Charpignon discuss their study on suicides among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared a state of emergency regarding child and adolescent ...mental health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, US adolescents have been affected by the widespread loss of primary caregivers. Suicide-risk screenings have yielded higher positive rates than during the prepandemic period; thus, they sought to measure suicide-related mortality in this population. Through partnerships with 14 state departments of public health, they collected data from 2015 through 2020 for 85--102 decedents with suicide as the cause of death. MIT COUHES approved the conduct of this research and waived ethical review and the informed consent requirement because the study was not human participant research and used death certificates from deceased individuals.
Objective
The aim of this study was to examine rates of killings perpetrated by off‐duty police and news coverage of those killings, by victim race and gender, and to qualitatively evaluate the ...contexts in which those killings occur.
Data Sources and Study Setting
We used the Mapping Police Violence database to curate a dataset of killings perpetrated by off‐duty police (2013–2021, N = 242). We obtained data from Media Cloud to assess news coverage of each off‐duty police‐perpetrated killing.
Study Design
Our study used a convergent mixed‐methods design. We examined off‐duty police‐perpetrated killings by victim race and gender, comparing absolute rates and rates relative to total police‐perpetrated killings. Correction added on 26 June 2023, after first online publication: ‘policy‐perpetrated’ has been changed to ‘police‐perpetrated’ in the preceding sentence. We also conducted race‐gender comparisons of the frequency of news media reporting of these killings, and whether reporting identified the perpetrator as an off‐duty officer. We conducted thematic analysis of the narrative free‐text field that accompanied quantitative data using grounded theory.
Principal Findings
Black men were the most frequent victims killed by off‐duty police (39.3%) followed by white men (25.2%), Hispanic men (11.2%), white women (9.1%), men of unknown race (9.1%), and Black women (4.1%). Black women had the highest rate of off‐duty/total police‐perpetrated killings relative to white men (rate = 12.82%, RR = 8.32, 95% CI: 4.43–15.63). There were threefold higher odds of news reporting of a police‐perpetrated killing and the off‐duty status of the officer for incidents with Black and Hispanic victims. Qualitative analysis revealed that off‐duty officers intervened violently within their own social networks; their presence escalated situations; they intentionally obscured information about their lethal violence; they intervened while impaired; their victims were often in crisis; and their intervention posed harm and potential secondary traumatization to witnesses.
Conclusions
Police perpetrate lethal violence while off duty, compromising public health and safety. Additionally, off‐duty police‐perpetrated killings are reported differentially by the news media depending on the race of the victim.
