Project Title
Does Police Violence affect On-Duty Deaths?
Faculty Mentor(s) Name(s)
Brooke Conaway
Abstract
The controversy surrounding police violence has been a cultural centerpiece in the United States throughout the 21st century. In 2019, close to a thousand people died at the hands of police officers. An increase in police violence could cause an increase in on-duty deaths due to fear and violent retaliation. Using the Uniform Crime Report annually published by the FBI and data collected by mappingpoliceviolence.org, an independent organization dedicated to tracking police violence, I test whether incidents of police violence in the previous year impacted on-duty deaths the following year. The potential effects of police violence are well documented, but previous work regarding the relationship between police violence and on-duty deaths is sparse. Using state-level panel data and an ordinary least squares regression technique, I find police violence has no statistically significant impact on on-duty deaths when controlling for population, unemployment rate, and violent crime rate. This result implies that an increase in police violence does not result in an increase in on-duty deaths the following year.
Does Police Violence affect On-Duty Deaths?
The controversy surrounding police violence has been a cultural centerpiece in the United States throughout the 21st century. In 2019, close to a thousand people died at the hands of police officers. An increase in police violence could cause an increase in on-duty deaths due to fear and violent retaliation. Using the Uniform Crime Report annually published by the FBI and data collected by mappingpoliceviolence.org, an independent organization dedicated to tracking police violence, I test whether incidents of police violence in the previous year impacted on-duty deaths the following year. The potential effects of police violence are well documented, but previous work regarding the relationship between police violence and on-duty deaths is sparse. Using state-level panel data and an ordinary least squares regression technique, I find police violence has no statistically significant impact on on-duty deaths when controlling for population, unemployment rate, and violent crime rate. This result implies that an increase in police violence does not result in an increase in on-duty deaths the following year.