Police use of firearms: Exploring citizen, officer, and incident characteristics in a statewide sample

This paper analyzes the more than 70,000 police use of force incidents in New Jersey from 2012 to 2016 to examine the association of a citizen’ s race and ethnicity with the likelihood of officers pointing a firearm, shooting, and the number of shots discharged. Our study suggests that Black and Hispanic New Jerseyans are not more likely to experience force incidents involving a firearm relative to other citizens who experience police use of force, however this relationship is conditioned on the size of the place the incident occured. Black residents of smaller municipalities are almost twice as likely (OR = 1.70), and Hispanic residents more than twice as likely (OR = 2.30), than white citizens to have an officer pull their service weapon out during a stop. Furthermore, among all use of force incidents where a gun is brandished by police, Black and Hispanic residents are more likely to be shot, and shot numerous times compared to white citizens. While some of the relationship between race and force is mediated by crime type and subject behavior, a relationship between race and force remains. The need for systematic data reporting from smaller agencies and implications for research and policy are discussed.