I asked Gemini about this and got:

While a person is much more likely to be killed by a citizen in total (because there are over 340 million citizens), *an individual law enforcement officer is approximately 35 to 40 times more likely to kill someone than an average citizen is.*

Here is the per-capita breakdown based on 2024 data:

### 1. The Numbers (2024 Estimates)

* *Total US Population:* ~341,200,000

* *Total Sworn Police Officers:* ~708,000 (This includes federal, state, and local officers with the power of arrest and the authority to carry a firearm).

* *Killings by Police:* 1,365

* *Homicides by Citizens:* ~17,000 (Based on the 14.9% decline in murders reported by the FBI for 2024).

### 2. Per-Capita Comparison

To find the "likelihood" of an individual in either group committing a killing, we divide the total deaths by the number of people in that group.

| Group | Population Size | Annual Killings | Likelihood of 1 Individual Killing Someone |

| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |

| *Police Officers* | ~708,000 | 1,365 | *1 in 519* |

| *Private Citizens* | ~340,492,000 | ~17,000 | *1 in 20,028* |

*The Result:* An individual police officer is statistically *38.6 times more likely* to kill a person than a private citizen is to commit a homicide.

### 3. Important Contextual Differences

When looking at these adjusted numbers, researchers and criminologists point to several factors that explain the disparity:

* *Frequency of Contact:* Police officers are professionally required to seek out and engage with violent or potentially violent individuals. The average citizen may go years without an aggressive confrontation, while a patrol officer may face several in a single week.

* *Legal Mandate:* Almost all civilian homicides (100%) in these statistics are classified as "murder or non-negligent manslaughter" (crimes). Conversely, the vast majority of police killings (typically over 98%) are ruled "justified legal interventions" by the legal system, meaning they were deemed a lawful response to a threat.

* *Armed Status:* 100% of on-duty sworn officers are armed with firearms and other lethal tools, whereas only about 32% of US adults personally own a firearm.

* *Targeting:* Civilian homicides are often "crimes of passion" or related to other criminal activity (like robbery), while police killings are concentrated during specific high-risk events like traffic stops, mental health crises, and the serving of warrants.

### Summary

If you were to pick one random person out of the entire U.S. population and one random person from the law enforcement community, *the person from the law enforcement community is about 39 times more likely to be the source of a fatal shooting or killing.* However, from the perspective of the *victim*, you are still roughly *12 times more likely* to be killed by a citizen than by a police officer because there are so few officers compared to the general population.

I'll add: fuck the police.