Stop, Frisk, and Homicide? A Spatial Analysis of the Relationship Between Police Stops and Officer-Involved Deaths

• In Event: Punishment, Place, and the Policing of Marginality

Abstract

Existing research illustrates the multifaceted public harms that emerge from the widespread use of stop and frisk by police. These encounters place both police officers and civilians at risk of violent victimization. Moreover, communities that face heightened stop levels experience higher rates of police use-of-force, physical illness, and psychological disorders. However, prior work has neglected to examine if the spatial deployment of these invasive policing tactics impacts the community-level risk of fatal police encounters broadly. Using a public health perspective and existing place-based theoretical frameworks (e.g., minority threat, community violence), the current study uses multiple publicly available datasets (i.e., Mapping Police Violence, Fatal Encounters) to explore whether geographic patterns of stop and frisk in multiple large U.S. cities are related to the spatial distribution of officer-involved deaths (OIDs) over a ten-year period. This study extends our understanding of the potential harms of stop and frisk practices.

Authors

• Rachel Lautenschlager, University of Kentucky

• Chelsea Farrell, University of Rhode Island