How many civilians, on average, do police forces in the United States kill each year? Legal scholar Richard Epstein, however, asks a different lethal-force question:
Police officer deaths in the line of duty, year to date for 2014, were 67 of which 27 were by gunfire. For the full year of 2013, the numbers were 105 total deaths, with 30 by gunfire. It would be odd to say that police officer deaths (which are more common than deaths to citizens from police officers) should not count…
In fact, according to the folks at DataLab at FiveThirtyEight, Richard Epstein has his facts wrong. The police kill on average 1000 people a year. (Hat tip to Alex Tabarrok.)
License to kill?
prior probability 