A Comparison of Law Enforcement and Medical Examiner Reports in a Violent-Death Surveillance System

Abstract

This study compared information gathered from medical examiner reports to information gathered from law enforcement reports in characterizing incidents of homicide and homicide followed by suicide that were abstracted for a public health violent-death surveillance system. The authors found that law enforcement reports contribute substantively to the surveillance system and often augment or provide additional information to the medical examiner reports. The utility of law enforcement data, particularly the narrative information, must be balanced with the time needed to gather the law enforcement reports and funding limitations. As violent-death surveillance needs grow, linking police and other law enforcement data with medical examiner and other public health data sources will provide a clearer picture of the circumstances relating to homicide and other violent deaths at the state and national level.

Suicide Among Older Adults Living in or Transitioning to Residential Long-term Care, 2003 to 2015

“…We attempted to account for this by including undetermined deaths, but our findings likely remain an underestimate. In addition, it is possible that the NVDRS narratives, while providing more context than is available in almost all other mortality data, are missing potentially relevant information due to the process of data extraction . Because there is substantial state variation as to what constitutes non–nursing home LTC (eg, assisted living) and because there is no systematic annual census of residents living in LTC other than nursing homes, we could not estimate the cumulative incidence of suicides in these settings.…”

“…In addition, it is possible that the NVDRS narratives, while providing more context than is available in almost all other mortality data, are missing potentially relevant information due to the process of data extraction. 38,39 Because there is substantial state variation as to what constitutes non-nursing home LTC (eg, assisted living) and because there is no systematic annual census of residents living in LTC other than nursing homes, 10 we could not estimate the cumulative incidence of suicides in these settings. Future studies should leverage data linkages to quantify attempted and completed suicides that occur across all types of LTC settings.…”

Gender differences in the presence of drugs in violent deaths

“…We use data from the Colorado Violent Death Reporting System (COVDRS), which is conducted by the Colorado Department of Public Health as a participant in the National Violent Death Report System (NVDRS) and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The NVDRS was created in response to growing consensus on the need for comprehensive, high‐quality data collection on violent deaths , which could ultimately inform the development and implementation of violence prevention policy . Data are collected in 18 US states, including Colorado.…”

Violent Roots

“…They find that the lack of agreement between the two systems is mainly due to “differences in case definition and ambiguous or failed procedures” (p. 335). In a similar vein, comparing information from law enforcement reports and medical examiner data, a recent study found that law enforcement reports complement data from the medical examiner reports, mostly because law enforcement focuses on who caused the death when the medical examiner focuses on what caused the death (Gabor et al, 2008). In the public health field of violent deaths studies, similar research proposes similar findings, ascertaining data limitations from all sources (Bonnie, Fulco, & Liverman, 1999), or specifying situations in which using multiple sources can be helpful—to assess circumstances of lethal events more so than to increase the quality of victim-related variables, for which death certificates provide the most comprehensive information (Goldsmith, Pellmar, Kleinman, & Bunney, 2002; Logan, Karch, & Crosby, 2009).…”