098 Neighborhood police encounters, health and violence in a southern city

Abstract

<h3>Statement of Purpose</h3> This study adds to the growing body of research examining how aggressive policing impacts health and well-being, specifically, the relationships between neighborhood police stop-and-frisk encounters on both health outcomes and violence rates in New Orleans, Louisiana. <h3>Methods/Approach</h3> A secondary, ecologic cross-sectional study was conducted with data from publicly available data from the New Orleans Police Department (2018), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 500 Cities Project (2016–2019), and the American Community Survey (ACS), as well as contractually approved vital statistics data from the Louisiana Department of Health (2017–2018). Neighborhood was defined as a census tract, with the number of tracts included in the study varying based on outcome, as described below, but with 178 tracts as the base sample. <h3>Results</h3> The average rate of police stop-and-frisk encounters and juvenile violations cited were more than twice as high for Black youth and adults compared to their white counterparts. Even after accounting for concentrated disadvantage and segregation, neighborhoods with higher rates of encounters had significantly (p &lt; 0.05) higher prevalence rates of smoking, physical inactivity, and poor physical health. Compared to neighborhoods with lower rates of police encounters, those with high rates experienced 0.38 more youth homicide, 21.53 violent crime, and 70.49 domestic violence events per 1,000 and these differences were statistically significant. <h3>Conclusion</h3> There is a need for strengthened policy focused on the impact of community policing on health and violence outcomes. <h3>Significance</h3> This work advances the science behind the impact of community hyper-policing on both health and other forms of violence among youth and adults.