Police Shooting Data

My efforts to counteract the misinformation and disinformation about law enforcement include researching data from verifiable and credible sources - often primary sources. Given my experience as a police officer, my B.S. in Accounting and my M.S. in Criminal Justice I feel I know where to look and how to assess such information. 

Furthermore, I have also established relationships with criminologists, statisticians, lawyers, police, bail bondsmen, probation officers, and others. I would like to share this with you.

Here is a link to the Arrest Related Deaths 2003-2009 report compiled and published, in November 2011, by the highly esteemed Dept. of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). It is one of the many reports they publish. 

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ard0309st.pdf

Data, from this monograph, that I have cited during my television and radio appearances, speeches, and articles I have written can be found: 

• Page 1 "From 2003 through 2009, a total of 4,813 deaths were reported to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program. Of these, about 6 in 10 deaths (2,931) were classified as homicide by law enforcement personnel ... During the same period, the FBI estimated nearly 98 million arrests in the United States. "
• Tables 7, 13, 14 regarding incidents at the time of arrest and demographics 

BJS is probably my main source for data - but not the sole source. It is, in my opinion, among the best available. Other great sources are the Criminology school at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as, journals like Criminology, historical research such as American Homicide and others.

But BJS data is, unquestionably, far superior to that compiled by media outlets, advocacy groups, and blogs. Unlike the information compiled by the aforementioned this data is required to go through a vetting process similar to peer reviews done in professional and academic circles. The BJS personnel who collect and analyze this information have PhD's. I believe they all have at least five semesters of statistics (btw I have four semesters).  

Latest Data about Probation and Parole

Dear friends,

Here are the latest data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics regarding Probation and Parole in the USA, 2014. It is the most comprehensive data available.

A few things to note when conversing with the soi disant civil libertarians, the police vilifiers, and the pot legalizers:

25 percent of those on probation are drug offenders, 31 percent of those on parole are drug offenders.

Unfortunately, of those on probation 19 percent are violent offenders and of those on parole 31 percent are violent offenders.

Perhaps this explains the chaos in the streets?

Michael P. Tremoglie

Here is the link:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ppus14.pdf

Univ of Penn Paper Says Black Officers and those with Negative Marks Shoot More Older Officers Less

A 2014 working paper titled Risk Factors Associated with Police Shootings: A Matched Case-Control Study, by Greg Ridgeway, Associate Professor of Criminology and Statistics, and Director of the M.S. Program in Criminology at the Univ. of Pennsylvania identifies officers' features regarding police shootings. 

Here is the abstract (emphasis added):

"Particularly with the resurgence of concern over police use of deadly force, there is a pressing need to understand the risk factors that lead to police shootings. This study uses a matched-case control design to remove confounders of shooting incidents and identify features of officers that increased their risk of shooting. By matching shooting officers to non-shooting officers at the same scene, the analysis isolates the role of the officers’ features from the features of the incident’s environment. The study uses data from the New York City Police Department on 291 officers involved in 106 officer-involved shootings adjudicated between 2004 and 2006. Black officers were 3.3 times and officers rapidly accumulating negative marks in their files were 3.1 times more likely to shoot than other officers. Older officers who became police officers later in life were less likely to shoot. The results indicate that officer features related to discharging a firearm are identifiable." 

But do not wait for the usual suspects - i.e. mainstream media, so-called "civil liberties" organizations, and other contemners of police to communicate this to the public. They are too invested in vilifying police not criticizing them. This information does not fit the narrative of 'white racist killer cops.'

Prof. Ridgeway's bio is impressive. From the Penn website - "Prior to coming to Penn, Prof. Ridgeway was the Acting Director of the National Institute of Justice....Previously, Prof. Ridgeway was Director of the RAND Safety and Justice Program and the RAND Center on Quality Policing .... Dr. Ridgeway is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, a distinction he received for being one of the world’s foremost statisticians engaged in crime research..." (Emphasis not in original)

The paper can be found here:  http://crim.sas.upenn.edu/working-papers/police