Reducing officer-involved deaths of civilians in urban areas

Abstract

Recent police-involved deaths of Black civilians have sparked public outcry and demand for police reforms. However, many departmental policies intended to reduce the lethal use-of-force by police officers lack empirical support for their effectiveness. To address this shortcoming, a Bayesian random intercept model is used to forecast the effects of eight departmental policies on the number of police-involved civilian deaths across 66 police departments. Results suggest that although several policies are associated with a reduction in officer-involved deaths of civilians in some police departments, they are unlikely to eliminate officer-involved deaths completely. Specifically, we observed that introducing additional departmental policies would only reduce the number of officer-involved deaths by approximately 5 to 10. Moreover, variation in the baseline number of officer-involved deaths and the effectiveness of these policies existed between the 66 police departments. The results suggest that de-escalation training, ban on chokeholds, comprehensive reporting, restrictions on foot pursuit, restrictions on vehicle pursuit, community surveys, and problem-oriented policies could reduce the number of officer-involved civilian deaths. Nevertheless, variation in the number of police-involved deaths of civilians and differential effects of policies across agencies suggests a more tailored solution, and additional research is needed to address this crisis.