Number of fatal police shootings England and Wales 2004-2021

In 2020/21 the police in England and Wales fatally shot one person, compared with three in the previous reporting year, and six in 2016/17. Between April 2018 and March 2019, there were 13 incidents where the police discharged firearms, five more than in 2017/18 and the highest in a single reporting year since 2008/09.

How many police officers are armed?

  There were approximately 6.5 thousand armed police officers in England and Wales in 2019/20, the fewest number of armed police officers since 2015/16 when there were around 5.64 thousand. In general, the police in England and Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom do not have a tradition of carrying firearms, with the country having some of the strictest gun laws in the world.

 Comparisons with the United States

  Among developed countries the United States is something of an outlier when it comes to police shootings. In 2020, it was estimated that the police in the United States fatally shot 999 people. Between 2015 and 2019, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was 30 per one million people, 23 per million people for Hispanic Americans and 12 per million people for white Americans.