Abstract
We evaluated the Fatal Encounters (FE) database as an open-source surveillance system for tracking police-related deaths (PRDs). We compared the coverage of FE data to several known government sources of police-related deaths and police homicide data. We also replicated incident selection from a recent review of the National Violent Death Reporting System. FE collected data on n = 23,578 PRDs from 2000-2017. A pilot study and ongoing data integration suggest greater coverage than extant data sets. Advantages of the FE data include circumstance of death specificity, incident geo-locations, identification of involved police-agencies, and near immediate availability of data. Disadvantages include a high rate of missingness for decedent race/ethnicity, potentially higher rates of missing incidents in older data, and the exclusion of more comprehensive police use-of-force and nonlethal use-of-force data-a critique applicable to all extant data sets. FE is the largest collection of PRDs in the United States and remains as the most likely source for historical trend comparisons and police-department level analyses of the causes of PRDs.
Highlights
Citizen deaths that occur during interactions with police officers are increasingly viewed by members of the general public and scholars as a public health concern in the United States [1, 2]
police-related deaths (PRDs) include, among other things: police homicides, citizens who die in automobile accidents during vehicle pursuits, citizens who suffer medical emergencies during interactions with police, and citizens committing suicide with police on-scene
A related commentary notes that citizens being killed by the police “affect[s] the well-being of the families and communities of the deceased” [1]
Summary
Citizen deaths that occur during interactions with police officers are increasingly viewed by members of the general public and scholars as a public health concern in the United States [1, 2]. Is often used in discussions of citizen deaths during police activities, we prefer the term “police-related deaths”. In a recent commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine, Crosby and Lyons argue that legal intervention deaths “are devastating to the victims’ families and the directly affected communities or neighborhoods;. They represent a significant public health burden and can incite further violence in which more people are killed” [2]. A related commentary notes that citizens being killed by the police “affect[s] the well-being of the families and communities of the deceased” [1]. Beyond their impact on victims, families, and communities, police homicides can have long-lasting physical and mental health consequences for police officers, many of whom experience symptoms of “post-shooting stress disorder” [3,4,5]
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