Governments are usually obsessed with statistics, compiling data on virtually everything, including crime, health care, education and the economy.

But if you're interested in detailed data on police shootings, or on how many people have been killed by police, your search will not be simple. A Review-Journal investigation of officer-involved shootings and police use of deadly force found no one tracks such incidents on a national basis.

"We don't have a mandate to do that," said William Carr, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which collects crime data from every corner of the country . . .

"It would take a request from Congress for us to collect that data," said Mr. Carr of the FBI, adding that budgetary constraints would likely prevent the collection of detailed data on police shootings.

That's a red herring. Police already track everything from domestic violence to child abuse to murder, and police routinely lobby state and federal lawmakers to put new crimes into statute. The budgetary impact of adding another reporting category to local police forces would be minuscule. The social impact of such an addition, however, would be huge.

The absence of such a reporting mandate creates the appearance of protecting police from scrutiny. It would be instructive to see how the public safety lobby would respond to a bill that requires the FBI to collect and report data about police shootings.