4 Topic Commentaries

Are law enforcement death rates rising?

• 

  Andrew Hendrix, MD

  General Surgery / Trauma

  •

  University of Virginia

  In this cross-sectional study of the FARS database from 2009 to 2023, police pursuit-related fatalities increased over 15 years.

  Source
• 

  Jemar R. Bather, PhD

  Biostatistics / Public Health

  •

  NYU School of Global Public Health

  Key findings from the study include (1) 5425 fatal crashes related to police pursuits (mean [SD], 362 [69] fatal crashes per year) that occurred nationally over the 15-year study period, resulting in 6352 deaths (mean [SD], 423 [84] deaths per year); (2) a 2% annual increase in deaths after adjusting for population and crash frequency; and (3) significant associations between higher police pursuit fatality rates and nighttime (vs daytime) occurrence; urban (vs rural) setting; noninterstate (vs interstate) roads; documented (vs not documented) speeding; weekdays (vs weekends); and South, Midwest, and West (vs Northeast) census regions.

  Source
• 

  Melody S. Goodman, PhD

  Biostatistics / Public Health

  •

  NYU School of Global Public Health

  We conducted a recent study showing that police pursuit fatalities exhibited an average annual percent change of 10% in the US from 2017 to 2021, and as with Hendrix et al, we observed that the South, Midwest, and West census regions had more fatalities than the Northeast.

  Source
• 

  Michael Sierra-Arévalo, PhD

  Sociology / Criminology

  •

  The University of Texas at Austin

  Results show that (a) most firearm assaults are nonfatal, (b) there is no compelling evidence that the national rate of firearm assault on police has substantially increased during the last 6 years, and (c) there is substantial state-level variation in rates of firearm assault on police officers.

  Source