FATAL ENCOUNTERS

Study: Police Shootings Are a Leading Cause of Death for Young Men

The study looked at men of all races, ages 25 to 29, and found that police killings are the sixth-leading cause of death.

New research shows that young men in the U.S. are surprisingly likely to die from a police officer’s bullet. The study looked at men of all races, ages 25 to 29, and found that police killings are the sixth-leading cause of death, right after drug overdoses, suicide, and heart disease. They also found that black men are 2.5 times more likely to be shot at by cops than white men. “Our models predict that about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys will be killed by police over the life course,” the study authors wrote. Because there is no reliable data source for police killings, the study authors used data from Fatal Encounters, a site that tracks police deaths by using news reports and crowdsourced information. This means police killings not documented by the media or placed in publicly searchable records were not accounted for in this study. The authors want their findings to encourage people “to treat police violence as a public health issue.”