Citation

Sierra-Arevalo M, Nix J. Criminol. Public Policy 2020; 19(3): 1041-1066.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, American Society of Criminology, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1745-9133.12507

PMID

38549863

PMCID

PMC10978003

Abstract

RESEARCH SUMMARY: Using open-source data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), we analyze national- and state-level trends in fatal and nonfatal firearm assaults of U.S. police officers from 2014 to 2019 (N = 1,467).

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. POLICY IMPLICATIONS: GVA has decided strengths relative to existing data sources on police victimization and danger in policing. We consider the promises and pitfalls of this and other open-source data sets in policing research and recommend that recent state-level improvements in use-of-force data collection be replicated and expanded to include data on violence against police.

Language: en

Keywords

danger; firearm assault; gun violence; policing