• RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Why US police shootings are so deadly ― and why some police forces do better

Two studies show the extent of gunshot wounds inflicted by police and link certain police-department policies with a lower death toll.
A close-up of a side view of a police officer sitting in his police car at night, surrounded by other police cars with their blue and red lights on.

When police officers in the United States kill people by gunfire, the deceased people tend to have more wounds than do people shot dead by civilians. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty

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Each year, US police fatally shoot about 1,000 people, a toll greater than in any other developed country. To understand why, Vageesh Jain and Daniel Hemenway at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, analysed all reported US firearm homicides between 2005 and 20201. They found that people killed by police had an average of nearly six gunshot wounds, compared to nearly four for people killed by civilians. The authors say that the tendency for police to shoot multiple times might help to explain why US police shootings are so often lethal.

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Nature 641, 11 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01271-0

References

  1. Jain, V. & Hemenway, D. Am. J. Prev. Med. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2025.02.004 (2025).

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  2. Neil, R., MacDonald, J. M. & Braga, A. A. Nature Hum. Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02169-7 (2025).

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