Preventing the Use of Deadly Force: The Relationship between Police Agency Policies and Rates of Officer‐Involved Gun Deaths

• Author: Jay T. Jennings,Meghan E. Rubado
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12738
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017

Preventing the Use of Deadly Force: The Relationship between Police Agency Policies and Rates of Off‌i cer-Involved Gun Deaths 217

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 2, pp. 217–226. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI:10.1111/puar.12738.

Preventing the Use of Deadly Force:

The Relationship between Police Agency Policies

and Rates of Officer-Involved Gun Deaths

Meghan E. Rubado is assistant

professor of public administration and city

management in the Maxine Goodman

Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland

State University. Her research examines

how institutions shape the decision-

making process and affect local policy

outcomes. Her primary interests are urban

service delivery, local governance, and

environmental policy.

E-mail: m.rubado@csuohio.edu

Jay T. Jennings is a postdoctoral

research fellow in the Annette Strauss

Institute for Civic Life at the University of

Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the

relationships between institutions and the

capacity of citizens to effectively participate

in politics. His work draws on the fields of

political psychology, public opinion, and

political communication.

E-mail: jay.jennings@austin.utexas.edu

Jay T. Jennings

University of Texas at Austin

Meghan E. Rubado

Cleveland State University

Abstract : Killings of civilians by police officers have become a matter of intense public concern in the United States.

High-profile deaths, especially those of black citizens, have caused outrage and sparked the Black Lives Matter move-

ment with calls for dramatic changes in how police agencies operate. However, little systematic research exists to answer

questions about which policies should be ended or put in place to reduce these deaths. The authors leverage a large

data set of gun deaths by police officers in the United States, combined with agency-level policy data and community

demographic data, to examine whether certain policies are associated with lower or higher rates of officer-involved gun

deaths. Findings show that one policy—the requirement that officers file a report when they point their guns at people

but do not fire—is associated with significantly lower rates of gun deaths.

Practitioner Points

• Police agencies that require officers to file a report when they point their guns but do not shoot at civilians

had significantly lower rates of gun deaths by police officers. Roughly half of agencies required such reports

in 2013.

• This requirement may cause officers to use more caution when considering using force by pointing their

guns and may demonstrate to officers an agency commitment to best practices that protect civilians from

unnecessary use of force.

• The reporting requirement for displaying a gun is not associated with higher rates of gun deaths of police

officers, suggesting that the policy does not endanger officers.

• While community policing and racial representation on police forces have been tied to improved outcomes in

several areas, we do not find that these factors are associated with lower rates of police-involved gun deaths.

F atal shootings of civilians by police officers in

the past several years have drawn the attention

of the news media, protesters, and investigators

from all levels of government. Public outcry from

individuals and organizations, including the Black

Lives Matter movement, has called for major changes

in police agencies that result in reductions in these

deaths, especially those of black citizens. But which

police agency policies are associated with higher

incidence of fatal police-involved shootings? What

changes could public officials make to reduce these

fatalities? These questions have received little in the

way of systematic research by scholars. Given the

continual loss of civilian lives in these incidents and

the recent unrest that has followed them in cities from

Cleveland to Minneapolis, Baltimore to Ferguson,

these questions warrant attention from scholars,

public leaders, and American society in general.

We suggest that certain policy choices by local officials

may reduce the rates of these deaths, and we test

our hypotheses on a large sample of U.S. cities and

counties. We find that one policy—the requirement

that police officers file a report when they point their

gun at someone but do not fire—is associated with

systematically lower rates of gun deaths of civilians.

Our analysis relies on a unique data set compiled

by a nonprofit organization that has attempted to

catalog every instance of police-involved gun death

since 2000. These are cases in which a police officer

fired at a civilian, resulting in death. This database

project, called Fatal Encounters, is crowdsourced and

fact-checked by the nonprofit. Fatal Encounters and

several less organized databases like it have sprung

up in recent years as a citizen solution to the lack of

reliable government data. The federal government

does not mandate collection of these data in a public

database. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

does collect information on police-involved deaths of

civilians, but these data are systematically incomplete

because of voluntary self-reporting by state and local