About Us
IncarcerNation.com is a growing database collecting relevant information available through open records searches on all fatalities able to be found that incur on a daily basis in police encounters in the US. We add daily cases as they appear in the news.
WHERE DOES THIS INFORMATION COME FROM?
We collect articles, videos, statements by police and Das, family or eyewitness statements on police killings from around the web and consolidate the available information here. Our goal is to document as close to the totality of fatal police encounters as can be found. Recent cases typically have little information available as it takes weeks for names, photos, identities, video and other data to surface in most cases. If a case of interest has little information, please check back regularly as we add information daily as it becomes available in the ensuing weeks and months after a police killing.
Accountability and transparency are not valued or observed much by many PDs. Some states provide reporting guidelines while others leave it up to municipalities or law enforcement what to report about police killings if anything at all. If the information does not surface in the news, it remains forever lost to us. Despite the high number of cases we are listing here, we are aware that there are many more that are unreported or misrepresented in copaganda reporting as “just accidents” in the media and via such shielding in the media remain uncounted. Many such death notices are brief, vague, just local news, locked behind the paywalls of small-town newspapers that delete the link soon thereafter. Finding so many cases is a challenge and a constant algorithm-driven Easter egg hunt across countless archives, databases, media outlets, obituaries, court documents cop and social media sites to gather and summarize the info bits here.
DEATHS WE COUNT
For database purposes of fatal police encounters, we do count the following cases: Deaths by COP by gunshot, taser, beanbags, asphyxiation, bludgeoning by police, vehicle (Hunted to Death during police). We count drownings and falls from heights during police chases, suicides under police duress. More on this topic later but much of what is disguised by police as “suicide by cop” often turn out to be people hunted by police, attacked with CS gas, beanbags, K9s, police SWAT robots until they commit suicide during the often SWAT-militarized terror and trauma of the event. Coercive suicides under police duress are an entire category that occurs so frequently that we list and point these cases out in this space.
ALL DEATHS INVOLVING POLICE ARE COUNTED
We do not differentiate between “guilty” or “innocent” victims. We list all victims of all races, genders, backgrounds, all narratives how and why they were killed. It is important to get an uncensored view of these deaths that are occurring by the thousands in our midst to see who dies, where, why and how things go wrong and end in a shocking number of avoidable senseless deaths day after day on a systemic level in the US. The chief common denominator between all cases in this database is that they represent fatalities caused by police in some manner, including some occasional cops who die in their own shootouts and car chases engaged with the public.
We do count cops who die on duty, commit suicide, murder their family members or die from any other unnatural violent causes. We do not include their unrelated deaths from illnesses.
We believe collecting fatality information on police is relevant for many reasons. The FOP police union has claimed that for every 4 civilians killed, 1 cop dies. Keeping up with police deaths, we find this to be outright false information. IncarcerNation marks all deceased cops with *COP behind their names and police deaths are readily searchable here. Police unions and cop websites count high numbers of casualties among police but examination of causes of death shows that by far, more cops have died from COVID and pre-existing heart problems in recent years than from job-related violence and that the deaths by violence on the job are quite low compared to deaths police cause in our communities by the numbers. This among other reasons is why we list police deaths here. Cops themselves occasionally become part of the constant cycle of death in US law enforcement.
Our summaries are updated daily as new cases are added and as information becomes available about recent or past cases. There are still many cases when we have only the statements by police which are often lacking or questionable but no other witness narrative or video can be found. When witnesses or formal family or attorney statements dispute the police narrative, we list both versions of events and trust that everyone can make up their minds about conflicting narratives.
DEATH BY COP in its current form contains all deaths from all causes in 2023 so far, car chase deaths included.
The section HUNTED TO DEATH lists the same car chase deaths that are also contained in Death by Cop but the HUNTED TO DEATH section is limited to only deaths due to racing chasing hunting, PIT-maneuver-attacking cop car deaths because we feel it is important that we put these deaths due to cops on the hunt in our streets all in one place and show just how many hundreds senseless deaths there are every year by these high-speed hunts. Whenever available, we list the information why police chased a vehicle. Virtually none fall within the category of life-threatening situations where such enormous risk to the public is warranted.
HOW TO POST AN INDIVIDUAL CASE FROM THIS WEBSITE
Every single case opens into its own page if you double-click on the blue-linked name of the deceased. You can then post the url so the case is not lost in a sea of hundreds of other deaths.
Thank you for your interest in IncarcerNation.com!