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Original article
Perils of police action: a cautionary tale from US data sets
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  1. Ted R Miller1,2,
  2. Bruce A Lawrence1,
  3. Nancy N Carlson3,
  4. Delia Hendrie4,
  5. Sean Randall2,
  6. Ian R H Rockett5,
  7. Rebecca S Spicer1
  1. 1Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Calverton, Maryland, USA
  2. 2Faculty of Health Sciences, Centre for Population Health Research, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
  3. 3University of the District of Columbia, Washington DC, USA
  4. 4School of Public Health, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
  5. 5Department of Epidemiology and Injury Control Research Center, School of Public Health, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Ted R Miller, Principal Research Scientist, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, 11720 Beltsville Drive, Suite 900, Calverton, MD 20705, USA; miller{at}pire.org

Abstract

Objective To count and characterise injuries resulting from legal intervention by US law enforcement personnel and injury ratios per 10 000 arrests or police stops, thus expanding discussion of excessive force by police beyond fatalities.

Design Ecological.

Population Those injured during US legal police intervention as recorded in 2012 Vital Statistics mortality census, 2012 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project nationwide inpatient and emergency department samples, and two 2015 newspaper censuses of deaths.

Exposure 2012 and 2014 arrests from Federal Bureau of Investigation data adjusted for non-reporting jurisdictions; street stops and traffic stops that involved vehicle or occupant searches, without arrest, from the 2011 Police Public Contact Survey (PPCS), with the percentage breakdown by race computed from pooled 2005, 2008 and 2011 PPCS surveys due to small case counts.

Results US police killed or injured an estimated 55 400 people in 2012 (95% CI 47 050 to 63 740 for cases coded as police involved). Blacks, Native Americans and Hispanics had higher stop/arrest rates per 10 000 population than white non-Hispanics and Asians. On average, an estimated 1 in 291 stops/arrests resulted in hospital-treated injury or death of a suspect or bystander. Ratios of admitted and fatal injury due to legal police intervention per 10 000 stops/arrests did not differ significantly between racial/ethnic groups. Ratios rose with age, and were higher for men than women.

Conclusions Healthcare administrative data sets can inform public debate about injuries resulting from legal police intervention. Excess per capita death rates among blacks and youth at police hands are reflections of excess exposure. International Classification of Diseases legal intervention coding needs revision.

https://doi.org/10.1136/injuryprev-2016-042023

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors TRM and BAL led study conceptualisation with inputs from the other authors. BAL and SR cleaned and analysed the healthcare data. TRM analysed the PPCS and arrest data. TRM drafted the paper. All other authors reviewed it, suggested changes in analyses and presentation, and approved the final manuscript.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement All data used are public use files available to anyone from the file distributors.