Colorado is on track to see the deadliest year for police shootings since 2020 with nearly 60 people having been shot or killed by state law enforcement so far this year.
This time last year, 34 people had been killed by police officers and sheriff’s deputies across Colorado and 19 others had been injured, according to a dataset compiled by The Denver Post.
Police have fatally shot 36 people this year and injured another 20, according to the dataset. Now, Colorado is only eight police shootings away from passing last year’s total entirely.
If those eight shootings are fatal, it will mark the deadliest year for Colorado since 2020, when police shot and killed at least 43 people, according to Mapping Police Violence. The national project tracks fatal police shootings across the country.
Colorado currently ranks as the sixth deadliest state in the country for police shootings, with 6.4 people killed per million by police so far this year, according to Mapping Police Violence.
“Civilians killed by law enforcement personnel has been on the rise over the past 20 years,” said Dr. Lee Friedman, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago who helped spearhead the Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project.
Friedman said nonfatal shootings were also on the rise across the country until 2013 when they suddenly dropped and have since held relatively steady.
“The data does not provide a clear picture of the driving factors because there has been no investment in quality data,” Friedman said.
He said the increase in police shootings appears to be linked to multiple factors, including specific law enforcement agencies’ training of officers, local crime rates, firearm ownership, if agencies outside of law enforcement respond to mental health crises and community diversity.
Prior research from the Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project showed shootings increased as a community’s average household income decreased, but shootings declined as communities became more diverse, Friedman said.
The Thornton Police Department took the lead this year as the deadliest city in the state, according to The Denver Post dataset. The department documented two police shootings in 2023 — one fatal and one nonfatal — but rocketed up to seven shootings and six deaths in 2024.
Denver’s police shootings in 2024 fell to two fatal and two nonfatal after eight police shootings in 2023, according to the dataset. That year, six of the victims were armed. Four died and four were injured.
The Colorado Springs Police Department followed closely behind Denver each year with five shootings, three fatal and two nonfatal, in 2023 and four shootings, three fatal and one nonfatal, in 2024, according to Denver Post records.
Aurora has documented three shootings of its own each year. One was nonfatal in 2023, but all three were fatal in 2024, the dataset shows. Pueblo’s police department also fatally shot three people in 2024, up from two people in 2023.
The Lakewood Police Department, Fountain Police Department, Fort Collins Police Department, El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, Commerce City Police Department and Broomfield Police Department have each confirmed two police shootings so far in 2024 and the following agencies have documented one:
•Greeley Police Department;
•Englewood Police Department;
•Adams County Sheriff’s Office;
•Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office;
•Littleton Police Department;
•Craig Police Department;
•Windsor Police Department;
•Alamosa County Sheriff’s Office;
•Montrose County Sheriff’s Office;
•Larimer County Sheriff’s Office;
•Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office;
•Elbert County Sheriff’s Office;
•Glenwood Springs Police Department;
•Saguache County Sheriff’s Office;
•Longmont Police Department;
•Milliken Police Department;
•Weld County Sheriff’s Office;
•Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office;
•Colorado State Patrol.
Nearly a dozen agencies where at least one officer fatally shot Coloradans in 2024 had zero shootings last year, according to Denver Post data.
However, 13 Colorado police departments and sheriff’s offices that killed one person in 2023 have reported zero shootings so far this year.
Colorado remains among the five states with the highest rates of fatal police shootings in the country, according to research from Everytown for Gun Safety.
From 2016 to 2020, of the 25 largest cities in the United States, Denver had the highest rate of fatal police shootings, with an average of nearly 10 fatal shootings per million residents, according to Everytown.
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