TCOD • ACCOUNTABILITY & SAFETY
Start with the evidence.
Good policing, misconduct, public safety and officer safety all deserve an honest look. Explore the numbers, check what they measure, and follow the sources behind them.
Choose a year
2026 · January 1–present
National overview · 2021–present. The year selection applies across this page. State and other filters below apply to the fatal-encounter explorer.
When the selected year is not yet available, a card shows the latest verified count with its actual year and a clear reporting-gap label. Current-year records are provisional. These different measures and reporting periods are not a ratio or a scorecard.
01 / CRIMINAL ACCOUNTABILITY
Officers arrested, charges & outcomes
The Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database at Bowling Green State University provides criminal arrest cases and recorded outcomes. Of this page’s 2021–present window, its current public release covers 2021 only. A case is not necessarily a unique officer.
1,262 arrest cases · latest public year: 2021
2026 is not yet available in BGSU’s public release. The highlighted 1,262 cases are from 2021, not a 2026 year-to-date total.
TCOD calculated the 2021 total by adding BGSU’s displayed results for all 50 states and DC, filtered to arrest year 2021, on November 12, 2026. These are cases, not unique officers or convictions.
Open the source explorer, select 2021 as the arrest year, then choose a state and county. The source opens separately and does not inherit this page’s filters. Use its outcome filters to distinguish criminal dispositions from employment outcomes.
Explore BGSU’s available 2021 cases ↗The case explorer opens at BGSU, where its researchers maintain the records. Source: BGSU public release, January 29, 2026. Coverage is nonfederal sworn officers at state, local and special agencies. News discovery and court follow-up cannot capture every offense. Methods · FAQ and coverage limits.
Arrest / charge
An accusation and a legal process. It does not establish guilt.
Conviction / sentence
Look for the recorded disposition and sentence. Arrest-year totals are not conviction-year totals.
Unknown / pending
A missing outcome is not an acquittal or evidence that nothing happened. Check later court records.
02 / FATAL POLICE ENCOUNTERS
Explore your state. Follow the records.
Counts below come from Mapping Police Violence (Campaign Zero). They cover deaths following police force, including shooting and non-shooting encounters, on or off duty. Inclusion does not mean force was unlawful.
Snapshot downloaded November 11, 2026 • This explorer is limited to January 1, 2021–October 29, 2026 • 2026 is partial and may lag recent events • Source records can be revised.
Choose a state
Reported armed status
Race / ethnicity in the source
Percentages use all records matching the filters, including unknowns. These are shares of recorded deaths, not population rates or a determination of bias. Multi-weapon records have their own group; each person is counted once.
How to read armed status and race
We preserve the source’s categories. “Unknown weapon” means a weapon was reported but its type was not known. “Undetermined” means armed status could not be established. Replicas and vehicles remain separate. Open a record to see the original weapon description.
Armed status alone does not decide whether force was lawful. Unarmed people may still pose a threat; possession of a weapon alone does not establish that deadly force was justified. The circumstances and legal findings matter.
The race/ethnicity field combines categories, including Hispanic. We retain its labels and unknown records. Population rates require matching Census populations, years and definitions. Contact-adjusted rates need a different denominator. Those rates are not calculated here.
Read the source’s full coding guide ↗Individual records & reporting
The links in each record are supplied by the dataset. They may include police accounts, news reporting and later updates; follow them to evaluate the evidence. TCOD has not independently adjudicated these incidents. View the current source table ↗
Annual counts for the selected state
This table uses only the state selection. Other filters above do not change it. 2026 is a partial year and is not directly comparable with full years.
03 / OFFICER SAFETY
Officers killed in the line of duty
2026 annual officer-death data: not yet available here
The latest annual report used here covers 2025: 53 officers feloniously killed, including 43 killed with a firearm. Those are 2025 figures, not a 2026 year-to-date count.
Felonious deaths result from criminal acts. They are not all line-of-duty deaths; accidents are counted separately.
Felonious deaths, by year
| Year | Officers |
|---|---|
| 2026 | Annual report not yet available here |
| 2025 | 53 |
| 2024 | 64 |
| 2023 | 60 |
| 2022 | 61 |
| 2021 | 73 |
Explore the official detail
Use the FBI Crime Data Explorer for geography, circumstances and available downloads. State-level officer death counts are not duplicated in TCOD’s fatal-encounter filters above.
Explore FBI officer safety data ↗The report also records 218 accidental officer deaths across 2021–2025. That five-year number must not be added to a single-year count.
Source: FBI, Officers Killed and Assaulted in the Line of Duty, 2025, released May 2026. Participating agencies submit data voluntarily. LEOKA’s eligibility and injury-related death rules differ from memorial organizations’ broader totals.
04 / CONTEXT & TRANSPARENCY
Numbers need the right denominator.
Police contact is widespread
BJS estimated that 49.2 million U.S. residents age 16 or older had at least one police contact in 2022. That measures people reporting contact, not the total number of encounters.
It provides scale, but dividing a different year’s death count by this survey estimate would produce a misleading “chance of being killed.”
BJS Police–Public Contact Survey, 2022 ↗Use the same standards for every claim
Recorded arrests and convictions can show that accountability occurs. They cannot show that every offense is detected or punished. Fatal encounters deserve scrutiny, and their existence alone does not establish criminal wrongdoing. Officer deaths deserve attention in their own right.
Ask: What is counted? Over which years? What is missing? What evidence supports the individual case?
Sources, update dates & corrections
- Page coverage: 2021–present, with 2026 selected by default. Source coverage dates differ; unavailable years are never treated as zero.
- BGSU: public release January 29, 2026, with arrest years through 2021. Only 2021 overlaps this page’s date window. The external case explorer also contains older history and may update independently.
- Mapping Police Violence / Campaign Zero: snapshot downloaded November 11, 2026; this page displays only 2021–October 29, 2026 from that snapshot. The source changed parts of its coding framework in July 2026. TCOD preserves its armed-status categories and does not compare the changed threat fields.
- FBI: LEOKA 2025 special report, released May 2026; agency-reported officer deaths. Its annual series here covers 2021–2025; the selected 2026 view identifies that reporting gap.
- BJS: 2022 Police–Public Contact Survey, published October 2024; a separately dated context estimate, unchanged by the year selector.
- Washington Post Fatal Force is an additional source for on-duty fatal shootings. Its narrower definition should not be added to MPV totals, which overlap.
This page is a dated research snapshot, not a live feed. Reporting lag is source-specific, not always one year. Source corrections and new cases can change counts. Send a source link and the record ID when reporting an error.
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