海角大神

Homicides by law enforcement officers across the United States are recorded far more accurately in a nascent system of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) than by current national systems, according to new research.

The paper, published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, compares the CDC鈥檚 system, which currently covers only 32 states, with two national ones 鈥� one of the FBI and another of the CDC itself 鈥� finding it provides not only more accurate numbers, but also a far richer picture of the circumstances surrounding each incident.

At a time of heightened public awareness of police shootings, it becomes particularly important to identify the system best able to paint an accurate picture, allowing policymakers to understand which programs help to reduce fatalities.

鈥淲hat鈥檚 important is building public trust and showing what we can do to help reduce this problem,鈥� says James Mercy of CDC, in a telephone interview with 海角大神.

Dr. Mercy, who heads the Division of Violence Prevention in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at CDC, explains that NVDRS, the system lauded by the research paper, links data from law enforcement records, death certificates, and medical examinations and coroners.

As such, it is able to 鈥渃reate narratives鈥� as to the events surrounding each incident, building a much richer picture of police homicides, and violent deaths in general.

Moreover, the system looks not only at killings by police, but also police killed in the line of duty, allowing CDC to look at 鈥渂oth sides of the equation.鈥�

鈥淭he troubling reality is that we lack the ability right now to comprehensively track the number of incidents of either uses of force directed at police officers or uses of force by police,鈥� said Attorney General Eric Holder in聽January 2015.

It is this very situation, and the controversy surrounding recent high-profile police killings, that led the researchers to undertake their study.

鈥淗ow do we learn which policies best prevent these deaths and protect police if we can't even get an accurate count of them?鈥� asked lead author Catherine Barber in a press release.

Ms. Barber and colleagues of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center (HICRC) at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, considered three systems: CDC鈥檚 National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), the FBI鈥檚 Uniform Crime Reports System, and the CDC鈥檚 National Vital Statistics System.

Each of the latter two rely on single sources of information: death certificates for the CDC鈥檚 National Vital Statistics System, and voluntary police reporting for the FBI鈥檚 system.

The more diverse sourcing of the NVDRS pays substantial dividends, according to the report, which finds it captured 92 percent of law enforcement homicides in the study areas, more than twice as many as the FBI鈥檚 system, and 71 percent more than the CDC鈥檚 Vital Statistics System.

Yet there are those who remain skeptical, suggesting this research falls short of providing conclusive evidence of the efficacy of NVDRS.

鈥淪o they find that NVDRS provides richer estimates than other reporting systems, especially the 'official ones.' 聽It's not news, really,鈥� says Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia Law School, in an email interview with the Monitor.

Dr. Fagan goes on to describe organizations 鈥� such as the Washington Post, the Guardian and Fatal Encounters 鈥� that look at non-official sources, such as newspaper accounts, to compile their own homicide counts.

鈥淭he right comparison is NVDRS with those sources, not with the SHR [the FBI鈥檚 system] (which everyone agrees seriously undercounts police killings),鈥� says Fagan. 鈥淚f the NVDRS produces estimates similar to those crowd-sourced estimates, that would be a stronger endorsement of NVDRS.鈥�

Nonetheless, if the study is accurate, its findings would seem to support the proposed expansion of NVDRS, as an official system, instead of relying on the current ones.

And, in fact, expansion is happening: funding is already in place to expand to a coverage of 35-40 states, and the President鈥檚 budget, which is yet to be approved, sets aside money that would cover all 50.

鈥淢oreover, police killings is just one example,鈥� says Mercy of CDC. 鈥淣VDRS looks at a whole range of issues, not least suicide among veterans. We鈥檙e already working closely with the Veterans Administration.鈥�