What is the conclusion to these findings.

America is at the top of the scale for the greatest number of people in jail and has the 6^th highest incarceration compared to the rest of the world at 531/100,000 (CITATION?). While most of these encounters are not fatal, we do see that fatal police shootings in the United States have been trending up over the last few years. This topic has been a very hot-button issue in our society lately as many of these high-profile fatalities have been accused of being related to race and other discriminatory factors, while the law enforcement organization states that they are reacting to high-risk factors. We believe the data can show us a clearer picture and remove the emotion and politics from these charged events especially when they are still fresh. We propose that there are contributing factors to the increase in police fatalities that can be determined with a regression analysis of the perpetrators' City / State, Age / gender, and their armed / feeling status. We will also explore if there are any commonalities or multiple factors combined contributing at a higher rate.

The initial analysis we are investigating would be comparing the highest state fatalities compared to those states overall arrests. The basic hypothesis would be that the states with the most arrests would also have the highest fatality rate. This basic assumption proved mostly true, states marked in green had the highest fatalities and arrests, except Georgia (GA), which overall had lower total arrest (in 2019).

Based on our initial hypothesis we would also expect the inverse to be true that the states with the lowest total arrests would also have the lowest number of fatalities. That was incorrect based on the data we can see many other states with lower total arrests but higher number of fatalities. While Vermont (VT) had the lowest arrests and fatalities, places like Connecticut (CT) had high arrest and fatalities. Another interesting outlier is the state of Alabama (AL), they had one of the lowest total arrests only 1831 in 2019 and they also had a lowest fatality count of 11 but because of the low total arrest they had the highest percentage of arrest compared to the rest of the US at 38%. One of the takes aways from this analysis is how to properly view this data, should it be broken down by state or are there other factors that are more important. We took the highest and lowest states and performed another analysis comparing fatalities to total state population. The result of this type of analysis should help reduce the impact of state size and put everyone on a more level playing field and have less biased perception. This data is straightforward as the states with the highest fatalities have the highest rate per million people. The only exception here, due to the low population, is Vermont which had a fatality rate that is more in line with the states with higher fatalities and population rather than the states with lower fatalities and population.

There could be many different reasons for this that we will work to break down in the following analysis.

The 21st Century Cures Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in December 2016, mandated that data on the role of mental illness in fatal police encounters be collected and reported (How Mental Illness Affects Police Shooting Fatalities International Bipolar Foundation, 2019). This act has allowed experts to analyze data on how mental health impacts these fatal encounters in comparison to other fatal situations and better prepare for them. In reviewing this data set, we take a deeper look into the reported fatalities that were related to mental illnesses by state. According to the Washington Post, a Post analysis shows fatal police shootings of those who are mentally ill are more likely to take place in areas with populations of fewer than 1 million (Kindy et al., 2020). From 2017 to 2023, there were 6,774 fatalities for all states, of which 1,275 were directly related to mental health cases. These 1,275 cases equate to roughly around 19% of reported cases for the seven-year period for all states. The largest number of these cases reported as mental health-related reside in the states of California (161), Florida (109), and Texas (97). Conversely, when looking at the grand total of overall reported fatalities and the percentage of those that were mental health, we see that the top three states resulted in Vermont (45%), New Hampshire (37%), and New York (30%).

The National Alliance on Mental Illness stated that between 2015 2020, a quarter of all fatal police shootings involved someone with a mental illness (Police Use of Force | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2015). The data set shows that from 2017 to 2020, reported fatalities for those with mental health were in the 200s for each year. Around 2021, we see that these numbers begin to decrease into the 140s. This is attributed to the reported cases being analyzed more and states implementing practices that assist in these types of situations when they arise to potentially prevent a fatality from occurring. It is more widely understood that someone experiencing a mental health crisis can appear hostile or resistant, and their symptoms can interfere with their ability to respond to commands (Police Use of Force | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2015). Many states have ramped up their efforts to change the culture and implement the right tactics to better safely address civilians that fall into this category. This is evident in the decreasing trend line despite the total number of fatalities overall increasing.

A recurrent problem across the world and in many jurisdictions, is that police fatalities are an unfortunate but all too often occurrence. Some people may not believe that it would have anything to do with age, color, or gender, but the facts demonstrate that women compared to men the average age is 37. According to the findings, there has been a discernible rise in race and being a woman at 50% and the race of being a male has an average of 47%. The numbers also make it clear that the number of deaths caused by men has gone up compared to women, who have an average of 7170 deaths. In the United States, the biggest cause of mortality for young males is currently considered to be violence perpetrated by the police. The results also suggest that there was a significant gender discrepancy among people of various races, with women having a count of 333 and males having a count of 6837. The age range in years with the highest age range being between 20 and 37 are the most dangerous for both men and women of every race and ethnicity, as this is the age range in which the risk of being slain by the police is at its highest. White women and men have a lower risk of being killed by law enforcement at a (10%) compared to people of other races, namely black women and men, American Indian and Alaska Native women and men, and white women and men who finding sit at a (50%). Additionally, the likelihood of a Latino man being killed by police is higher than that of a white man being killed by police. (The probability of being murdered using force by law enforcement in the United States... - PNAS) According to the available statistics, the factors of age, color, and gender have a significant role in police fatalitys

To expand further on the topic of race. In 2020, researchers at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania published a report in the Journal of Epidemiology and Public Health stating that from 2015 to 2020 racial disparity in fatal police shootings had not changed even with the use of body cameras and other measures of accountability short of legal accountability (Belli, 2020). Using the same data, they used from the Washington Post and population data from KFF the percentage of minorities being killed to that of the majority race of the population is still high.

When comparing the states with the largest number of fatalities and the lowest number of fatalities, one of the factors that should be considered is that the states with the lowest number of fatalities also tend to be more homogenous in the race of their population. In fact, the averages of the population breakdown by race in states with the highest number of fatalities shows that people of color only make up 10% more of the population than white people do, but still encounter arrests and death by police brutality at higher rates.

However, some important information to keep in mind about this data is that this data is looking at Hispanic as a race rather than an ethnicity.

During our research and analysis, our team discussed some of our findings and observations. From these discussions, we came up with a few topics that could help expand our current research and lead to future potential analysis. One topic that we discussed was considering more demographic data beyond what we initially found. We considered using Income Class as a potential variable that could provide some useful information. We considered the possibility of a correlation between Income Class and fatality rates, which could be further expanded upon by investigating it by State. We thought that this analysis could provide information on what income class is most likely to face a fatal police encounter and how that information can relate to some of our current data.

Another topic discussed was additional demographic data concerning criminal records. Our discussion brought up the potential analysis opportunities if we were able to identify everyone as a first-time offender or a repeat offender before their fatal ends. We felt that this information paired with data analysis done concerning race could provide an analysis that could demonstrate a potential correlation between fatality rates, the frequency individuals found themselves involved with the police, and their race.

The last topic we discussed as a group was looking at the potential of examining how the location where the fatality occurred could better inform our research. We had considered that the location where the fatality occurred could have an impact on determining if every police interaction in a location would lead to a fatality. This research has the potential to build upon existing research focusing on mapping police violence.