I suspect that the reason 18,000 agencies did not report any homicides by police is that very few of those 18,000 had any homicides.
IMO, the national database ought to record every homicide, justified or unjustified, and every police agency should be responsible for reporting all homicides in their jurisdiction.
You do run into deaths in restraints or from “restraining” that don’t get counted as homicides even when the restraints were contributing factors - the deaths still might get recorded as accident or illness or excited delerium or some such. We had one in NJ, excited delirium with fractured ribs and internal injuries. I hope to God that man was injured before he encountered the police but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Thank, Heartwood, for your post. There is always a grey area. Distinguishing between a manslaughter (ranging from murder to negligence), a justifiable homicide and an accidental death is often tough. Plus, nobody wants to record a death as due to a crime when there isn’t evidence, because of our principle of presumption of innocence. But, for statistical purposes, we don’t need pristine pure data. It is important to know whether we are seeing more deaths out there due to unenforceable drug laws or to rising racial tensions, or to growing anarchy in our cities due to bad economic policies and welfare policies. Just ratcheting up law enforcement may not be the best answer. How about lowering taxes and reviving the economy, so that our young people have a bright future?