
We reevaluate the claim from Bor et al. (2018: 302) that “police killings of unarmed black Americans have effects on mental health among black American adults in the general population.” The Mapping Police Violence data used by the authors includes 91 incidents involving black decedents who were either (1) not killed by police officers in the line of duty or (2) armed when killed. These incidents should have been removed or recoded prior to analysis. Correctly recoding these incidents decreased in magnitude all of the reported coefficients, and, more importantly, eliminated the reported statistically significant effect of exposure to police killings of unarmed black individuals on the mental health of black Americans in the general population. We caution researchers to vet carefully crowdsourced data that tracks police behaviors and warn against reducing these complex incidents to overly simplistic armed/unarmed dichotomies.
bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Sociology, SocArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Sociology, bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Sociology|Criminology, bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences, SocArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences, SocArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Sociology|Crime, Law, and Deviance
bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Sociology, SocArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Sociology, bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Sociology|Criminology, bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences, SocArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences, SocArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Sociology|Crime, Law, and Deviance
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 18 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% |
