The Guardian has started a special Facebook community for The Counted, where you can follow the progress of the project. It's designed to be an open space where people who have information that may help inform our reporting can share it with Guardian journalists.
We will be using The Counted on Facebook to share details from our own reporting and from other news outlets on police killings, to discuss the issues involved and to contact people involved with or connected to incidents.
What is included in The Counted?
Any deaths arising directly from encounters with law enforcement. This will inevitably include, but will likely not be limited to, people who were shot, tasered and struck by police vehicles as well those who died in police custody.
What is not included in The Counted?
Self-inflicted deaths during encounters with law enforcement. For instance, a person who died by crashing his or her vehicle into an oncoming car while fleeing from police at high speed is not regarded by the Guardian’s database to have been killed by law enforcement.
The database does not include suicides or self-inflicted deaths including drug overdoses in police custody or detention facilities. Other crowdsourced counts do include some such deaths.
In mass shootout incidents, like the one in Waco, Texas, where police have failed to identify those who were killed by law enforcement and those killed by civilian gunfire, the Guardian has been unable to log individuals in the database. We will make every effort to include this information when more details are provided.
At present, the Guardian is collecting data on those killed by police specifically in 2015 and 2016.
How does the Guardian define ‘armed’ and ‘unarmed’?
This information is difficult to verify because often the only information available comes directly from law enforcement officials. In some cases, friends and relatives of people killed will dispute this official account. For The Counted, we use the term “armed” to express the nature of the threat perceived by law enforcement. This means, for example, that “vehicle” will appear under the category of “armed” if the person was trying to use it as a weapon.
Similarly, a person who is found to have had a weapon in his or her possession that he or she did not attempt to use, or which is discovered only after that person has been killed, would be categorised here as unarmed. Freddie Gray, who was found to have a knife in his pocket after being arrested by police in Baltimore in April 2015, would be one such example.
In cases where multiple witnesses offered a credible alternative story to the official account of whether a person was armed, we have labelled the case “disputed” pending the conclusions of investigations.
The category “Other” contains any item other than a firearm, knife or vehicle which police have described as a threat. This includes “non-powder” projectile weapons such as BB guns and airsoft rifles, as well as machetes, swords and blunt instruments.
How has the Guardian determined the race/ethnicity of people killed?
In order to provide a resource that can help contribute to ongoing national conversations about race and policing, the Guardian has made every effort to find and express a race/ethnicity for all the individuals represented in the database.
This information has been obtained from all available sources including police and coroners’ reports, voter registration data, witness testimony, court records and photographs. These will occasionally prove inaccurate. If you know of more accurate information, please contact us as soon possible.
We will be using The Counted on Facebook to share details from our own reporting and from other news outlets on police killings, to discuss the issues involved and to contact people involved with or connected to incidents.
What is included in The Counted?
Any deaths arising directly from encounters with law enforcement. This will inevitably include, but will likely not be limited to, people who were shot, tasered and struck by police vehicles as well those who died in police custody.
What is not included in The Counted?
Self-inflicted deaths during encounters with law enforcement. For instance, a person who died by crashing his or her vehicle into an oncoming car while fleeing from police at high speed is not regarded by the Guardian’s database to have been killed by law enforcement.
The database does not include suicides or self-inflicted deaths including drug overdoses in police custody or detention facilities. Other crowdsourced counts do include some such deaths.
In mass shootout incidents, like the one in Waco, Texas, where police have failed to identify those who were killed by law enforcement and those killed by civilian gunfire, the Guardian has been unable to log individuals in the database. We will make every effort to include this information when more details are provided.
At present, the Guardian is collecting data on those killed by police specifically in 2015 and 2016.
How does the Guardian define ‘armed’ and ‘unarmed’?
This information is difficult to verify because often the only information available comes directly from law enforcement officials. In some cases, friends and relatives of people killed will dispute this official account. For The Counted, we use the term “armed” to express the nature of the threat perceived by law enforcement. This means, for example, that “vehicle” will appear under the category of “armed” if the person was trying to use it as a weapon.
Similarly, a person who is found to have had a weapon in his or her possession that he or she did not attempt to use, or which is discovered only after that person has been killed, would be categorised here as unarmed. Freddie Gray, who was found to have a knife in his pocket after being arrested by police in Baltimore in April 2015, would be one such example.
In cases where multiple witnesses offered a credible alternative story to the official account of whether a person was armed, we have labelled the case “disputed” pending the conclusions of investigations.
The category “Other” contains any item other than a firearm, knife or vehicle which police have described as a threat. This includes “non-powder” projectile weapons such as BB guns and airsoft rifles, as well as machetes, swords and blunt instruments.
How has the Guardian determined the race/ethnicity of people killed?
In order to provide a resource that can help contribute to ongoing national conversations about race and policing, the Guardian has made every effort to find and express a race/ethnicity for all the individuals represented in the database.
This information has been obtained from all available sources including police and coroners’ reports, voter registration data, witness testimony, court records and photographs. These will occasionally prove inaccurate. If you know of more accurate information, please contact us as soon possible.
