Exploring Fatal Police Shootings in the US (2015)

IST 421 Christina Demes Demographic Statistics

Using data obtained from the United States Census and the “Fatal Police Shootings” dataset on Kaggle (specifically from 2015),
this poster explores the demographic and situational factors that make a person more susceptible to being killed by police. An- A deeper look at the demographics of
other question I hope to answer is how high school completion and poverty rates connect to fatal police shootings. To make the the 386 people killed by police in the
graphs, I used RStudio and several attached packages like: tidyverse, ggplot2, dplyr, and viridisLite to make it visually accessible United States in 2015.
to everyone.
Deaths by Gender
Heat Map of Fatal Police Shootings by State 300

Deaths
200

100

0.0004 0

Female Male

0.0003 Deaths by Age

15

0.0002

Deaths
10

5
0.0001
25 50 75 Age
Scaled Deaths
Deaths by Race
150

100

Deaths
This heat map was made by grouping the data by state and counting the deaths for each. Using population data
from the 2015 Census, the death count was divided by the estimated population of each state, then multiplied by 50

100. The result is a heat map of fatal police shootings by state that takes population into account. 0
Asian African Hispanic Other White
American

Deaths by State Average Poverty Rates vs. Average High School Completion
92.5
This scatterplot explores the relationship
15 A count of the fatal
Arizona between average high school completion
Average High School

police shootings that

90.0
Completion Rate

took place in the states Montana and poverty rates for each state. It’s
with the
10 highest scaled deaths.
New Mexico important to note the national averages
87.5
when evaluating this graph:
Deaths

Oklahoma
West Virginia

5
85.0
Wyoming
National Average
Poverty Rate: 16.20%
National Average High
86.44%
82.5
School Completion Rate:
0
AZ OK NM WV MT WY
80.0 Fatal Police Shootings in the US, kaggle.com
10 15 20 25 Average Poverty Rate State Population Totals: 2010-2019, census.gov