WASHINGTON, December 5 (Sputnik) – Local police departments throughout the United States are not required to report homicides, committed by law enforcement officers to a federal crime reporting program, a representative from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has told Sputnik.
"The FBI's UCR [Uniform Crime Reporting] Program is a voluntary program. The reporting of unfounded offenses, which includes justifiable homicide, is not a requirement for participation in the program," spokesman for the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, Stephen G. Fischer Jr., said Thursday.
Some US agencies and states lack the ability to report unfounded offenses for a number of reasons, including computer problems, records management issues and staff shortages, Fischer explained.
On Wednesday the Wall Street Journal reported that the number of people killed each year by law-enforcement agencies in the United States is almost impossible to count, as hundreds of cases are not included in FBI records.
More than 550 police homicides registered by 105 largest US police agencies between 2007 and 2012 were missing from the FBI database or were attributed to the wrong agency, according to research conducted by The Wall Street Journal, which added that homicides committed by on-duty federal officers are not included in the database either.
The issue of information gaps in US law enforcement agencies has become more relevant amid recent killings of African-Americans by white police officers and subsequent grand jury decisions not to indict the policemen, which have led to nationwide protests.
