SPOTLITE Dashboard

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. 

SPOTLITE is a project of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois. SPOTLITE is nonpartisan and nonadvocacy. It is designed to supply high-quality data that can drive productive conversations about policing in the United States.

SPOTLITE is a continually-evolving work in progress. To get SPOTLITE data into the hands of American communities as soon as possible, we release each new data layer or feature as soon as it is completed, rather than waiting until all planned elements are in place. The SPOTLITE team is already working on updating the incident count dashboard to the present, and eventually transitioning to a nearly real-time monitoring capability. Additional planned enhancements include an anomaly detector for identifying counties with higher or lower numbers of SPOTLITE incidents than would be expected from nationwide trends, categorizing the ascribed race and ethnicity of involved civilians nationwide, specifying precise incident locations, identifying involved agencies, as well as documenting whether any civilians or officers were injured or killed in an incident.

Our pace of bringing these planned enhancements to the public is set by available funding to support the SPOTLITE program. If you or your organization is interested in learning more about how to financially support the SPOTLITE effort, please email the Cline Center at spotlite@illinois.edu or click here to donate.