GlossaryStaffing, accountability, and public reporting
Officer-involved shooting
An officer-involved shooting is a firearm event involving law enforcement under a source's stated definition.
An officer-involved shooting is a firearm event involving law enforcement under a source's stated definition. Some sources count officers firing at people; others include additional firearm discharges or officers being shot. The label alone does not establish that anyone died, that the officer fired, or that the shooting was legally justified.
Read the inclusion rule
The FBI use-of-force collection provides one defined national reporting context. It should not be treated as the universal meaning of every local “officer-involved shooting” heading. An agency's policy or dataset dictionary must explain what triggers its particular entry.
A record may distinguish firearm discharge, person struck, injury, and death. These fields answer different questions. Do not fill in one from another simply because a public summary uses the word “shooting.”
Example
Hypothetical example: A local dataset defines its category as an officer discharging a firearm at a person. One recorded event shows no person struck and no death.
It is still an event within that dataset's definition. Calling it a fatal shooting would be unsupported. A separate legal or administrative review is needed to describe whether the discharge complied with applicable standards.
Common confusion
Justifiable homicide is a specific death-reporting classification, not a synonym for every officer-involved shooting. A nonfatal discharge cannot become a homicide simply because an officer was involved.
LEOKA concerns officers killed or assaulted under its criteria. Use-of-force data concern officers' force actions. Those collections should not be merged without identifying the distinct roles and events.
Local and review scope
Check whether the definition includes off-duty events, accidental discharges, animals, or officers struck by someone else's gunfire. Identify preliminary and final status separately. A statistical entry should not be presented as a completed prosecutor decision or disciplinary finding.