When Police Use Lethal Force

More than a thousand Americans die in encounters with law enforcement every year, with many more shot, wounded, or traumatized, but at present we do not know how many. We do not know how these encounters are distributed with respect to race, gender, or disability. There is little systematic data on what happens to officers or their communities after these events. As a result, it is unclear whether community reactions like protests, news coverage, or legal actions bring about lasting changes in policing, or just temporary ones. Lacking comprehensive, accurate data, it is difficult to identify policy reforms that reduce unnecessary uses of lethal force by police, rebuild community trust, and improve the safety of citizens and officers alike.

 

Since 2017, the Cline Center has been bringing together law enforcement experts, activists, and scholars to build a consensus on the design of an authoritative national database that would document police uses of lethal force and the associated community responses. Leveraging the Cline Center’s expertise in using artificial intelligence to monitor global events, we are designing technologies and processes to identify news reports about police shootings and track community responses to these incidents.

 

The first step in this larger vision is the SPOTLITE registry system.

 

The Cline Center for Advanced Social Research in partnership with an interdisciplinary team of faculty and student researchers has released the most authoritative registry to date of police uses of lethal force in the United States from 2014 to 2021. The Systematic Policing Oversight Through Lethal-force Incident Tracking Environment (SPOTLITE) includes any incident where police use firearms—including those with non-fatal outcomes—as well as any other use of force that results in a death. The SPOTLITE registry lets anyone explore past uses of lethal force by police in every county across the United States, and soon to assess the racial and ethnic breakdown of civilians involved in these incidents (currently this feature is only available for the state of Illinois).

 

SPOTLITE incident count data is just the first step. When complete, this Cline Center program will help build a shared understanding of patterns in police uses of lethal force and will support the development of evidence-based policies that improve police legitimacy and reduce inappropriate uses of lethal force.