Who Shot Ya? How Emergency Departments Can Collect Reliable Police Shooting Data

Abstract

This paper examines an alternative solution for collecting reliable police shooting data. One alternative is the collection of police shooting data from hospital trauma units, specifically hospital-based violence intervention programs. These programs are situated in Level I trauma units in many major cities in USA. While the intent of these programs is to reduce the risk factors associated with trauma recidivism among victims of violent injury, they also collect reliable data on the number of individuals treated for gunshot wounds. While most trauma units do a great job collecting data on mode of injury, many do not collect data on the circumstances surrounding the injury, particularly police-involved shootings. Research protocol on firearm-related injury conducted in emergency departments typically does not allow researchers to interview victims of violent injury who are under arrest. Most victims of nonfatal police-involved shootings are under arrest at the time they are treated by the ED for their injury. Research protocol on victims of violent injury often excludes individuals under arrest; they fall under the exclusion criteria when recruiting potential participants for research on violence. Researchers working in hospital emergency departments are prohibited from recruited individuals under arrests. The trauma staff, particularly ED physicians and nurses, are in a strategic position to collect this kind of data. Thus, this paper examines how trauma units can serve as an alternative in the reliable collection of police shooting data.

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

“…4,5 Others have explored various options for using public health monitoring systems to provide better data to epidemiologists and the public on police-related fatalities and gunshot injuries. [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.…”

Going Beyond the Blue: The Utility of Emergency Medical Services Data in Understanding Violent Crime

“…Recent studies of gun violence in particular have utilized such data (e.g., D. J. Boyle et al, 2010; Richardson et al, 2016), given that gunshot wound victims may seek medical attention but want to avoid contact with the police. These analyses similarly find that hospital data uncover more violence than relying on police data alone.…”

The dark footprint of state violence: A synthetic approach to the American crime decline

“…Opinions in the nation’s largest newspapers lament the lack of solid, government-collected data covering police killings of civilians (Berman, 2015; Lowery, 2014). A former FBI Director described federal data on justifiable killings as unreliable due to voluntary reporting requirements, describing journalists instead as the “lead sources” in determining the scope of the problem (Tran, 2015) and a former Attorney General made similar comments (Richardson et al, 2015).…”

“…The undercounting of civilian homicide (Maltz, 2006) compounds when we shift to police homicide, shifting the vectors of concern as well. Richardson et al (2015) report that in 2012 only 4% of jurisdictions (about 750 of 18,000) reported police killings to the FBI. Directly contrary to civilian homicides, this extreme undercounting stemmed in part from “large jurisdictions that do not routinely report police-involved deaths” including one jurisdiction of more than 1300 officers which “did not view justifiable homicides by law enforcement officers as reportable data”.…”