Crime Watch Investigations!

When I first considered doing crime as a topic, I was shocked to see that no government organization keeps tabs on how many American citizens are killed by the police each year. To me, it seemed like this would be an obvious statistic to document, especially for the sake of transparency. Fortunately, The Washington Post established their own database to use.

As of 2015, the police in the USA have killed nearly 1000 people per year. There was a slight dip in killings in 2016, although it was not statistically significant. Do note that 2017 is not yet over, and as of now, the police are still on track to kill nearly 1000 people again.

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Fatal police shootings by race

Were you expecting this result? I know I wasn't. The media stereotype, the one that organizations like Black Lives Matter would have you believe, is that black americans make up the largest racial group to be killed by police. When we take a look at the data, we see that white americans do in fact represent the largest racial group killed by the police. It's important to note that there are also significantly more white americans than black americans.

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Fatal police shootings by gender

For every single year that we have data for, men are significantly more likely to be killed by the police than women are. Is it simply that men commit more crimes, or do women just get off easier? The data can't answer those questions, but we know for a fact that men are exponentially more likely to be killed by the police.

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Austin Crime Watch Database

Get your local dosage of crime!

The truth is, crime happens on a regular basis, even in your neighborhood. This is a one day sample of reported crimes in Austin, Texas for 2015. The date for all of these crimes was January 1, 2015. Use the dropdown menu or search a full zipcode to learn more about crimes happening in Austin.

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Zip	Crime Type	Date