Associations Between Police Killings of Civilians and Civilian Gun Fatalities

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

Background: A recent study of archival data shows higher rates of police killings of civilians are positively associated with state-level firearm ownership (Doucette et al., 2022). Recent findings indicate a positive association between crime, especially those committed with a firearm, with concealed carry applications and permits in US states (Binder and Carter 2018). An analysis of 2015-2017 data from the Washington Post's "Fatal Force Database'' shows rates of police shooting deaths are significantly and positively correlated with levels of household gun ownership (Hemenway et al. 2019).
Methods: We analyzed data from Mapping Police Violence, which collects any incident where a law enforcement officer applies lethal force resulting in a civilian being killed, and data from the Gun Violence Archive, an online archive of gun violence incidents collected from law enforcement, media, government and commercial sources daily. We examined 1340 cities with available data to examine the association between police killings of civilians and civilian gun fatalities.
Results: A linear model for civilian fatalities per capita vs police killings of civilians per capita controlled for department size and Ferguson effect had a significant association (R-square of 0.5812,
p-value< 2.2e-16).
Discussion: Next steps include examinations of departmental and municipal demographics.

Authors

• Kathryn McKelvey, Campaign Zero

• Frankie Wunschel, Vera Institute of Justice

• Andrew David Zaharia, Campaign Zero