The Association between Temperature and Fatal Police Shootings in the United States: 2015-2020 Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

Purpose: Police violence is a significant public health and justice issue, with an estimated 30,800 police deaths occurring between 1980 and 2019. Aside from traditional factors that influence police use of force such as department policies, officer sociodemographic characteristics, and incident context, less is known about the influence of environmental conditions on policing. Temperature has previously been associated with increased rates of violence, but there is a lack of research on the association between temperature and police violence specifically. Our study objective is to investigate the association between temperature and fatal police shootings in the United States from 2015 to 2020.

Methods: Here we use a case-crossover study design and conditional logistic regression to investigate the association between temperature and fatal police shootings. We used The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” database to access fatal police shooting data, linking each incident to daily meteorological data from Daymet. Fatal police shooting incidents (N=5,629) were matched to up to four control days in the same month and year of the shooting. We performed stratified analyses by the victim’s race, age, armed status, region, and season. In addition to our a priori metric of choice, maximum same-day temperature, we also investigated lagged maximum temperature.

Results: Across all incidents, one-degree Celsius increase in temperature was associated with a 1.006 [0.999, 1.013] increased odds of fatal police shootings. In stratified analyses, we found significant associations in several strata including White Non-Hispanic victims (1.011 [1.002, 1.021]), victims aged 45 and above (1.027 [1.013, 1.040]), and incidents that occurred in the Southern (1.013 [1.002, 1.023]), and Western (1.012 [1.000, 1.024]) United Sates. Across nearly all population subgroups, there was an elevated effect in victims who were armed.

Conclusion: We found suggestive evidence of an association between maximum same-day temperature and fatal police shootings overall, but stronger evidence for several population sub-groups. Presence of a civilian weapon may be an important factor in the relationship between outdoor temperature and police shootings. Overall, these findings could help inform climate change adaptation policies moving forward.

Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1

Methods ......................................................................................................................3

Results.........................................................................................................................5

Discussion ..................................................................................................................11

Conclusions. ...............................................................................................................16

References ..................................................................................................................17

Tables and Figures

Table 1. Descriptive information on the shooting victim...................................................6

Figure 1. Distribution of temperature on case and control days.........................................7

Figure 2. Association between temperature and shootings stratified by subgroup…............8

Figure 3. Association stratified by armed status of the victim............................................9

Figure 4. Sensitivity analyses.........................................................................................10

Figure 5. Linearity of the association..............................................................................11

About this Master's Thesis

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School	Rollins School of Public Health
Department	Environmental Health
Degree	M.P.H.
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Climate Change Environmental Health
Stichwort	Climate Change Violence
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Scovronick, Noah, Emory University

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