> Mainly because police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics, so the data is horribly incomplete. And as anybody knows, you can massage the data to show anything you want when you don't have the complete picture:
That is true, but not to the US' credit. In the UK, the records are compiled nationally and are beyond question. There have been three fatal police shootings here in 2015; all of them were front-page national news.
The US keeps no such records, and until http://killedbypolice.net/ began compiling credible news reports, nobody was keeping national records. The numbers on killedbypolice.net are therefore an absolute minimum for how many people are killed by police in America. Killings which are not well-documented in the news aren't included. If the number is inaccurate, then the picture in America is even worse.
Undoubtedly many of them are justified. America is awash in guns, and if somebody is shooting at you, then undoubtedly you have the right to shoot back. However only 48% of those who were killed had a firearm on or near them (it doesn't necessarily mean they were using it).[1] Many of the remainder are classified as being "armed", but that includes cases like this mentally ill man who was killed for holding a screwdriver in an unthreatening manner[2], so those numbers should be considered suspect. Finally, there are hundreds of killings every year of people who cannot be considered "armed" by any definition. Many of these are well-documented on video; if you want to spend the next few hours watching snuff films, they're easy enough to find.
The punishment for the overwhelming majority of these killings is a paid vacation for the murderer.
Something is desperately wrong with America.
1: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0...
2: https://www.rt.com/usa/252533-dallas-screwdriver-shooting-ju...