Analysis of circumstances in police‐related fatalities comparing medical examiner records with a public database

Assessing circumstances surrounding police-related deaths is hampered by the absence of an official national database. The National Vital Statistics System, which compiles death certificates filed by medical examiners and coroners, misses approximately one-half of deaths due to police use of force. The void has been filled by the emergence of several unofficial databases sourced from public records, which have been used, for example, to estimate the number of fatal police shootings of unarmed individuals. However, these public databases have not been validated against official records. Furthermore, there have been no attempts to explore the complexity of circumstances leading to police-related fatalities. The present study was conducted to compare information in one public database, Fatal Encounters (FE), with matched records from the King County Medical Examiner's Office (ME) and to measure the role of overlapping circumstances leading to fatal outcomes. For this purpose, the two data sources were linked by names. Circumstantial elements were extracted, categorized, and analyzed according to Manner of Death, Pre-Custody criteria, and Race assignments. Overlapping circumstances were resolved by the calculation of conditional probabilities. The results found 172 matched records in which agreements between the two sources ranged from 70% to 100%. Disagreements were present in whether the decedent was unarmed and not fleeing. The distribution of deaths according to race was disproportionate relative to the county population. The study demonstrated the importance of data in measuring police-related fatalities and the need for caution in interpreting data that does not fully encompass the range of complex circumstances.