SHOT: Developing a database for police shooting incidents in the United States

Gun violence and in particular police shootings have become prominent in the news media in the United. States. However, there is currently no national database of police incidents. This paper describes the first phase of a project to develop a database to collect, edit, query and analyze police shootings. The SHOT Project (Statistics Help Officer Tactics), an academic collaboration between Criminal Justice and Information Technology departments, has developed a protocol for collecting data from open sources using content analysis. The database will enable the research community and law enforcement the ability to study the dynamics of shooting incidents, the ability to analyze this information and be better prepared to understand trends and patterns. The second phase of the project will be GIS Visualization and an Internet-based enterprise system for update, query and analysis.