Police Officers Killed on Duty: Replicating and Extending a Unique Look at Officer Deaths

Abstract

In a unique exploration of line of duty police deaths, Kachurik and colleagues (Kachurik, S., Ruiz, J., & Staub, M. (2013). Police officers killed on duty: a different view. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 15(2), 1–11.) found that officers with greater social investment (ie, officers who were married and had children) were less likely to be feloniously killed than were single officers. Here, the analyses are replicated in a specific city over several periods to confirm this relationship. Focusing on Baltimore Police Department officers killed in the line of duty between 1808 and 2006, Kachurik and colleagues' findings that greater social investment did indeed decrease the likelihood of felonious death on the job — are replicated here. However, whereas the previous authors found children, but not marriage, to be significantly related to manner of death, the current study finds the opposite — marriage, but not the number of children an officer has, was significantly associated with officer homicide. Contrary to Kachurik et al., officers with less experience were significantly more likely to die feloniously than were their more tenured counterparts. In addition, the study finds that officers were more likely to die feloniously in certain districts.

Trends and Patterns of Police-Related Deaths in Brazil

“…As such, this chapter attempts to connect long-established issues of police violence in the North American context with similar, ongoing debates in Brazil. We share the idea that is important to provide evidence from other contexts since factors affecting police-related deaths in some places may not be relevant in other areas (Gibbs et al 2014).…”

“…This generalized violence has major impacts on society. On the one hand, when police officers are killed, the public experiences a sense of insecurity as the police are supposed to be the ones protecting them from danger (Gibbs et al 2014). On the other hand, when police kill, especially on the large scale as in Brazil, it puts individuals' constitutional and civil rights in check, directly affecting people's trust in authorities and hope for a functioning democracy (HRW 2009b).…”

“…International criminological research has long revealed strong associations between police violence and officers' individual characteristics, biased police practices toward marginalized people, a country's culture of violence, impunity, a lack of democracy of police institutions, as well as police organization, education, and practices (Adorno and Cardia 2000;Caldeira 2013;Cano 2010;Chappell and Wilson 1969;Gibbs et al 2014;Ross 2015). However, many of these previous studies do not explore regional variations in policerelated deaths and their potential covariates; even if they do, they are often based on North American and European contexts (but see, e.g., Cano 2010;Chappell and Wilson 1969;Bruce and Neild 2005).…”

Understanding the Organizational Factors that Impact Police-Community Relations

“…It is only more recent scholarship that has devoted significant attention to violence against the police. Additionally, a majority of scholars have focused on specific types of assaults against officers, such as only those that led to officer deaths in the line of duty (e.g., Blair, Fowler, Betz, & Baumgardner, 2016;Gibbs, Ruiz, & Klapper-Lehman, 2014;Kachurik, Ruiz, & Staub, 2013;Kaminski, 2008;Kaminski & Stucky, 2009;Kent, 2010;Maguire, Nix, & Campbell, 2017;Swedler, Kercher, Simmons, & Pollack, 2014). This narrow view neglects the fact that officer assaults leading to injuries are more common than those resulting in death (Covington, Huff-Corzine, & Corzine, 2014), and thus the former deserve equal, if not more, attention in the literature.…”

“…Scholars have primarily focused on the community level and/or situational level correlates of violence against the police (e.g., Bierie, Detar, & Craun, 2016;Caplan, Marotta, Piza, & Kennedy, 2014;Covington et al, 2014;Gibbs, Lee, Moloney, & Olson, 2017;Gibbs et al, 2014;Kaminski, Jefferis, & Gu, 2003;Rabe-Hemp & Schuck, 2007).…”