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When Numbers Lie: The Under-Reporting Of Police Justifiable Homicides, Tiffany R. Murphy
When Numbers Lie: The Under-Reporting Of Police Justifiable Homicides, Tiffany R. Murphy
Tiffany R Murphy
The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is tasked with tracking the number of police-involved homicides in a given year. Over a ten-year period, the BJS published the average number of police-involved homicides at 400 annually. However, the BJS’s ability to provide accurate information in this area is woefully lacking because of systemic failures in its data collection from law enforcement agencies. These deficiencies result in hundreds of police-involved homicides being unreported. What results is an incomplete picture for local, state, and federal agencies to make assessments as to how the over 18,000 law enforcement agencies are performing …