Fatal police encounters – it’s not just shootings

Abstract

ABSTRACT One of the most critical issues in policing today is citizen deaths that occur as a result of police encounters. Most of the fatal police encounters research tends to focus on fatalities as a direct result of police actions such as fatal shootings. However, there are a wide variety of ways in which fatalities occur during police encounters that may not be due to direct police actions (for example accidents and suicide). This study examines both direct and indirect forms of fatal police encounters. To do this, a chi-squared analysis was conducted of 106 fatal police encounters that occurred across two Australian states. The findings reveal that over three-quarters of fatal police encounters within the data were a result of indirect police actions. These findings highlight the prominence of indirect fatal police encounters and, in turn, the greater opportunity to focus on prevention strategies for these often-neglected deaths in the research.