A descriptive analysis of homicides committed during civil unrest in the United States in 2020

Civil unrest erupted throughout the United States following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. While most protests remained peaceful, some turned violent. Using publicly available sources, we assembled a database of the 31 known homicides associated with the protests and riots that occurred in 2020 following the death of George Floyd. Results from our descriptive analyses help shed light on the characteristics of the victims and perpetrators in these cases, as well as the nature of the homicide incidents and the civil unrest events during which they occurred. Although certain politicians and journalists depicted the homicides associated with these protests and riots in monolithic terms, the nature of these incidents varied widely. Therefore, theoretical explanations for these homicides, as well as public policy responses to them, must account for this heterogeneity.