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tommytornado OP t1_iwkm0d6 wrote

In response to the recent post https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/yw5xb8/correlation_between_police_training_and_fatal/ I felt I needed to quickly create this to highlight some issues with the data used and its interpretation.

The original post implies a correlation between police training and fatal police shootings. i.e. they are implying that the less training police receive the more likely they are to be involved in a fatal shooting. Whilst this *may* be true it is not at all proven by this graphic, nor this data.

I found, quite easily, the same stats as the source of this graphic, however if I add some other features like violent crime rate per state (incidents which are more likely to result in violent responses) the resulting graph changes completely. Using this new data I can easily create a feature which is the rate of shootings per million / violent crime per million.

Now you can see that Alaska, for example, isn't unusual. In Alasaka perhaps there are more police fatal shootings because there are more violent crimes per capita, and it has nothing to do with their training?

Thsis graphic was knocked up in 10 minutes in python using pandas and matplotlib using these data sources:

Washington Post shooting database - https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

US States by population - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

(Violent) Crime Rate by State - https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/crime-rate-by-state

Police training requirements by state - https://www.trainingreform.org/state-police-training-requirements

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CosmoKramerJr t1_iwl2e8a wrote

Am I right in saying that you added violent crime committed by non-cops into the mix, and the correlation disappeared? So, doesn’t that just imply that there’s not a correlation between non-cop violence and training? If that’s true, that’s actually a bit surprising, since I’d actually think/hope that the areas with higher violent crime rates would train their cops more, given that they’re more likely to be put into difficult situations… which leads us to a possible reason why there was a strong-ish correlation in the original chart: cops aren’t necessarily trained enough for what they’re going to experience.

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PietOnTheRoad t1_iwlqi30 wrote

Thanks for the additional perspective on that type of data.

As an European, I guess the actual reason for all the shootings incl police shootings is very much connected with culture. You guys love your weapons and carry them around. And then, whether it’s a police encounter or a bar fight, you don’t use your fists but your weapons.

Look at Switzerland, every household has a weapon, but nobody is carrying it. Look at a lot of countries with low weapon ownership, typically also low number of shootings. And look for countries where a lot people carrying weapons, they encounter similar problems as the US.

I don’t think it’s police training (maybe plays a part in here, though) but it’s culture.

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Saxit t1_iwn0xt6 wrote

> As an European, I guess the actual reason for all the shootings incl police shootings is very much connected with culture. You guys love your weapons and carry them around. And then, whether it’s a police encounter or a bar fight, you don’t use your fists but your weapons.

The Czech Republic has had shall issue concealed carry for about 30 years, and a majority of gun owners there has a permit for that. Their police does not shoot any more people per capita than the British police does (CZ has a lower homicide rate than the UK as well).

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tommytornado OP t1_iwlqy9d wrote

All of this. Plus I suspect deep down fear plays a big part but that in itself is probably quite tightly related to crime rates and gun ownership.

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DJ_Die t1_iwn9w5n wrote

>And look for countries where a lot people carrying weapons, they encounter similar problems as the US.

They do not. Here in the Czech Republic, almost all gun owners can carry guns and we have no such issues. In fact, Czech police kill fewer people per capita than the police in the UK.

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