Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers

ABSTRACT:

Officer-involved shootings have spawned large-scale protest movements, intense media scrutiny, and a measure of political backlash from social conservatives. Over the years, Los Angeles County has suffered several rounds of extreme rioting following controversial episodes of police violence, yet continues to witness hundreds of officer-involved shootings each year. We analyze the spatial distribution of officer-involved shootings in Los Angeles County using ordinary least squares regression and hot-spot mapping techniques. We find the highly uneven distribution of officer-involved shootings across the many enforcement divisions of the LA Police and Sheriff Departments is statistically associated with neighborhood levels of violent crime and the average age of local citizenry. Other common predictors of officer-involved shootings, including race, ethnicity, and neighborhood economic conditions, are discussed, along with implications for policy and practice.