Richard Epstein writes:

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…

It would indeed be odd to say that police officer deaths should not count, which is perhaps why no one says this. Police officer deaths are counted but the literal truth is that we don’t count deaths to citizens. No one knows for sure exactly how many citizens are killed by police because the government doesn’t keep a count. Draw your own conclusions. What we do know, is that it is not true that police officer deaths are more common than deaths to citizens from police officers. Not even close.

105 officers were killed in the line of duty in 2013 but to be clear this includes heart attacks, falls, and automobile accidents. Deaths due to violent conflict include 30 deaths by gunfire, 5 vehicular assaults, 2 stabbings and a bomb. To be conservative, let’s say 50 deaths to police at the hands of citizens.

According to the FBI there are around 400 justifiable homicides by police every year, where justified is defined as the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty. But note that if the killing of Michael Brown is found to be unjustified it won’t show up in these statistics.

The best information we have of citizens killed by the police, believe it or not, are private tabulations from newspaper accounts. On the basis of one such collection, DataLab at FiveThirtyEight estimates that police kill 1000 people a year.

Thus, killings by police seem to be on the order of 10 to 20 times higher than killings of police.