Erased From the Record: How the U.S. Hides Deaths in Custody, Including George Floyd’s

The federal government’s own records reveal just how deeply distorted and unreliable its accounting of deaths in custody really is. George Floyd’s killing — a case that sparked a global uprising and led to a murder conviction for former officer Derek Chauvin — wasn’t even correctly categorized. Instead of being logged as “use of force by an officer,” Floyd’s death was misclassified as a generic “homicide,” the category reserved for civilians. As The Marshall Project reported, “the error shows how even one of the most notorious cases of police violence…can be hidden in the official statistics.” From an abolitionist perspective, this is not just a bureaucratic slip — it is part of a deliberate system of erasure that minimizes state violence.

The broader review of 25,000 records from 2019 to 2023 exposed a pattern of concealment. At least 681 deaths were missing altogether. States like Louisiana and Mississippi reported almost nothing, with officials admitting that local police “are not actively participating in the death in custody reporting requirement.” In many cases, names were replaced with “unknown” or simply “Decedent.” More than two-thirds of deaths in Virginia were listed this way. The data itself is littered with blanks: over 4,200 marked as “pending,” 2,500 with no location, and 2,800 with no race listed. For Lashawn Thompson, who died in an insect-infested Atlanta jail cell, the entry still says only “Pending” years later.

Rep. Bobby Scott, an original sponsor of the Death in Custody Reporting Act, voiced his frustration: “I’d like to see the law implemented so that we can have data to show how many people are dying in custody.” Yet the Department of Justice has never once enforced its own penalties against agencies that fail to report. As one policy analyst put it, agencies avoid releasing data because “it’s embarrassing to cops because they’re killing people, it’s embarrassing to prisons because they are letting people die.”

Inadequacies in the reporting of police related deaths aren't simply accidents but deliberately designed to protect an oppressive system from scrutiny. As Carnegie Mellon University professor and "Death in Custody" co-author Jay Aronson said, "It makes perfect sense and no sense at all. The only reason it makes sense is … if the goal is to actually not know, and to do everything you can not to know.”

Link: The Marshall Project

If you’ve lost someone to fatal violence under police or while incarcerated, apply to our Autopsy Initiative for a free independent autopsy here:  https://www.knowyourrightscamp.org/autopsyinitiative