Study of Fatal and Nonfatal Shootings by Police Reveals Racial Disparities, Dispatch Risks

For their study, researchers manually reviewed publicly available records on police shootings maintained by the Gun Violence Archive that resulted in a fatal or nonfatal injury from 2015 to 2020. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 2013, maintains a database of fatal and nonfatal gun violence using thousands of sources including media, law enforcement, government, and commercial. Fifteen trained Bloomberg School students and researchers manually reviewed and coded the incidents at least once. The team then cross-referenced fatal incidents with Fatal Encounters, a database that tracks fatal shootings by police officers.

Incidents in which mental or behavioral health conditions were named in association with the shooting comprised 23 percent (2,404) of all shootings by police. Injuries associated with behavioral health needs were more likely to be fatal. Sixty-seven percent (1,611) of all shootings by police involving someone suffering from a mental or behavioral health episode were fatal.

“The data we reviewed suggests that behavioral health calls are a common interaction preceding injurious shootings by police,” says Cassandra Crifasi, PhD, MPH, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “We recommend improving social services to make responding to behavioral health calls safer for everyone. Public support is high for these approaches including nonpolice mobile units, diversion to mental health services, and a police and mental health co-responder model.”

The analysis found that the odds of a fatal shooting by police were significantly higher if the victim was armed. In more than half of these fatal shootings—57 percent or 3,356—someone other than a police officer was also armed with a firearm. Overall, 364 (3 percent) of injured people possessed a replica or BB gun and 1,531 (14 percent) were armed with a knife. In contrast, in 955 (9 percent) of shootings, the injured person was not armed.

Of all shootings by police involving no other weapon, i.e., from victims or others, 40 percent of victims (785) were described as non-Hispanic white, 35 percent were non-Hispanic Black, and 21 percent were Hispanic.

“While this study improves our understanding of injurious shootings by police, there is a clear gap in systematic reporting of all shootings by police, fatal and nonfatal,” says Daniel Webster, ScD, Distinguished Research Scholar at the Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “Law enforcement agencies at all levels of government should commit to gathering comprehensive, detailed, and standardized data to inform efforts to prevent future injurious shootings by police.”

The authors note that the study has limitations. Because the analysis relies on media stories, data rely on assumptions of newsworthiness, accurate reporting, and resulting news coverage.

The authors also note that public safety reforms should require reporting nonfatal as well as fatal shootings by police to assess overall impact among groups disproportionately affected.

First author Julie Ward, RN, PhD, MN, conceptualized the study when she was completing her PhD at the Bloomberg School. She is now an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University.