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Out today in @PLOSONE, @jaquelynjahn and I map rates of fatal police violence + racial inequities in those rates across all 382 metro areas in the US. We started writing this last fall and hope it can be useful in this moment. THREAD: #epitwitter https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0229686
Background: we build on the work of @fatalencounters, http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ , & others by using models to calculate (1) rates & racial inequities in fatal police violence using small area estimation methods, averaging across 5 years of data & (2) bounds for each metro area. 2/
More background: Metro areas are a useful way to think about the risk people face in their day-to-day lives as they cross city, county, & police department boundaries to live, work, play, and protest. 3/
We conservatively exclude fatalities involving police that could be construed as "accidents" according to police and media reports, such as vehicle crashes, following prior work. (More on this exclusion later). 4/
Take-aways:
(A) Metro areas vary A LOT in how often people are killed by police. The most lethal metro's rate (Anniston-Oxford-Jacksonville, AL) was 9 TIMES the rate of the least lethal metro (Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls, NY).
9 times!! 5/
(A) Metro areas vary A LOT in how often people are killed by police. The most lethal metro's rate (Anniston-Oxford-Jacksonville, AL) was 9 TIMES the rate of the least lethal metro (Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls, NY).
9 times!! 5/
(B) There are clear geographic patterns to fatal police violence rates. In terms of overall fatality rates, Western, Southwestern, and Southern metros have much higher rates than the Northeast or northern Midwest 6/
(C) But, low overall rates in the NE/MW belie that metros in those regions tend to have the worst Black-White inequities. The Chicago area had the highest estimate: Black ppl there were 651% more likely to be killed by police than White ppl. A map of Black/White rate ratios: 7/
(D) Latinx-White rate ratios were relatively high in the West and NE and varied across the middle of the country - though we urge caution due to their lower statistical precision. A map of Latinx/White rate ratios: 8/
(E) Metros’ rates & inequities can be much larger if we don't limit our analysis to "non-accidental" causes (as reported by media & police), meaning that whether causes of death are recorded accurately is critical. e.g., in Kalamazoo, MI, rates increase by a factor of 2.5 (!). 9/
(F) Ditto racial inequities. Black/White inequities in police-involved fatalities doubled when analyzing all causes of death in Kalamazoo (vs. when analyzing “non-accidental" causes from things like shootings, tasers, etc.), but actually declined by 17% in Seattle. 10/
As #blacklivesmatter 
protests across the world fight against anti-Black racism & the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, & many others by the police, we hope our work serves local and national campaigns by showing where rates & racial inequities are highest. 11/
protests across the world fight against anti-Black racism & the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, & many others by the police, we hope our work serves local and national campaigns by showing where rates & racial inequities are highest. 11/
To be clear, these protests & demands for an end to racist policing don't need our credibility/scientific justification. Our study is meant as a resource, showing which metros have the highest rates of police killings & where Black people are most disproportionately at risk. 12/
We also want to highlight the work of Black public health scholars studying policing, who are leading the field in analyzing police violence as a public health issue & whose work shaped our paper (go follow!): @aasewell @RRHDr @ProfAlang @do_art @badavis_ @RheaBoydMD @samswey 13/
PS - Future work will focus on fatal police violence rates faced by Indigenous/AIAN (very high) & API communities. Because of the shrinkage towards the overall mean in the methods we used here, those rates are better estimated separately. (Happy to chat about this, DM me) 14/
PPS - We used population denominators instead of # of arrests or stops in each metro. Why? Because using those denominators would *induce* bias & "bake in" racial inequities in police stops/arrests. We urge folks to read @jonmummolo's clear work on this: https://twitter.com/jonmummolo/status/1275790509647241222
