Excessive force by police has been a forefront issue across the nation this year, from the shooting death of Michael Brown and subsequent protests in Ferguson, to the arrest and trial of Darrin Manning, a Philadelphia teen who underwent surgery after a stop and frisk by a police officer. As was seen in the choking death of Eric Garner in New York or the killings of Carlos Mejia, Frank Alvarado, Osman Hernandez and Angel Ruiz in Salinas, Calif., interactions with police can be deadly, especially for Black and Latino men.

Annual FBI reports confirm that deadly force by law enforcement is on the rise. According to the FBI's yearly Uniform Crime Report, the number of felons shot and killed by police in 2013 was higher than any year in the past two decades. But the FBI does not track the number of unjustified cases because it doesn’t track murder by profession. That leaves many cases unreported. Eric Garner, Michael Brown or any individual who has not been convicted of a felony would not be counted as one of the 400 recorded annual police killings.

A USA TODAY analysis of the recorded justified killings found that 20 percent involved a Black man killed by a white police officer. Departments like Ferguson or Albuquerque, which had 26 fatal shootings in the past four years, many involving victims with mental illnesses, have undergone federal review by the Justice Department after public outcry and civil rights complaints. Several other police departments, Salinas, have undergone similar scrutiny. In Philadelphia, 300 civil rights violations were filed against the police department in 2013 alone.