Prevalence of Disability Among Those Killed by Police, 2015 - 2017

• In Event: Police Use of Force

Abstract

Police violence is the leading cause of mortality for young men in the U.S and an extensive body of literature demonstrates that disabled individuals are at greater risk of incarceration, however, we lack information of the prevalence of disability among those killed by police due to the lack of official data. In this study we expand a subset from 2015-2017 of the Fatal Encounters Database, which archives police related deaths reported by the news, to identify if individuals in these data have signs of a disability. We then examine the prevalence of disability among the general population of those killed by police, and by race/ethnicity and gender. We found that 36% of those killed by police had a disability, and the rate was higher among women (45%) than men (36%). When looking by race, the prevalence of disability among those killed by police was highest among whites (43%) and lowest among Middle Eastern (17%), Black (27%), and Native American (28%) populations. This underscores risks of use of force for disabled individuals, the need to investigate the role of police related mortality in disparities in life expectancy, and the processes and contexts that lead to this mortality for different demographics.

Authors

• Erin Josephine McCauley, University of California, San Francisco

• Natalie Keller, University of California, San Francisco