Four expert witnesses talk to the BBC World Service Inquiry programme, including the head of President Obama's taskforce on police reform, Charles Ramsey.
And while even Barack Obama, after meeting with his post-Ferguson taskforce on policing, spoke of the "need to collect more data", relatively little public discussion has centered on how such a count – a real count – would actually work.
"This epidemic is disproportionately affecting black people," said Brittany Packnett, an activist and member of the White House taskforce on policing.
This will be backed by a new taskforce of intelligence, policing and asylum experts to smash the people smuggling networks.
On Monday, the president's taskforce on policing issued recommendations for better data collection as part of a call for top-to-bottom criminal justice reform.
Earlier that month, Barack Obama's taskforce on policing issued recommendations for better data collection as part of a call for top-to-bottom criminal justice reform.
Better data on killings and the use of force by police officers was strongly recommended by a White House taskforce on policing convened by Barack Obama following the unrest in Ferguson.
A draft report from a taskforce on policing handpicked by the embattled Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, says that black distrust of the Chicago police is "justified", it has emerged, as Chicagoans outraged by the police shooting of a 16-year-old took their anger to the warehouse exposed by the Guardian as an incommunicado detentions and interrogations center.
"Without the pressure from all of us being in the streets, there would have been no 21st-century taskforce on policing, so this is a 'both-and', not an 'either-or', situation".
A couple of blocks away, a tactical joint taskforce of US marshals, state police and sheriff's deputies had just arrested a fugitive on unrelated interstate charges.
