City-Wide Firearm Violence Spikes in Minneapolis following the Murder of George Floyd: A Comparative Time-Series Analysis of Three Cities

Abstract

This study investigates the aftermath of a high-profile violent police incident as it relates to city-wide firearm violence. Utilizing two Midwest cities (Kansas City, Missouri and Omaha, Nebraska) as comparison cities, we assess whether violent firearm incidents increased in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd. Multiple interrupted time-series analyses showed statistically significant increases in weekly firearm incidents in Minneapolis (AME = 10.63, p < 0.05) and Omaha (AME = 1.47, p < 0.5) following the murder of George Floyd. No significant results were found in Kansas City. Similar relationships were found when examining monthly firearm incidents. The firearm spike in Minneapolis thus represents an approximate 10-fold increase in weekly firearm incidents relative to that observed in Omaha. We conclude, therefore, that the murder of George Floyd was associated with a substantially greater increase in firearm violence in Minneapolis than in the two comparison cities. Police training to reduce police violence and public health approaches to reduce urban firearm violence will alleviate the social and economic impacts of violence on federal and state governments.

Online Fake News Opinion Spread and Belief Change: A Systematic Review

“…A CRIS also evokes emotional responses that lead to polarization. This was demonstrated in [59] for the climate change topic and the topic of public opinion about police funding [64] at around the time of the murder of George 7 Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies Floyd at the hands of law enforcement in the United States [155]. It was also seen that the level of a person's stubbornness was shown to be inversely correlated to the probability of belief change [55].…”

Turnover in Large US Police Agencies Following the George Floyd Protests

“…One potential consequence of a lack of police turnover research (owing in part to the dearth of data we have outlined above) could be inadequately accounting for the mechanisms driving lower police activity, such as in studies linking increased violent crime to the George Floyd protest moment (Cassell, 2020). Whereas recent studies linked increased firearm violence in Minneapolis to the murder of George Floyd, that has not been the case with some comparison cities (Boehme et al, 2022). Models linking Floyd protests and crime may inadvertently mask an important causal factor: the number of officers available to deter, respond to, and investigate serious crime (Petersen et al, 2023).…”

“…A growing demand for police reform accompanied these protests. While certainly not new, the Floyd moment in policing was notable for prompting the most widespread protest movement in recent memory (Boudreau et al, 2022), wide-ranging policy change, mainstream political calls for defunding and even abolishing police agencies, increased (but perhaps localized) firearm violence (Boehme et al, 2022), and rapid declines in favorable opinions of the police (Reny & Newman, 2021).…”

The impact of COVID-19 on police officer activities

“… Demir and Park (2021) found that Black Lives Matter protests resulting from George Floyd's death did not lead to a change in assault CFS in Burlington, Vermont. On the other hand, there was a significant increase in reported firearm incidents after Floyd's death in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but not in two Midwestern cities used as comparison sites ( Boehme, Kaminski, & Nolan, 2022 ). Another recent study found that citizen cooperation and engagement with police (measured as the ratio of citizen CFS relative to ShotSpotter gunshot detections) significantly decreased after George Floyd's murder across eight U.S. cities ( Ang, Bencsik, Bruhn, & Derenoncourt, 2021 ).…”