. This project will create two police homicide databases in the United States (2000-2018) using resources developed by the Fatal Encounters project. These police homicide data will be merged with several unique public data sources that collect information about police-department characteristics, civilian crime, assaults/killing of police officers, and socio-demographic Census data. This national police homicide database can then be used by the project team and other researchers to test the correlates of police homicides?a uniquely important public health problem. This project will also create a GIS database which geo-codes all police homicides in order for other researchers to study the independent effect of police homicides on population health, health disparities, community well-being, and police/community relations.
Our specific aims are as follows: 1. Finalize updating, coding, cleaning, and geo-coding of the backbone data, the Fatal Encounters (FE) database, which will comprehensively document all police homicides from 2000-2018. 2. Combine data from Fatal Encounters and several national/federal data sources to create a National Police Homicide Database (NPHD). a. The NPHD will be made publicly available and disseminated widely so that researchers can test the causes of police homicides in the U.S. b. We will use the NPHD to test unique hypotheses related to police-department-policy and contextual correlates of police homicides. 3. Create a GIS geo-database with precise geo-locations of police homicides, titled the National Police Homicide Geo-Database (NPHGD). The NPHGD will be made publicly available and disseminated widely so that researchers with geographically linkable data can test the independent effects of police homicides on health and well-being and police/community relations.
Our project will build a database of all police homicides that have occurred from 2000 to the present. We will compile nearly two decades of police homicide data in the United States in order to test heretofore untested hypotheses regarding the causes and effects of police homicides, a widely recognized public health problem with potentially far-reaching community effects. First, we will create a national police homicide database in order to test the correlates of police homicides. Second, we will create a police homicide geodatabase that spatially pinpoints all police homicides that will allow for the study of the effect of police homicides on population health and community well-being. Third, we will examine relationships between key police- department level policies, contextual factors, and police homicide rates that will inform directly actionable policy recommendations.
