Fatal Police Shootings In 2015 Approaching 400 Nationwide

REPORT: Police Have Fatally Shot Close To 400 People This Year
A witness talks with police at a Manhattan crime scene, Wednesday, May 13, 2015, in New York, after a man apparently wielding a hammer was shot and wounded by police. The shooting took place shortly after 10 a.m., blocks from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
A witness talks with police at a Manhattan crime scene, Wednesday, May 13, 2015, in New York, after a man apparently wielding a hammer was shot and wounded by police. The shooting took place shortly after 10 a.m., blocks from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

In an alley in Denver, police gunned down a 17-year-old girl joyriding in a stolen car. In the backwoods of North Carolina, police opened fire on a gun-wielding moonshiner. And in a high-rise apartment in Birmingham, Ala., police shot an elderly man after his son asked them to make sure he was okay. Douglas Harris, 77, answered the door with a gun.

The three are among at least 385 people shot and killed by police nationwide during the first five months of this year, more than two a day, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the rate of fatal police shootings tallied by the federal government over the past decade, a count that officials concede is incomplete.

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