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Session Submission Summary

Profiling and Understanding Police Shootings in Metropolitan America

Fri, Nov 17, 8:00 to 9:20am, Marriott, Franklin 12, 4th Floor

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

In the United States, police use of deadly force is lawful when the officer reasonably believes the civilian or the flight of a civilian poses a significant threat of serious bodily injury or death to themselves or others. Despite much public concern over the circumstances and outcomes of police shootings, knowledge of the distribution, determination, and consequences of police use of firearms remains patchy. Single-agency data and/or exclusion of non-fatal incidents often render past research findings restricted in their generalizability and provincial in their focus. In order to address these and other deficiencies, the Police Use of Force Study Group at John Jay College of Criminal Justice has engaged in open source data collection and analysis to unpack the complex dynamics of the problem. Data on about 600 incidents recorded during the period of January-June 2015 in cities with a population of 100,000 or more residents are collected from multiple sources, concatenated with department- and community-level information, and computerized for statistical analysis to provide descriptions and explanations of police use of firearms. Frameworks from various traditions, including social psychology, organizational development, and structural sociology, will be invoked to account for analytical results. Preliminary findings are presented in this panel.

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