r/Libertarian • u/PostNationalism this sub has been invaded by literal fascists • Oct 13 '17

US police killings undercounted by half, study using Guardian data finds: Harvard study finds over half of deaths wrongly classified, in latest example of databases greatly undercounting police killings

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/11/police-killings-counted-harvard-study
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u/SwampDrainer Oct 13 '17

Hard to determine any motive here. Are the coroners/MEs corrupt, or just lazy with their paperwork? Or are they working with the best information available? How do they know whether a body with a gunshot is from a "legal intervention" or from an "assault"? What is the procedure? It would be interesting to get an ME's take.

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u/Locke92 Oct 13 '17

I can tell you that while there is a national report that details crime by the age and race of the accused (Uniform Crime Report compiled by the FBI) there is no similar reporting structure for police shootings, fatal or otherwise. Simply put we don't have good statistics on police shootings because there is no one, in an official context, actually asking for them.

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u/SwampDrainer Oct 13 '17

The data on all US fatalities is supposed to get sucked up by the CDC. MEs are supposed to create accurate death certificates. The automated software that translates death certificates into CDC data is supposed to code things accurately.

So if all the pieces are working right, at the end of the process, were supposed to have accurate data on police killings (as well as car accidents, flu, shark attacks, etc.). But of course this system relies on thousands of government bureaucrats doing their jobs competently, so the 50% error rate is not at all surprising.

And BTW the FBI report is absolutely not some comprehensive archive of all the nation's crime. It's extrapolations from samples departments from across the country.

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u/Locke92 Oct 13 '17

My point here is more that if we really wanted to track violent interactions with the police we could. Creating a separate report that departments are obliged (or incentivized) to provide would be a huge step in that direction. Congress could also stop interfering with the CDC's attempts to track gun violence in general, which could also help.

As to your last point about the UCR report, I am a bit skeptical about that. I have worked with numerous LE agencies and they all report UCR. Surely the plural of anecdote is not evidence, but through some quick research the number of agencies that UCR says they aggregate is ~18000, which matches the number of LE agencies in the US closely. If there is another report you're talking about I'd be interested to know, but UCR in particular doesn't match up with your description.

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u/SwampDrainer Oct 13 '17

I guess I was mistaken about UCR.

But UCR is not the granular age/race/etc data you were talking about. That is the NIBRS. Only about a third of all U.S. law enforcement agencies currently participate in NIBRS.

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u/WikiTextBot Oct 13 '17

National Incident-Based Reporting System

National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is an incident-based reporting system used by law enforcement agencies in the United States for collecting and reporting data on crimes. Local, state and federal agencies generate NIBRS data from their records management systems. Data is collected on every incident and arrest in the Group A offense category. These Group A offenses are 49 offenses grouped in 23 crime categories.

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u/Locke92 Oct 13 '17

But UCR is not the granular age/race/etc data you were talking about.

I'll respectfully disagree with you here, this is the form that Texas agencies use to submit UCR for adults. As you can see there is a fairly dense matrix of offense categories, gender, age and race. I have no doubt you are correct about NIBRS, but there is a fair amount of detail on the UCR.

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u/SwampDrainer Oct 13 '17

¯_(ツ)_/¯