Columbus police have killed more than 60 people since 2013, outpacing many peer cities

After Columbus police shot and killed a man armed with knives near the site of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Tuesday, a total of eight people have been shot by Columbus Division of Police officers in 2024, and seven have died.

Where does Columbus rank compared to other U.S. cities when it comes to police violence against citizens?

Up-to-date data on police killings is not readily available from any official or government source, but nonprofit organizations and news sources have worked to aggregate and analyze police killings across the nation based on a variety of sources, including police reports and local media accounts.

The Washington Post has logged 9,893 deaths nationwide since 2015 . Another project, Mapping Police Violence , has tallied 13,328 since 2013.

Mapping Police Violence is run by Campaign Zero , a nonprofit police reform advocacy group.

The data includes both police shootings and deaths at the hands of police by other means, such as people struck and killed by police vehicles or suffocated in restraints. It does not document all police killings since any that go unreported by media are not detected or included.

How does Columbus compare when it comes to police violence against citizens?

Data from Mapping Police Violence is current as of July 4, and does not include Tuesday’s shooting at the RNC.

Columbus has had 63 total killings since 2013 and six in 2024, according to the data. An April shooting by Whitehall police is also not included, as it took place outside the Columbus city limits. None of the shootings have resulted in criminal charges against the officers, and none have inspired significant protests or similar public outcry.

The shootings have largely taken place after subjects charged police with knives or posed similar risks to the public.

In one instance, police fatally shot Ali Hamsa Yusuf, 22 , in a confrontation on Columbus' West Side. Yusuf, a contracted security guard, attempted to shoot his supervisor in the back of the head at close range at an Amazon warehouse west of West Jefferson. One Columbus officer was shot during the encounter, but was protected by a bulletproof vest and not seriously hurt.

Columbus’ population was projected at 913,175 people in 2023, according to U.S. Census Data. The city ranks high among similarly sized cities. Compared to seven similarly sized cities, Columbus had the second most killings total, behind Jacksonville, Florida with 69 since 2013.

Columbus also ranks third for police killings in 2024, behind Indianapolis and Austin, where seven people have been killed. Tuesday’s death could bring that to a tie.

Four of the cities—Fort Worth, San Jose, Charlotte, and San Francisco—have had no police killings so far this year.

Here are the stats for comparable cities, along with their 2023 projected population:

• Jacksonville: 985,843 people. 69 total killings, two in 2024
• Columbus: 913,175 people. 63 total killings, six in 2024
• Austin: 979,882 people. 59 total killings, seven in 2024
• Indianapolis: 879,293 people. 55 total killings, seven in 2024
• Fort Worth: 978,468 people. 46 total killings, zero in 2024
• Charlotte: 911,311 people. 39 total killings, zero in 2025
• San Jose: 969,655 people. 30 total killings, zero in 2024
• San Francisco: 808,988 people. 29 total killings, zero in 2024

Milwaukee, with a population of 561,385, has had 32 since 2013 and one in 2024.

So far, 709 people have died at the hands of police nationwide in 2024, according to Mapping Police Violence. That’s 56 more people than this time last year.

The project also notes that Black people are 2.9 times more likely to die at the hands of police than white people. The man killed Tuesday was a Black man named Samuel Sharpe Jr., though aid organizations said they knew him as “Jehovah” and that he was known to live in a tent encampment.

Police say they fired when Sharpe charged another man while wielding two knives.

bagallion@dispatch.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus police have killed more than 60 people since 2013, outpacing many peer cities