Officer-involved shootings

Update on the Historical OIS Data I've Been Pulling Together

Roughly 2 years ago I started building a database of fatal officer-involved shootings (OIS) at the agency-year level, going back in time as far as possible. If you’re not familiar with the OIS data landscape, here’s the gist: Official data compiled by the FBI and NVSS have long been recognized as woefully incomplete and thus inadequate. Unofficial data compiled by current/former journalists, activists, and researchers have become available over the last decade or so.

Unveiling the unseen: Documenting and analyzing nonfatal shootings by police

Some invited comments on an article by Julie Ward and team in AJPH

American Society of Criminology - 2022 Meeting

A list of the panels I'm involved in at the November 2022 meeting.

Police Use of Deadly Force - What We Know and What We Need to Know

My talk provides a broad overview of the research on police use of deadly force – how often it happens, where it happens, and why it happens. I'll also point out the holes in our knowledge due to data constraints. I conclude with a discussion of …

Another Post about Police Shooting Data

I’ve been screaming this into the void on Twitter lately so I figured I’d pull all my thoughts together in a blog post. On January 12th, ABC News published a story claiming that fatal police shootings had declined 13% in 2021 “amid calls for reform on use of force.” The story also claimed that Florida saw the biggest decrease in shootings (from 93 to 44).1 At that time, The Washington Post’s (WAPO) database was showing 888 fatal police shootings.

Factors associated with police shooting mortality: A focus on race and a plea for more comprehensive data

At the 2021 ASC Conference, I present findings from my latest paper on police shootings with John Shjarback.

Factors associated with police shooting mortality: A focus on race and a plea for more comprehensive data

We compile nonfatal police shooting data from four states and find that some racial disparities are larger than previously thought.

Body-worn cameras and transparency: Experimental evidence of inconsistency in police executive decision-making

Body-worn cameras (BWC) have diffused rapidly throughout policing as a means of promoting transparency and accountability. Yet, whether to release BWC footage to the public remains largely up to the discretion of police executives, and we know little …

On the challenges associated with the study of police use of deadly force in the United States: A response to Schwartz & Jahn

I was invited to write a formal comment on a recent analysis of fatal police shootings in US MSAs.

Gun victimization in the line of duty: Fatal and non-fatal firearm assaults on police officers in the United States, 2014-2019

We explore state-level variation and trends over time in gun assaults of police officers.

Good Cop, Bad Cop: Understanding Police Use of Force

I was a guest on this podcast where we discuss what science tells us about police use of force.

Gun Violence Against U.S. Police Officers: Insights from a New Dataset

In a forthcoming paper in Criminology & Public Policy, Michael and I conducted an exploratory analysis of fatal and non-fatal firearm assaults on U.S police officers using six years of public data provided by the Gun Violence Archive. We adopted the following inclusion criteria: Victim was a sworn officer employed by a local, state, or special jurisdiction law enforcement agency that routinely responds to calls for service (i.e., officers employed by town, city, or county agencies, sheriff’s departments, state agencies, tribal police, university police, transit police) Victim was on duty at the time of assault The bullet struck the victim’s person or his/her equipment (excluding vehicle) The bullet came from a real firearm (i.

Police Shooting Research and the Conditional Probability Mistake

Yesterday, Andy Wheeler posted a summary of the problems with recent studies about officer-involved shootings, including one my colleagues and I published in February 2017. As usual, Andy’s criticisms were thoughtful and spot on. And I hope I can take him up on that conference beer soon, even though he’s at a new job. That said, I do want to push back just a little about the motivation for our paper.

New preprint: Do police killings of unarmed persons really have spillover effects?

Correcting 91 misclassified incidents renders Bor et al.'s (2018) key finding non-significant.

Considering Violence Against Police by Citizen Race/Ethnicity to Contextualize Representation in Officer-Involved Shootings

We use data on violence against police as a benchmark to understand racial disparities in OIS

Crowdsourced police shooting data: What we know and what we're missing

At the 2019 ASA Conference, Geoff Alpert and I discuss how misleading analyses of strictly fatal OIS can be.

That new study in PNAS on fatal officer-involved shootings

My thoughts after reading.

The problems with OIS data that only capture fatalities

Any time an officer purposely discharges his/her firearm at someone, deadly force has been used.

Validity of details in databases logging police killings

A recent study suggests fatal encounters between police and unarmed black men has mental health consequences for the black community.

Analysis of 2018 Use of Deadly Force by the Phoenix Police Department

We examined trends in Phoenix OIS from 2009 to 2018.

Disparity Does Not Mean Bias: Making Sense of Observed Racial Disparities in Fatal Officer-involved Shootings with Multiple Benchmarks

We discuss the importance of using an appropriate benchmark to compare racial differences in officer-involved shootings.

Domestic Disturbances and Fatal Police Shootings: An Analysis of the Washington Post’s Data

Among fatal OIS, domestic disturbances were *not* significantly more likely to involve an individual armed with a gun

Is the Number of Citizens Fatally Shot by Police Increasing in the Post-Ferguson Era?

No.

Review of ‘‘When Police Kill’’

My brief review of Frank Zimring’s book on police use of deadly force.

A Bird’s Eye View of Civilians Killed by Police in 2015: Further Evidence of Implicit Bias

Further analysis of WAPO data - while limited - is suggestive of implicit bias in fatal officer-involved shootings