For the first time in years, there are early signs that police killings in the United States may be declining — after deaths reached a record high in 2024 and amid intensified scrutiny of law enforcement tactics nationwide.

The findings come as photos and videos of aggressive law enforcement — particularly involving federal immigration agents — have dominated headlines and social media. The new numbers don’t include deaths during immigration enforcement, and federal agents operate under different authorities and standards than state and local police. Nevertheless, some experts say the heightened visibility has sharpened public attention on the use of force.

New data from Campaign Zero, a research group that advocates for the end of police violence, shows a slight drop in police killings in 2025 compared with 2024.

At least 1,314 people were killed by police in 2025 — the first annual decrease since 2019, according to the group’s report. By comparison, at least 1,383 people were killed by law enforcement in 2024, the highest number recorded since the group began tracking the data.

Some policing experts caution that it’s too early to say whether the drop is the beginning of a longer-term decline.

“You want to have a couple of good years, and you want to begin to gather why we think these things are happening,” said Tracie Keesee, co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity and an associate professor of public safety and justice at the University of Virginia School of Continuing and Professional Studies. Keesee has 25 years of law enforcement experience.

“What do we not know?” she said. “What’s the data not telling us? I think that’s also important.”

Experts point to a range of possible explanations for the decrease in police-related deaths, including ongoing staffing shortages that have resulted in fewer officers on patrol, expanded use of de-escalation training and stricter use-of-force policies, and the uneven rollout of changes adopted by police departments in the years following the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Lower crime rates nationwide — including a decline in homicides — is another possible factor, some experts say, as it may have reduced the number of high-risk encounters between police and civilians.

The uncertainty reflects long-standing gaps in national policing data. There is no comprehensive federal government database tracking police use of force, leaving the public to rely on independent efforts such as Campaign Zero’s Mapping Police Violence database, which compiles incidents from public records, media reports and other verifiable sources.

Last year, the Trump administration shut down the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, a system that tracked misconduct by federal law enforcement officers.

The available data that is maintained by the federal government is collected by the FBI through its Uniform Crime Reporting system, which began tracking use-of-force incidents in 2019. The data relies on voluntary, self-reported submissions from police departments.

Another widely cited effort, The Washington Post’s Fatal Force database, tracked fatal police shootings between 2015 and 2024, but stopped updating the numbers in 2025.

While the Fatal Force database focused solely on police shootings, the Mapping Police Violence database takes a broader approach, including deaths involving other types of force as well as some accidental deaths — differences that can shape overall counts and complicate comparisons.

Researchers say these gaps are not just a data problem but also a barrier to understanding use of force itself. The gaps make it difficult to study when and why force is used and to evaluate which policies — whether legislative or within police departments — are the most effective in reducing it.

“There really is a significant misconception about what use of force looks like, and it’s largely because of the fact that we just don’t know what leads to use-of-force incidents,” said Logan Kennedy, an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at East Carolina University. “There’s not data out there.”

Variation across states

State-level data from Campaign Zero shows wide variation not only in how often police kill civilians, but also in the types of encounters that turn fatal.

Some states consistently had far lower rates of police killings than others. Rhode Island was the only state that had no police killings in 2025, according to the report.

New Jersey had the second-lowest rate in the country in 2025, with 0.08 police killings per 100,000 people. That’s a 48% decrease from the state’s average of the previous 12 years, according to the report.

By contrast, New Mexico had the highest rate of police killings per capita, with 1.36 police killings per 100,000 people, according to the report.

The types of incidents that lead to deadly force also vary. In some places, fatal encounters are more likely to stem from reported violent crimes, while in others they more often begin with routine traffic stops or calls related to mental health crises or welfare checks, according to Stateline’s analysis of the data.

Some researchers and policing experts say those differences may reflect a mix of factors, including training standards, department policies and whether states have invested in alternatives to traditional policing — such as crisis response teams that handle mental health calls.

Since 2021, every officer in New Jersey has been required to undergo de-escalation training known as ICAT, or Integrating Communication, Assessment and Tactics.

ICAT training teaches patrol officers how to handle tense situations — especially those involving people in crisis — by slowing encounters down, communicating clearly and using safer alternatives to force. The program was developed by the Police Executive Research Forum, a national nonprofit focused on policing standards, about a decade ago.

“In the last 10 years, we have seen the evolution of police training, especially as it relates to de-escalation,” said Chuck Wexler, the group’s executive director.

ICAT has been implemented in roughly 1,500 law enforcement agencies nationwide, Wexler said. He added that it may have contributed to New Jersey’s significant decline in use-of-force deaths in 2025, though he acknowledged it would not have been the sole factor.

At least 12 cities with populations over 250,000 had zero police killings in 2025, according to the report. Departments in two of those cities, Long Beach, California, and Minneapolis, have received ICAT training, Wexler said. Police in Roanoke, Virginia, and Spokane, Washington, reported no officer-involved shootings in 2025, and were also trained under ICAT.

“If you don’t change your training and your tactics and how you communicate with people, you’re not going to see the change in the areas that you can,” Wexler said.

Some states, including California and Washington, have adopted stricter use-of-force laws in recent years, allowing officers to use deadly force only as a last resort. Others have expanded certain programs aimed at reducing police involvement in nonviolent situations, such as when someone is in the midst of a mental health crisis and might be better helped by a specially trained social worker than a responding law enforcement officer.

The report’s authors found no single policy directly linked to lower rates of police killings.

The variation, some policing experts say, highlights how uneven changes to policing standards and procedures have been implemented since Floyd’s death.

Some states and localities have pursued sweeping changes, while others have taken a more limited approach. Some experts say it can take years for a policy or training change to be implemented, take hold and begin to shift broader trends.

It’s also unclear whether the momentum behind policing policy changes has been sustained across much of the country — and to what extent states and localities have maintained those changes or rolled them back, experts say.

“Years later, we don’t really know. Did those reforms actually go into effect?” said Kennedy, of East Carolina University. “Asking questions about whether or not they’re persisting or eroding –– it makes a significant difference.”

Disparities persist

The impact of police violence also remains deeply uneven — both nationally and within states.

Black Americans continue to be killed by police at disproportionately high rates compared with white Americans, a disparity that holds across nearly every state analyzed, according to the report. Nationwide, Black people are killed at more than twice the rate of white people, the report found, with even wider gaps in some states.

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Hispanic people were also more likely than white people to be killed by police in 2025, according to the report.

Even if 2025 does mark the start of a new downward trend in police-involved killings, some experts say national figures can obscure what’s happening on the ground.

The decline does not mean all communities are experiencing the same level of change, according to Keesee, of the Center for Policing Equity.

“The question I always ask (is), ‘Police killings are down for who?’” Keesee said. “When you still have racial disparities, that means it might not be perceived that killings are down, especially if you’re in communities where a lot of these things seem to take place.”

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at ahernandez@stateline.org.

Gas prices are climbing again across the United States — with little clarity on where prices are headed next — spurring proposals for state gas tax holidays in the hopes of offering drivers some relief.

The national average hit $3.96 per gallon Monday, up from $3.72 the week before, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A month ago, the average price per gallon was $2.79.

Some analysts warn prices could continue climbing in the coming weeks, potentially pushing the national average above $4 per gallon for the first time since 2022.

Data from AAA, a national travel and motorist organization, shows a similar upward trend for both regular gas and diesel.

While the Energy Information Administration no longer publishes detailed data for every state, regional figures show increases across much of the country. The West Coast, Central Atlantic states and Rocky Mountain region are seeing some of the highest average prices, with California, Colorado and Washington among those experiencing the largest recent increases.

Rising gas prices are putting renewed pressure on household finances, especially for low- and middle-income Americans who have less flexibility to absorb higher transportation costs. The increases can ripple through daily life, influencing how much people drive, where they travel and how they spend money elsewhere.

Still, economists say the most significant factor right now is not just the price itself, but the uncertainty surrounding it. With national policy decisions and geopolitical developments in the Middle East shifting rapidly, there is little consensus on how long prices will remain elevated or how high they could climb.

“Gasoline prices don’t live in isolation,” said Steven Durlauf, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Durlauf also is the director of the university’s Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility. “Reductions in the supply of petroleum, oil-based products affect the entire economy.”

States weigh gas tax holidays

With prices rising, local leaders and state lawmakers in several states — including California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland and Utah — have weighed gas tax holidays as a way to provide relief at the pump.

Georgia lawmakers have already enacted a temporary suspension, while officials in Florida and Maryland have expressed skepticism, citing budget constraints and questions about how much savings would actually reach consumers.

Gas prices have risen across all of these states, with some of the sharpest increases in the South.

Gas tax holidays, which temporarily suspend or reduce state fuel taxes, gained traction in 2022 when gas prices last topped $4 per gallon. Supporters say they can offer immediate, visible relief by lowering the per-gallon cost of fuel.

But researchers and some economists say the benefits are often limited and uneven. A new analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning tax policy research group, estimates that the recent rise in gas prices is on pace to cost American drivers an additional $9.4 billion per month.

The researchers found that gas tax holidays may provide only minimal relief to those who need it most. For households earning less than $53,000 a year, a federal gas tax holiday would save about $5 per month on average.

Some research suggests that much of the benefit from such policies may not reach consumers at all. When fuel supply is constrained, a significant share of the savings can be absorbed within the oil and gas supply chain rather than passed on at the pump.

State-level examples reflect similar patterns. In Georgia, analysts from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the state’s newly enacted tax holiday is expected to cost the state about $196 million per month and disproportionately benefit wealthier households: The bottom 60% are expected to receive just 22% of the tax cuts — or roughly $13 per family, according to the ITEP analysis.

Utah lawmakers have spent a year planning for a 15% cut in the state’s gas tax from July through December. But some economists say any savings for consumers might be engulfed by higher prices.

“It’s still unclear the extent people will notice that tax cut,” Phil Dean, chief economist at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah, told the Utah News Dispatch.

There are also fiscal trade-offs. Gas taxes are a key source of revenue for transportation infrastructure, and suspending them — even temporarily — can strain state budgets, particularly in places where revenues have fallen in recent years.

Some experts say more targeted approaches, such as direct income rebates or assistance aimed at lower-income households, may be more effective in offsetting rising fuel costs without reducing transportation funding.

“A tax holiday is, I think, something most economists would be uncomfortable with,” said Durlauf, the University of Chicago economist.

If the consumer demand is still there, gasoline prices might still rise, he said. “It’s not obvious to me that the prices will not just adjust to (gas tax holidays) as well.”

Global tensions

Much of the recent volatility stems from the Trump administration’s war in Iran and uncertainty surrounding the Strait of Hormuz — a critical global oil transit route through which a significant share of the world’s oil supply passes. Iran has effectively restricted access to some vessels in the region, raising fears of supply disruptions that can quickly ripple through global markets.

Even the threat of disruption can send oil prices higher, as traders react to the possibility of reduced supply.

Though the United States produces substantial amounts of oil domestically, it remains part of a global market, meaning international developments still directly affect prices at the pump.

“Americans can’t fence themselves off from the impacts of global changes to supply and demand,” said Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, a fuel savings and price-tracking company. “Actions have consequences, and consumers are very much feeling that.”

Crude oil remains the single biggest driver of gasoline prices, accounting for about half of the cost of a gallon of regular gas, according to the Energy Information Administration. Refining makes up about 20%, while distribution and marketing account for 11%, and taxes roughly 18%.

Brent crude oil — the international benchmark — has surged in recent weeks, briefly reaching $119 per barrel last week. It settled around $100 per barrel on Monday, and rose again on Tuesday to about $113 per barrel.

Federal forecasts expect prices to remain elevated in the near term before easing later this year.

Seasonal factors are also contributing to the increase. As warmer weather approaches, refineries transition to producing summer-blend gasoline, which is more expensive to manufacture but designed to reduce evaporation and meet environmental standards.

Warmer weather also usually means more drivers will be on the road.

“The oil industry is volatile. It’s a global market, and that’s why we don’t predict what’s going to happen next because it’s impossible to,” said Aixa Diaz, a spokesperson for AAA. “This all coincided at a time when gas would normally be going up anyway for us.”

At its core, gasoline pricing reflects basic supply and demand dynamics. When supply tightens — or is expected to — prices rise. When demand falls, prices tend to drop, sometimes sharply.

“Whenever there’s a perceived shift in either supply or demand, there’s going to be an equal reaction,” De Haan said. “This is just one of the larger reactions, because it’s a larger impact.”

The recent spike has also been fueled by rapidly shifting political signals. President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States is in talks with Iran to resolve the conflict, helping to briefly push oil prices lower after they surged amid Trump’s threats to target Iran’s energy infrastructure. Iran denied there were ongoing talks.

Such volatility, economists say, adds another layer of uncertainty that can weigh on both consumers and the broader economy.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at ahernandez@stateline.org.