The United States Data
The United States Data is collected by a collaboration of researchers and data scientists and is available for download here.
“We believe the data represented on this site is the most comprehensive accounting of people killed by police since 2013. Note that the Mapping Police Violence database is more comprehensive than the Washington Post police shootings database: while Washington Post only tracks cases where people are fatally shot by on-duty police officers, our database includes additional incidents such as cases where police kill someone through use of a chokehold, baton, taser or other means as well as cases such as killings by off-duty police.”
This is not an official count either as this dataset is a collection of second-hand information in the form of press releases, news articles, etc. Some records are incomplete, and the total number of incidents is likely higher than detailed here.
One advantage of this dataset over the US data is that it is updated regularly. Giving a more accurate temporal picture of current trends.
Comparing Canada and the United States
There are more police involved deaths in the United States than in Canada.
Poll Questions:
6) What factors do we need to consider when to calculating and comparing police involved death rates in Canada and the United States? (select all that apply)
A) The population of both countries
B) The record lengths of both datasets
C) Discontinuities in the data (eg. availability of killercopscanada data)
D) The different rates of gun ownership in each country
Police Involved Death Rates
By normalizing, we can more directly compare the patterns between geographic regions with different characteristics (Population) and datasets of different lengths. Police in the United states are, on the whole, more likely to kill someone than Canadian Police. However, this doesn’t tell the full story. Systemic Racism is pervasive on both sides of the border, and there are sever racial disparities in both countries.
Racial Disparities
The data for each country use different demographic groupings so we can’t directly compare between all groups. However, three demographic groups: White, Black, and Indigenous are present in both. A caveat, the race of is unknown for 37% of Canadian and 10% of United States victims. This adds uncertainty to the comparison. It also means that the Police Involved Death Rates by race are underestimated, especially for Canada. Scaled, to their respective populations, we can see that Indigenous and Black people are much more likely to be killed by the police than white people in both Canada and the United States. The police involved death rate for Indigenous people in Canada is higher than in the United States.
Systemic Racism in Canadian Policing
The disparity between races is greater in Canada than the United States for both Black and Indigenous people. To show this, we can divide the black and indigenous rates for each country by the white rate (ie. Normalizing again). This will tell us how many times more likely a Black or Indigenous individual is to be a victim than a white individual in each country. We can see that Indigenous and Black Canadians are 11 and 4 times more likely to be killed by police than a White Canadian respectively.
Poll Questions:
5) Which country has a higher frequency of police involved deaths?
A) Canada
B) The United States
C) They're about equal
6) Which country has a greater racial disparity in incidents of police involved deaths?
A) Canada
B) The United States
C) They're about equal
A brief history of the policing in Canada.
This issue isn’t restricted to America, it’s pervasive in Canada as well and cannot be overlooked.
- The RCMP were created by Prime Minister John A. MacDonald. He got the idea for the Mounties from the Royal Irish Constabulary, a paramilitary police force the British created to keep the Irish under control. Initially called the “North West Mounted Rifles”, their primary purpose to clear Indigenous people off their land. The name was changed to “North-West Mounted Police” because officials in the United States raised concerns that an armed force along the border was a prelude to a military buildup. This organization was renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1904. If you want to learn more about the history of the RCMP, I suggest you listen to this podcast by The Secret Life of Canada