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Theory and methods
Lethal use of force surveillance: practical considerations for open-source database linkage
  1. Maayan Simckes1,2,
  2. Dale Willits3,
  3. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar2,
  4. Anjum Hajat2
  1. 1 Washington State Department of Health, Olympia, Washington, USA
  2. 2 Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
  3. 3 Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Maayan Simckes, Washington State Department of Health, Olympia, Washington, USA; maayan.simckes{at}doh.wa.gov

Abstract

Currently, there remains no reliable and timely government tracking in the USA of deaths caused by law enforcement. Federal efforts to track these events are insufficient, generally missing as many as half of community deaths that occur annually because of law enforcement’s lethal use of force. The dearth of accurate data on these events limits the ability to accurately quantify their burden and effectively identify opportunities for intervention and policy change. The most reliable data sources on law enforcement related deaths among community members in the USA are publicly run (such as those run by the Washington Post and The Guardian newspapers) or crowdsourced systems, such as Fatal Encounters and Mapping Police Violence, which draw on both traditional and non-traditional sources of reporting and provide open-source access to users. We used successive deterministic and probabilistic linkage to merge these four databases. After exclusions, we found a total of 6333 deaths identified from 2013 to 2017. While most cases were identified by multiple databases, each database also found unique cases during their years of operation. The methodology described here emphasises the importance of these non-traditional data sources and can serve as a helpful resource to improve data accessibility and timeliness for public health agencies and others seeking to expand their study, understanding and response to this growing public health crisis.

  • PUBLIC HEALTH
  • EPIDEMIOLOGY
  • METHODS

Data availability statement

Data are available in a public, open access repository. All death data cited in this study are freely available for download via the referenced online repositories. The data are collected or compiled by each entity and shared publicly to encourage use by researchers, journalists, and other interested parties. There are no licensing, copyright or embargo requirements. There is no cost to accessing these data. Fatal Encounters: https://fatalencounters.org/ Mapping Police Violence: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ In addition, the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey data can also be downloaded freely via the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Users create a free account and are provided with expectations regarding publication and citation. There is no cost to accessing these data.: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/series/92.

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2022-219022

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    Data availability statement

    Data are available in a public, open access repository. All death data cited in this study are freely available for download via the referenced online repositories. The data are collected or compiled by each entity and shared publicly to encourage use by researchers, journalists, and other interested parties. There are no licensing, copyright or embargo requirements. There is no cost to accessing these data. Fatal Encounters: https://fatalencounters.org/ Mapping Police Violence: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ In addition, the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey data can also be downloaded freely via the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Users create a free account and are provided with expectations regarding publication and citation. There is no cost to accessing these data.: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/series/92.

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @DrMaayanSimckes

    • Contributors MSS is the first author and guarantor of this study, responsible for conceptualisation, implementation, writing and revision. AH, AR-R and DW each contributed to conceptualisation, methods development and review, writing and revision. They also each provided final review and approval of the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

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

    • Author note This article is meant to provide a methodologic roadmap, adaptable to the changing landscape of available data sources. As open source and other use of force data collection programs are founded and sunset, this methodology should be revisited to evaluate the strengths of each system and how they should be prioritized in relation to each other to maximize data quality and completeness during linkage processes.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.