Perils of police action: a cautionary tale from US data sets

Abstract

ObjectiveTo count and characterise injuries resulting from legal intervention by US law enforcement personnel and injury ratios per 10 000 arrests or police stops, thus expanding discussion of excessive force by police beyond fatalities.DesignEcological.PopulationThose injured during US legal police intervention as recorded in 2012 Vital Statistics mortality census, 2012 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project nationwide inpatient and emergency department samples, and two 2015 newspaper censuses of deaths.Exposure2012 and 2014 arrests from Federal Bureau of Investigation data adjusted for non-reporting jurisdictions; street stops and traffic stops that involved vehicle or occupant searches, without arrest, from the 2011 Police Public Contact Survey (PPCS), with the percentage breakdown by race computed from pooled 2005, 2008 and 2011 PPCS surveys due to small case counts.ResultsUS police killed or injured an estimated 55 400 people in 2012 (95% CI 47 050 to 63 740 for cases coded as police involved). Blacks, Native Americans and Hispanics had higher stop/arrest rates per 10 000 population than white non-Hispanics and Asians. On average, an estimated 1 in 291 stops/arrests resulted in hospital-treated injury or death of a suspect or bystander. Ratios of admitted and fatal injury due to legal police intervention per 10 000 stops/arrests did not differ significantly between racial/ethnic groups. Ratios rose with age, and were higher for men than women.ConclusionsHealthcare administrative data sets can inform public debate about injuries resulting from legal police intervention. Excess per capita death rates among blacks and youth at police hands are reflections of excess exposure. International Classification of Diseases legal intervention coding needs revision.

Years of life lost due to encounters with law enforcement in the USA, 2015–2016

“…Deaths due to police violence are undercounted in official vital statistics and crime records 2. However, previous epidemiological studies have found that systematically compiled news accounts are a reliable source of injury data 2 6.…”

Temporal Trends and Racial/Ethnic Inequalities for Legal Intervention Injuries Treated in Emergency Departments: US Men and Women Age 15–34, 2001–2014

“…[6][7][8] Still, others have produced analyses of existing injury and mortality data derived from hospital records and death certificates. [9][10][11] Researchers have yet to answer basic epidemiological questions about police violence, however, such as whether the incidence rate of injuries caused by US police has changed over time, or the degree to which these injuries are properly coded as Blegal intervention^(i.e., those caused by law enforcement, as per the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)) and are therefore identifiable in statistical analyses of hospital data. Additionally, little attention has been paid to the role of private security guards in use-of-force incidents, even as the private security industry has grown steadily since 2001, and the number of private guards in the USA has come to be roughly equal to the number of police officers.…”

Police Brutality and Black Health: Setting the Agenda for Public Health Scholars

“…In addition to job loss after incarceration, survivors of brutality may have to deal with disabilities resulting from police use of excessive force. 11 Disability decreases productivity and the ability to accumulate financial resources.…”

“…10 Police killings increase Black-specific mortality rates. Even though only two percent of injuries from police interventions that require treatment in the emergency department or hospital result in death, 11 Blacks are almost five times more likely than are Whites to have a police intervention-related injury. 12 Little is known about the prevalence of nonlethal police violence that results in injury or disability.…”