Police Shootings and Civic Engagement

在促进公共安全和秩序以及应对针对他们或其他人的威胁时，ffiCER警察有时会使用致命武力，包括枪击，伤害平民。警察使用致命武力的时刻提醒我们，政策制定者和公众赋予警察执法和公共安全的权力、权威和自由裁量权。这些时刻也引发了人们对警察使用致命武力的频率、原因和后果的质疑。然而，无论是政策制定者还是公众，都不知道ffiCER警察使用致命武力的频率，特别是他们射杀平民的频率。媒体报道、众包和政府对警察枪击事件的报道描绘了美国警察致命武力的不完整图景。例如，它经常排除大多数警察枪击事件--非致命枪击事件。此外，政策制定者和公众对警察枪击事件的公民和社区影响知之甚少。因此，政策制定者和公众需要更多关于警察伤害平民事件的数据。他们还需要数据驱动的评估，即警察伤害平民是否会对ff对公民生活产生负面影响，包括公众的信任和参与。收集、编目、存储和共享关于警察枪击事件的全面数据，无论是致命的还是非致命的，都是必要的。更高质量的数据和分析可能有助于减少警察对平民的伤害，并改善警察与他们要服务和保护的社区之间的关系，而不存在偏见。研究人员将收集2000-2019年期间美国警察枪杀平民的数据。数据的主要来源将是285个最大城市(即截至2010年人口普查人口至少为10万人的城市)的警察部门。研究人员将利用每个城市和/或其所在州的“信息自由”法规，要求提供每一起涉及枪杀平民的警察或警察的公共记录，无论是致命的还是非致命的。他们还将要求提供与offiCER有关的枪击事件的日期、时间和地点，以及offiCER和平民的人口统计信息。作为补充，研究人员将收集报纸上关于offiCER在样本城市发生的枪击事件的报道。他们将对它们进行编码，以评估媒体对枪击事件的报道和内容。研究人员将使用他们收集的数据来建立一个公共储存库，用于汇总、托管和传播有关警察枪击的数据。此外，他们还将对警察使用致命武力进行描述性分析。最后，他们将进行多变量分析，以确定警察的致命武力是否损害公民参与，包括公民主动接触市政当局提供的紧急服务(911)和非紧急服务(311)的倾向。评估警察使用致命武力--无论是致命的还是非致命的--是否会减少公民主动与地方政府的接触，将有助于从理论上、经验上和公众上理解警察与平民的互动。这些数据，包括其公开传播和分析，将更好地阐明警察使用致命武力的程度，并建议如何更好地平衡警察为公共安全和秩序使用致命武力的自由裁量权，同时培养或维护公众对警察的信任，特别是有色人种社区。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In promoting public safety and order, and responding to perceived threats against them or others, police officers sometimes harm civilians, using lethal force, inclusive of shootings. Moments of lethal force by the police remind us of the power, authority, and discretion policymakers and the public grant the police for law enforcement and public security. Those moments also raise questions about the frequency, causes, and consequences of lethal force by the police. Neither policymakers nor the public, however, know how often police officers use lethal force, particularly how often they shoot civilians. Media coverage, crowdsourcing, and government reports of police shootings paint an incomplete picture of lethal force in U.S. policing. It often excludes, for example, the majority of police shootings—non-fatal shootings. Furthermore, policymakers and the public know little about the civic and communal effects of police shootings. Accordingly, policymakers and the public need more data about incidents of police harm of civilians. They also need data-driven assessments of whether police harm of civilians negatively affects civic life, inclusive of public trust and participation. Collecting, cataloging, storing, and sharing comprehensive data about police shootings, fatal and non-fatal, is necessary. Higher-quality data and analyses may contribute to reducing police harm of civilians and bettering relationships between police and communities they are to serve and protect without bias. The researchers will collect data on shootings of civilians by police in the U.S. for the period 2000-2019. The primary sources of data will be the police departments of the 285 largest cities (i.e., cities of at least 100,000 residents as of the 2010 Census). The researchers will use each city’s and/or their state’s “freedom of information” statutes to request public records of every instance of a police officer involved in a shooting of a civilian, both fatal and non-fatal. They also will request the dates, times, and locations of the officer-involved shootings, along with information about the demographics of the officers and civilians. As a supplement, the researchers will collect newspaper stories about the officer-involved shootings in the sample cities. They will code them to assess media coverage and content of the shootings. The researchers will use the data they collect to build a public repository for aggregating, hosting, and disseminating data about police shootings. Additionally, they will produce a descriptive analysis of lethal force by police. Finally, they will conduct multivariate analyses to identify whether lethal force by police harms civic engagement, including the propensity of citizen-initiated contact for emergency (911) and non-emergency (311) services from municipalities. Evaluating whether lethal use of force by the police, be it fatal or non-fatal, decreases citizen-initiated contact with local governments will inform theoretical, empirical, and public understandings of police-civilian interactions. The data, inclusive of its public dissemination, and analyses of it will better illuminate the degree to which police use lethal force and suggest how to better balance police discretion to use lethal force for public safety and order while fostering or maintaining public trust in the police, particularly by communities of color.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.