A little more than a year ago, outrage over police shootings around the country led California Attorney General Kamala Harris to launch an “unprecedented” project called Open Justice to provide user-friendly statistics — including counts of fatal police encounters — to researchers and regular citizens.

…

But the public still isn’t getting a complete picture of these deadly incidents. Not even close.

…

“Nobody has any idea how many police shootings there are,” said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford Law School professor and co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. “Any scrutiny is good, and if this causes more scrutiny, that’s good, and if it causes any embarrassment, that’s fine.”

…

Weisberg and other criminal justice experts note that without good numbers, it’s impossible to decipher trends — and, when possible, address them.

“It’s tough to motivate police departments to engage in their own self-criticism if they’re allowed to be in denial about how frequent these incidents are,” Weisberg said.