Police encounters are more common — and less predictable — than most people realize. Here's what the data says about when, where, and how often they happen, and why being ready matters.
Police activity and violence aren't spread evenly across the year. Warmer months put more people on the road and outdoors — and incidents climb with the temperature, peaking from late spring through August.
Relative intensity of encounters and violence by month — consistently peaking June through August (gold). July 4 is the single highest-incident day of the year.
Fatal traffic stops and other police killings cluster heavily by state and city. Where you drive changes your odds. The chart below depicts the highest and lowest states for police killings per 1 million people (from Jan 1, 2013 through June 8, 2026)
Source: Mapping Police Violence
New Mexico has the highest per-capita police-killing rate in the country (11.1 per 1,00,000).
Chicago runs roughly 200,000 traffic stops a year — more per capita than most major cities. Los Angeles makes about 5 times as many stops as San Francisco.
Risk of a fatal police encounter peaks between ages 20 and 35 across every demographic group. If you have a young driver in your family, the case for being prepared is even stronger.
The overwhelming majority of encounters end without incident. The danger is that no one gets to know in advance which stop is the exception — that's exactly the moment an attorney on the line changes everything.
The scale of police violence in the U.S. is in a category of its own among developed nations. Preparation here isn't paranoia — it's proportionate.
You won't pick the day, the city, or the officer. But you can make sure a licensed attorney is one tap away when it happens — from $16/month.
Sources: Stanford Open Policing Project; U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (Police-Public Contact Survey); Mapping Police Violence; Campaign Zero. Figures are the most recent available and vary by source, year, and jurisdiction. Shown to illustrate general patterns in U.S. policing.