rest of the 2000's, it'd be great to have subarticles for 2012-2000 and then one for the 20th century. We could even do that now and just have some stubs. What do you think? But I definitely agree that we should keep the main article as a guide, that is a much better idea. Michellecornelison (talk) 15:45, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know anything about how articles for creation works. We can all work on them no matter whose userspace they're in. I'm going to be travelling for a few days starting later today and I won't have time to work on them, but I'll create blanks in my userspace right now including one for a draft of the main article. I'll post links here in a few mins.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:49, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, how's this:

• User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah/List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States 2012
• User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah/List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States 2011
• User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah/List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States 2010
• User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah/List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States 2009
• User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah/List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States prior to 2009
• User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah/List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States new main article draft

Like I said, I won't have much time for the next few days, although I'm happy to work on it more then, although feel free to do as much as you'd like. Anyone can move these into article space when they're done, except for the new main article draft one, which I think we should just use to replace the content of the old main article.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:56, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

One other thing: I think it'd be better to leave the tables whole in the subarticles, and even to merge the two parts (jan-june and july-dec) into one table in each subarticle, to preserve the utility of sortability in the other columns, especially the place (this is in response to Michellecornelison's otherwise excellent version in articles for creation.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:15, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I see what you mean about the sortability; I hadn't thought about that. So just one large table instead of individual ones per month like I had made--I think that is a good idea. I will get to work on this soon. Michellecornelison (talk) 18:44, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I have begun moving content into the blanks on your userspace. I am about to get started on the main article draft. I did want to get some other opinions on a few things though:

1. I wasn't sure how to title the tables for articles that only cover one year. Right now I just put the year, but I didn't know if I should change it to YYYY Killings, or just leave it as is.

2. For now, I only included the introductory paragraph from the main article and the 400 statistic and did not include the 'Background' section. I thought that we could just leave that on the main article. Opinions on this?

3. Do we want each subarticle to have links to every other subarticle, or only to the main article?

4. Also, for the 'prior to 2009' article, I made separate tables for each year in the 2000s and another table for the 20th century. This seems better to me because it makes it pretty clear that the lists for each year are incomplete, especially with the part in the introduction citing 400 as yearly average. I just think it makes the data more clear to do it this way, but I wanted some feedback on it. I also want to do my best to flesh those lists out more soon if I can find the sources.Michellecornelison (talk) 23:21, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Article has been split

This article has now been split into 5 subarticles which are linked to this article as discussed in the previous section. I didn't change much to this article other than removing the tables of names. Now that this page no longer contains actual lists (only a list of links) I don't know if we want to change any wording or add anything. This all transpired pretty quickly I guess but things can always be changed. Thoughts? Michellecornelison (talk) 05:22, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

The split article is an improvement. The long article was taking too long to load, especially when editing. Thanks for doing that.--Mikebrand (talk) 02:39, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I think the lists would benefit from a template that links each list to all the other lists; similar to the template that links all the Olympic Games. I don't know how to create a template. Anyone experienced with that?--Mikebrand (talk) 02:46, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of linking all the lists together. I'm looking at the Olympics page but I guess I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Are you talking about the table on the main olympic game page that has links to each individual olympic games? But obviously, I am not experienced in the template thing. But it sounds like it could be good. Michellecornelison (talk) 05:22, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

 Done Is this more or less what you all had in mind?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 20:23, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what I had in mind, but I think it looks good. I moved it up a little on this page; I thought that made more sense. For the individual pages, what about putting at the very top? I feel like that would make the most sense. That way people can navigate between the pages without scrolling all the way down. Michellecornelison (talk) 03:04, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I think that's fine, although usually these kind of things go on the right and are more stubby when they're on the top, e.g. infoboxes. That might be what we want here, but I have to read up on how to do it. I just happened to already know how to do the skinny kind. Anyway, I have no objection to putting them at the top of the sublists, and in the next few days I'll read up on how to make them appear on the right, or you can do it if you're interested.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:13, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I messed with it for a while but wasn't able to figure it out, sorry. But an infobox would be great, I think. We can just leave it on the bottom until we figure out how to get it on the top right. On a different note, I don't know if we need a new section to discuss this, but I had been thinking about images and wondering if there is a place for images on this page (or the sublists). I don't have any specific ones in mind at the moment but I thought it could be an interesting idea to consider--what kind of images could be appropriate or helpful, etc.Michellecornelison (talk) 15:24, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

How do you like what I've done? It screws with the width of the tables on my browser and my screen; I don't know if this is a universal effect. I think it's better, but feel free to do whatever you'd like. If you want to go back to the skinny version you can find it in the edit history of the template.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:56, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

It also screws with the width on mine too, and I think that needs to be fixed. It seems to me that if the heading text on the info box could just be made a lot smaller that would fix the problem. I don't know how to do that though...Do you mind? Thanks for working on this!Michellecornelison (talk) 16:09, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Moving it to the very top seems to help on my browser. I figured out how to make the text smaller at the top, but it didn't help. I can't figure out how to change the size of the box. How does it look to you now?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:24, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Images

I do think a discussion of images deserves its own section. I don't know exactly what you have in mind, but I have trouble thinking of any images I'd like to see in here. I'm not opposed to the idea in principal, but would like to discuss it on an image by image basis. It also seems as if it'd be hard to find free images to use, and very hard to make a fair-use case for non-free images, since nothing in this list is going to discuss the images themselves I don't think.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:56, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Template

I like the template at the top-right of the page. I had to searcch for it because the Edit link couldn't find it. For easy reference, it is here: Template:Lists of killings by law enforcement

I am afraid that the intro text at the top of each page could either be time consuming to maintain across pages or could diverge between pages. I tried moving that text into the template. The problem with that is that there is a reference in the last sentence. Apparently a reference in a template doesn't automatically get included in the references for the page. One option would be to move that last sentence about the estimate of 400 killings per year to be just on the main page. Thoughts?--Mikebrand (talk) 09:08, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Lists need lead paragraphs just like any article, and putting it in the template would mess with that. I think it's better to try to maintain the uniform lead across subarticles as long as we have to have one anyway. If it does get to be a problem, we can figure out a solution then. I'm kind of sure there is actually a way to get references in templates to show up normally, but I'm not really sure and I don't want to check now. I think I've had this problem before. It was my fault that the edit link couldn't find the template. I fixed it now.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:32, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

"400" Statistic

I think it's time for some more discussion of the 400-per-year statistic. From looking at the cited webpage, it is clear that the article is counting only "justifiable homicides," which it seems to define as "police killings of felons," if you look at the graph they are using. That means they are only counting police killings of people who are (suspected of) committing serious crimes.

At first I thought it was no problem that the number only counted justifiable homicides, I suppose because I was under the impression that all killings were divided into either justified or unjustified (a very small category). I now doubt that is the case. I think there are many cases that aren't considered "killings of felons" but are not ruled as unjustified or brutality. I guess these cases just fall through the cracks. Anyway, my point is that we are not counting only certain types of killings but all of them, so we should clarify which killings that statistic is counting.

The main reason I bring this up is that we currently have 77 killings logged for July 2012 (that is sevenfold what we have for most other months). My suspicion is that July was not an anomaly but that the list has not been kept us this closely until now. Anyway, if every month really is like July then there would be over 900 killings in 2012. I hope to keep the list up that well for the rest of the year, and while I don't expect to reach 900, I do expect to greatly exceed 400.

I'll continue to be on the lookout for any kind of reliable annual statistics covering all types of police killings. I can edit the other statistic, but I saw that there had already been a lot of discussion to get it to its current state, so I thought I would open a dialogue about it first.

Cheers, Michellecornelison (talk) 15:02, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Good point. At first, it occurred to me to edit the line to say "over 400" rather than "near 400". That's not supportable by the source, however. I thought of another solution, though, which I put in there; let me know what you think, or revert if it doesn't seem good. I admit it's skirting WP:SYNTH since it's asking the reader to draw an implication, but it doesn't bother me that much. If this seems OK until we can come up with better sources, we could change it in the other articles too.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:18, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I think that is pretty much what I had in mind. And it also helps show that this list is not only justifiable homicides. The only other thing I would do is link up the wiki page on justifiable homicides, since there is one, even though that page needs some work. Justifiable homicide -Michellecornelison (talk) 15:40, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

And I guess we will have to adjust the wording again for the 2012 article if the count exceeds 400. I think the list will always be incomplete, but we'll just need to state it differently. But we can worry about that when it happens.Michellecornelison (talk) 15:44, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I changed it in all the articles; I think at least with the hedge about justifiable homicides it's better than what we had before. Obviously it's still not perfect, since the source is mostly about a single decade. Perhaps we can see if a better source turns up and figure out what to do then. It may be that we don't need to have an actual number in there, but just a statement that the list isn't going to be complete, which has got to be true, anyway.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:15, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I think having some kind of number is important, we just have to make sure to be clear what that number refers to. Speaking of numbers, I've been wondering for a while if there is any way to set up an automatic numbering system for the table. It would need to count up from the bottom. That would be immensely helpful, but I've been doubting it's even possible. It definitely can't be manually done--that would be a mess, as I add entries all throughout the table all the time. Michellecornelison (talk) 16:23, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

The exact same thought occurred to me! I'll look into it. It's almost certainly possible. If I can't figure it out myself I'll ask for advice on the appropriate help page.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:25, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems that we're not the first to want this, but it can't currently be done. There's been a bug report open since 2007, which makes me think no one's going to implement it any time soon.

Man, that's too bad. Thanks for looking into it, though! Michellecornelison (talk) 14:41, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm a little late to this conversation. Late last year I ran a pilot study to try to determine what the total annual national count might be. I came up with a figure of around 1200 killings per year. That is not a highly reliable figure because my selection was not random. I arbitrarily selected four states that were geographically diverse and not too big because I wanted to complete a comprehensive search for every incident in those states. Also, I did the search in Nov and December, so the year had not completed. Here's what I came up with:

State	Killings in 2011 (A)	State's % of US Population (B)	Projected national killings (A / B)
Colorado	16	1.61%	994
Georgia	35	3.10%	1129
Maine	4	0.42%	952
Washington	34	2.15%	1581
Sum	89	7.28%	1223

In July Michellecornelison, and by August also Suprcel, began making a tremendous contribution to these lists. Summing the killings in those two months (Aug 69 and July 78) and multiplying by 6 gives a figure of 882. This would also not be a highly reliable figure because the incident rate could be seasonal.

The last sentence of the Background on the main page states: "A study of killings by police from 1999 to 2002 in the Central Florida region found that the national databases included only one-fourth of the number of persons killed by police as reported in the local news media." If the underreporting is similar for the entire country, that study's results imply an annual incident rate of 1600.

Whichever figure is accurate, I think you've made a good decision to break the article into sub-articles. If the list does become truly comprehensive, years may need to be subdivided into seasons.

When I did the searches, I found that the reporting of killings was highly local. For example, not all killings in Colorado Springs were reported in nearby Denver and almost none from Pueblo, on the other side of the rockies, were reported in Denver. The method I used, of a Google search of local paper's websites, was very labor intensive. I'm curious about the search methods that Michellecornelison and Suprcel are using. I'm hoping that there is a better way than the methods I had used. If you care to answer that, please answer in a new topic.--LUOF (talk) 12:19, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the mention. I am more than happy to share about search methods; I actually go about it in a pretty simple way. I think the most important thing is being diligent and timely about looking for articles. Trying to catch up on anything over a month ago can get pretty difficult. But I just Google "officer-involved shooting" both in the regular search and in the news search and go through every single news article (until I have to quit). Doing this every couple of days, especially when you are using the same computer and can see what you have already viewed, is helpful to keep you from missing anything. I also search "police-involved shooting" and sometimes "killed by cops" or "killed by police," which will occasionally bring up some different articles (but not nearly as many). Occasionally I will search by date, often to try and fill in gaps because you can be pretty certain at least one person gets killed by police every day. This can be tricky though because articles often only mention the week day of the incident in reference to the date of the article's publication.

Every once in a while a news source will write an article specifically about cop killings in their area over a period of time, sometimes with lists of names or even a list of links to articles--these are goldmines (but you don't see them too often). I never have trouble finding more killings. When I sit down to edit, I just keep going until I am sick of it, but it's never because I can't find any more. I really got diligent about this in July, hence the overabundance of names (comparatively) for that month. Suprcel's help has been really awesome, as it gets pretty exhausting (not to mention depressing) editing almost every day.

I was also curious, as you mentioned, about seasonal effects on numbers. It wouldn't surprise me if summer months saw more killings, but I doubt it's drastic. I've been a bit lazy this month so it makes comparison difficult. Anyhow, I am also completely down for discussion on sectioning out individual years into separate tables (still on the same article page), and I think your suggestion about seasons is a good one. A few concerns of mine are:

Winter spans the new year, so would we need two winters? Or would we just make four tables, three months each, not named by seasons?

This would also affect the sortability of the tables, which can currently be completely sorted by location or last name. So that would make a little more work for a reader who wants to sort the list.

But on the flipside, sorting through that huge table (at least for 2012) is a pain anyway, so maybe it would be helpful after all. It would be good to have some more discussion on it before we make a move, though. Michellecornelison (talk) 20:18, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Rather than splitting on true seasons, breaking the table quarterly would probably be better. 2012 is already at about 300 entries. I think that is about the max for efficient loading. Maybe it's time to break the 2012 article into two tables: Jan-Jun; Jul-Dec. If those halves get to be around 300 each, we could divide into quarters. Thoughts?

I understand what you mean about the toll it takes. When I ran that pilot study on those four states, I went back in time as far as the sources contained records. Only a portion of what I contributed was for 2011. It did begin to take a psychological toll on me. That's part of the reason I left the project for a while. I've now gotten some other obligations wrapped up and should be able to contribute meaningfully again. --LUOF (talk) 03:00, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Splitting Individual Years into Quarters

Since we aren't discussing statistics anymore I figured I'd begin a new section. I think that if we want to split it (which I do) we should just go straight to quarters rather than halves first. No reason to make more work for ourselves, and there are certainly plenty of names on the list already. I guess we'll name the tables using ranges, as follows: January to March, April to June, July to September, and October to December, unless there is another idea. I'm not sure if anyone else will want to weigh in on this discussion, but if anyone is justly unhappy it will be easy to revert. Would you mind going ahead and making the move, LUOF, if there are no immediate objections? Michellecornelison (talk) 12:43, 20 September 2012 (UTC) And to clarify, I think we agree that only the 2012 article is in need of this right now. Michellecornelison (talk) 12:45, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Neutrality of Article

Having read several of the recent entries, there seems to be a lack a neutrality. I noticed several of the entries label the officers actions as facts, but the the non-officers actions as alleged. How can it be a neutral point of view to label the assault of the officer as alleged, but the officers killing of the subject as fact? This is clearly biased, either all actions should be labeled as alleged or none should be. Also at least some of the articles do not indicate that the non-officer was actually killed by the officers, only that officers were present and the person died. Persons who kill themselves while hiding or fleeing from the police do not seem to meet the criteria for inclusion on this list. Inclusion of such persons artificially inflates the numbers. Legion211 (talk) 04:03, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

If the news report does not describe a situation where a law enforcement officer's actions were the proximate cause of death, then the entry should be removed. Please specify which entries you are referring to. Regarding neutrality: normally the entries are written using the same wording as the news report. If the news report states that a person allegedly pointed a gun at an officer and states that the officer shot and killed the person, then that is normally how it will be described in these entries. If you find entries that differ from the news report, please edit the entry to make it in line with the news report.--LUOF (talk) 05:36, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Neutrality RfC

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

All should be included per the discussion below - no reasons are given for exclusion, 2 comments supporting all inclusion, so no consensus not to, as long as they are sourced Mdann52 (talk) 12:47, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

---

What information should be included, or excluded, about each event in order to maintain neutrality?

• Information on the deceased (medical/mental, race, criminal history)
• Reason for initial police contact
• Intermediate events
• Reason for use of deadly force
• Police guilty/cleared of wrongdoing
• Other?

Deunanknute (talk) 14:14, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

• It is going to be difficult to fill out all of those columns given the lack of comprehensive media coverage surrounding this topic. The list is not likely to be even close to comprehensive and it will have a lot of missing information. The other thing I see is that the neutrality issue in part stems from the nature of the list itself. It is only one side of a larger story -- about tension between police and the people in many of the communities that they serve, racial tension in America, and disenfranchisement of poor and minority communities. At a minimum there should be a corresponding or companion list of officers killed in the line of duty. Perhaps combine the lists on one page with a section for police killed in the line of duty and a list of civilians killed by police. Not matter how you proceed, there are going to be strong opinions that are provoked. Lists are always fraught with problems on Wikipedia. Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 01:23, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

• This is going to be difficult to maintain neutrality. It's really critical to include evidence presented and the verdict. If it is a contentious verdict, include arguments on both sides. Trickaphobe (talk) 02:59, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
• Frankly, I'm surprised that this is an article at all.....HubcapD (talk) 06:39, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

• As little as possible Date; location; name(s) of deceased person(s); law enforcement agency involved; result of investigation or trial, if over. Having said this, I personally find this list not to be worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia, as it strongly invites bias. Also, creating such lists opens the door for other, similar ones, e.g. "List of rapes by law enforcement officers." What is the purpose here? What precisely is the knowledge imparted to the reader by this cumulative information? -The Gnome (talk) 11:25, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Summoned by bot. I think that all the suggested column categories are worth including if the information is available. Coretheapple (talk) 00:54, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• All those pieces of info should be included as long as they can be reliably sourced. (Shouldn't be a problem, though.) The fact that this could be a hub for bias is no excuse for not having the article or the information. Red Slash 16:45, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
• All - bot summoned. Why do you need to exclude any of those? Wikimandia (talk) 01:00, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.