A recent study finds thousands of injuries and deaths at the hands of law enforcement, signaling the need for public health interventions in policing.
During legal police interventions, U.S. law enforcement officers either killed or injured over 55,000 people in 2012, according to research published online July 27 in Injury Prevention. Of the more than 1,000 people who died, 95 percent of those deaths were from police shootings.
The study examined injury and arrest data from the 2012 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Report, the Police Public Contact Survey, the FBI and 2015 census death data from The Guardian and The Washington Post.
One in every 291 stops or arrests resulted in injury or death. Injury and death rates increased for men and with age, the study said.
In addition, stop and arrest rates were higher per 10,000 people for blacks, Hispanics and American Indians compared with whites and Asians, the study said. However, rates of death and injury following the stops and arrests did not differ among racial and ethnic groups, even though minorities were more likely to be stopped, said lead study author Ted Miller, PhD, principal research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.
Miller said the public health community can intervene, such as evaluating injury outcomes that stem from increased community-oriented policing.
“We should be out pushing for better training for the police on how to deescalate situations, on more simulation work with the police on what to do to keep situations from turning violent and pushing for the police to be periodically screened for mental health and substance use issues,” Miller told The Nation’s Health. “Don’t leave them out in the field while they have mental health and substance use issues. That’s public health 101.”
Another issue is availability of data. Research showed that FBI statistics are incomplete on police-involved shootings, and that it is up to emergency department staff, medical examiners and coroners to help fill those gaps.
“The physicians are in a good position to capture the stories of what’s going on,” Miller said.
For more information, visit http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/early/2016/06/16/injuryprev-2016-042023.abstract
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association