A strikingly high number of people are killed by the German police in their own homes, in many cases in their exceptional psychological situation. Statistically speaking, 6 December is the most dangerous day to be killed.
Matthias Monroy, Johannes Filter
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, at least 361 people have been shot dead by German law enforcement officers, and from 1976 to 1990 there were 153 other victims of ‘police use of firearms’ in West Germany. After shots were fired at a rampaging digger driver on 31 December, a new ‘record’ was set with 22 deaths in 2024. The highest number of fatal shots fired in police operations to date was in 1983 (21) and 1999 (19).
Since our data was collected, the greatest risk of being fatally shot by a police bullet has been in the federal states of Berlin, Hamburg and Hesse. Statistically speaking, 25-year-olds are most frequently affected, 97 per cent of whom are male. The most dangerous time is in December, with Thursdays and the sixth day of the month being the most common days of the week. At weekends, noticeably fewer people die as a result of police use of firearms, and the involvement of special units in operations is also significantly lower.
These and other conclusions can be drawn from the annual statistics published by the magazine CILIP, which we have been presenting on a new website for the past three years. CILIP has been documenting fatal police shootings since 1976 and compares them with other information. Most of these are press reports, which in turn are often based on statements from the authorities (which should be treated with caution, as the views of the police and the public prosecutor’s office predominate).
For the visualisation, we have searched and marked the cases for indications that the victims were in an exceptional psychological situation. We were also interested in shots fired inside and outside buildings (although this could not always be reconstructed). With our overview, however, we can support the thesis that a considerable number of mentally impaired people are victims of police shootings (this also includes cases in which those affected wanted to be shot by the police as ‘suicide by cop’).
According to our analysis, almost a quarter of all police shootings since 1976 (until 1989, however, only counted in West Germany) were of people with mental health problems or in psychosocial crisis situations. Many of them were killed in their own homes, for example after suddenly reaching for a knife in response to a police intrusion or because they felt threatened.
Like the absolute number of police deaths counted by us, these figures reached their highest level to date last year. Of the 22 people shot dead, 13 were described in reports as mentally ill or in an exceptional psychosocial situation. In our next issue, we will publish an analysis of these shootings and show that the lethal use of firearms against these individuals has increased significantly over the years.
The police also analyse data on fatal police shootings, but without going into the individual cases. The German Police College (DHPol) compiles annual statistics on the use of firearms by the spring of the following year, which are also made available on request. The Standing Conference of Interior Ministers and Senators of the Federal States issued a corresponding mandate in 1984. Since then, all federal states and the Federal Police have had to send corresponding data to the DhPol.
In addition to warning shots, the DhPol statistics we have made available for all years distinguish between use against animals, property and against people in six categories:
– ‘Self-defence/emergency assistance
– Danger to life and limb in other cases (according to everyman’s rights)
– Prevention of crimes or ‘equivalent offences’
– Preventing escape on suspicion of a crime or an ‘equivalent offence’
– Preventing the escape of prisoners
– Prevention of the forcible release of prisoners
– Use of firearms against persons in a crowd from which violence is committed’
Another category in the official statistics is the unauthorised use of firearms, including against bystanders. Finally, injuries and deaths are also counted, as well as suicides by police officers with their service weapons since 2014.
The DhPol data is also processed by CILIP in various visualisations. This shows, for example, that the number of shots fired in the 1990s was four times higher than it is today – although the number of annual fatalities has remained roughly the same or even increased. One of the reasons for this is the significant reduction in warning shots, which were also common at demonstrations or gatherings of people at the time.
In the majority of fatal cases, the subsequent victims were armed, although nowadays they are more likely to be armed with a stabbing weapon and less often with a firearm. It is also evident that in the last century, police fired more often during robberies at banks or petrol stations.
However, by far the most shots fired by German police are fired at animals, for example after they have been seriously injured in wildlife accidents. This was not always the case: according to DhPol statistics, around 2,200 animals were shot in 1984, and by 2023 this figure had climbed to almost 17,000.
On CILIP’s police shooting website, we count all cases in which people have died as a result of a police bullet. However, only the official use of weapons is listed. We therefore do not include the numerous ‘extended suicides’ in which police officers (we are only aware of cases involving men) kill partners or relatives beforehand. Also not counted are situations in which this takes place off duty. This concerns at least two cases from 1986 and 1995 in which police officers were working as temporary help at a petrol station and used their service weapon or a privately procured revolver during an assault.
Discrepancies between the CILIP statistics and the police count arise when the Public Prosecution Office’s investigation into the cause of death following the use of a firearm has not been finalised. The cases are then assessed by the DhPol as ‘open’, meaning they do not appear as ‘deaths’ in the official annual statistics. From 2014, the police academy has introduced the category ‘Cases not yet classified (consequences)’; this is where, for example, it is recorded if it was not yet clear at the time the report was submitted whether there were injuries or fatalities.
Sometimes we also have to correct our count. In several cases, for example, it emerged after a few days or months that the victims had killed themselves in a shootout with the police. We may also have misrepresented some case descriptions, for example when new facts came to light in later investigations. We would be pleased to receive any corrections.
In every case of a police fatal shooting, the police investigate the causes. This is usually carried out by the department of a neighbouring city – a clear conflict of interest, as the police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office work together there. In extremely rare cases, charges are then brought. We do not have the resources to follow these later processes in each individual case; we usually only document press reports. Judgements can be counted on one hand and are usually below the one-year threshold, meaning that the accused are allowed to remain in the police service. This is also due to the fact that in such proceedings, the statements of those affected and those accused are juxtaposed. The judiciary likes to believe the police – criminal law expert Lukas Theune refers to this as ‘professional witnesses’.
Our case descriptions have only become more comprehensive over the years. In the new overview, we have also added online sources from the turn of the millennium onwards. Scans of the earlier events can be found in our newspaper archive, which we are happy to provide access to on request.
We are not the only ones who want to document and analyse the lethal use of firearms by the police. We offer the raw data for download for your own analyses. In 2017, the newspaper “taz” conducted further research into our collection and visualised it. Clemens Lorei also documents the use of firearms by the police in Germany and often refers to CILIP. Because many media outlets have also recently been using our data, but sometimes pass it off as their own research, as was recently the case with the German Press Agency, we have now placed our case descriptions under the CC BY 4.0 licence. The material may be reproduced and distributed in any format or medium, including commercially. However, the publication must cite us as the source.
Software developer, data scientist and data analyst Johannes Filter develops open source software to enable free access to information. Matthias Monroy works for the daily newspaper ‘nd’ and also writes for netzpolitik.org. The statistics can be found at https://polizeischuesse.cilip.de.
Image: People shot by the police since 1976 according to our magazine’s count. The numbers explain old and new federal states after 1990.
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