fatal_police_shootings: Fatal Police Shootings data.

In usdata: Data on the States and Counties of the United States

Fatal Police Shootings data.

Description

A subset of the Washington Post database. Contains records of every fatal police shooting by an on-duty officer since January 1, 2015.

Usage

fatal_police_shootings

Format

A data frame with 6421 rows and 12 variables.

date

date of fatal shooting.

manner_of_death

shot or shot and Tasered.

armed

Indicates if the victim was armed with some sort of implement that a police officer believed could inflict harm.

age

the age of the victim.

gender

The gender of the victim. The Post identifies victims by the gender they identify with if reports indicate that it differs from their biological sex.

race

W White non-Hispanic; B Black non-Hispanic; A Asian; N Native American; H Hispanic; O Other None unknown.

city

The municipality where the fatal shooting took place. Note that in some cases this field may contain a county name if a more specific municipality is unavailable or unknown.

state

two-letter postal code abbreviation.

signs_of_mental_illness

If news reports have indicated the victim had a history of mental health issues, expressed suicidal intentions or was experiencing mental distress at the time of the shooting.

threat_level

The general criteria for the attack label was that there was the most direct and immediate threat to life that would include incidents where officers or others were shot at, threatened with a gun, attacked with other weapons or physical force, etc. ; the attack category is meant to flag the highest level of threat; the other and undetermined categories represent all remaining cases; other includes many incidents where officers or others faced significant threats.

flee

If news reports have indicated the victim was moving away from officers by Foot, by Car, or Not fleeing.

body_camera

If news reports have indicated an officer was wearing a body camera and it may have recorded some portion of the incident.

Source

Washington Post

Examples

library(dplyr)

# List race frequency and percentage
fatal_police_shootings |>
  group_by(race) |>
  summarize(n = n()) |>
  mutate(freq = n / sum(n) * 100)
# List different weapons that victims were armed with
fatal_police_shootings |>
  distinct(armed)

usdata documentation built on June 22, 2024, 9:57 a.m.