Today I started working on the data fatal police shootings in the United States collected by the Washington Post.
As with the previous project, the first thing we would have to identify is what questons we would like to answer. on looking at the data, 6 main questions stand out to me.
- What is the trend of fatal police shootings from 2015 to 2023?
- In which areas are fatal police shootings more predominant?
- To what extent does mental illness play a role in police shootings?
- Is there a gender, age or racial bias in these fatal police shootings?
- Does a certain weapon of a fugitive, experience more fatal shootings than other weapons?
- Do specific agencies play a role in higher fatal shootings and if so which?
One thing to note would be that since this is a ‘fatal’ police shootings data, we do not have data regarding police shootings where the fugitive survived. We also do not have data regarding the race of the cops involved in the shooting, the cause for the fugitive’s altercation with the police and data on wheter the shooting was justified. The lack of this data may bring about some limitations during our analysis