Many watchdogs believe the police are killing more innocent Americans than ever. But here's why they can't be sure
If it seems to you that the police are becoming more violent, you may be right. In 2011, Los Angeles County police shot to death 54 people, some 70 percent more than in 2010. Between 2008 and 2013, the number of people shot by Massachusetts police increased every year. In 2012, police in New York City shot and killed 16 people, nine more the previous year and the most in 12 years. In 2012, Philadelphia police shot 52 people—the highest number in 10 years.

But whether these statistics reflect a national trend is, at this point, an unanswerable question.

That’s because many of the country’s 17,000 police departments don’t release information on use of force by police, and the federal government makes no serious effort to collect it. While the government gathers and releases extensive information about violence by citizens, it conceals information about violence by police.
A credible national database on use of force by police is a longtime goal of criminologists and reformers. A 1996 Bureau of Justice report notes that, “For decades, criminal justice experts have been calling for increased collection of data on police use of force.”

“We don’t have a mandate to do that,” William Carr, a FBI spokesperson told the Los Vegas Review Journal. “It would take a request from Congress to collect that data.” Carr’s claim is false: the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act instructs the Attorney General to “acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” and to “publish and annual summary of the data acquired.” Yet 20 years later the data dearth persists.

Many, if not all, police accountability activists believe the police are wounding and killing more people than they were five or ten or twenty years ago, and that a higher percentage of the incidents are unjustified. The trend, they say, is all the more alarming because it has accompanied an overall decline in violent crime.
“All the federal government would have to do is say [to police departments], provide this data or you won’t receive funding,” says criminologist David Klinger, a former police officer. But the administration, like previous ones, isn’t inclined to do so, and while a bipartisan group in Congress seeks information about people killed by the U.S. military, there’s no comparable effort to uncover information about people killed by the U.S. police.
The lack of information on police violence is a matter of not just transparency and public safety but also civil rights. We need more studies, more legal action, and, above all, more pressure from the public
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/28/%E2%...treme_secrecy/