WASHINGTON — Young black males have the highest rate of being killed by police in a “justifiable homicide,” although a growing percentage of felons that police killed in the past few decades are white, researchers report.

        A U.S. Department of Justice study of justifiable homicide by police from 1976 to 1998 found that police killed 8,578 felons — 373 each year on average — a figure that has remained fairly constant as the population and the number of police officers on patrol has grown.

READ THE STUDY ONLINE

Read more about the U.S. Department of Justice study at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/ph98.htm, “Policing and Homicide, 1976-98: Justifiable Homicide of Felons by Police and Murder of Police by Felons” from the U.S. Department of Justice.

        Federal researchers based their findings on voluntary reports from police departments on what the departments concluded were justifiable homicides of felons.

        The study does not include all police departments, since some do not file reports or fail to file reports in certain years, and does not always reflect cases where justifiable homicides were later ruled murders.

        The terms in the study, according to the Justice Department, “reflect the view of the police agencies that provide the data used in this report.”

        For example, a justifiable homicide is warranted to “prevent imminent death or serious bodily injury to the officer or another person.”

        The people are described as felons because they were “involved (or thought to be involved) in a violent felony.”

        No federal database tracks officer-involved shootings or the total number of people killed by police officers each year.

        Cincinnati police have killed 15 black suspects since 1995, but it is difficult to compare the city with others of similar size without a national database.

        The shooting death April 7 of Timothy Thomas, 19, touched off protests and riots by blacks angry at what they perceive as a history of abuse from police.

        Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and the Cincinnati Black United Front sued the city in federal court, alleging a pattern of racial profiling by police officers.

        The Justice Department study found that young black males made up 1 percent of the population in 1998 but were 14 percent of the 367 felons police killed.

        Young white males accounted for 7 percent of the population and 15 percent of the felons killed.

        Overall, 62 percent of the felons killed in 1998 were white and 35 percent were black.

        Twenty years earlier, 50 percent of the felons killed were white and 49 percent were black.

        “You've got a huge increase in the size of the population, a huge increase in the number of police officers, but the number of felons killed by police has not risen significantly over those years,” said Patrick Langan, a senior statistician at the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

        Since the reports from police are voluntary, the information provided to the Justice Department is not always complete. Mr. Langan said a more thorough study would be possible if the reports were officially certified by states and always included the demographic characteristics of the felons and police officers involved.

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