This directory contains the data behind the story Where Police Have Killed Americans In 2015.
We linked entries from the Guardian's database on police killings to census data from the American Community Survey. The Guardian data was downloaded on June 2, 2015. More information about its database is available here.
Census data was calculated at the tract level from the 2015 5-year American Community Survey using the tables S0601 (demographics), S1901 (tract-level income and poverty), S1701 (employment and education) and DP03 (county-level income). Census tracts were determined by geocoding addresses to latitude/longitude using the Bing Maps and Google Maps APIs and then overlaying points onto 2014 census tracts. GEOIDs are census-standard and should be easily joinable to other ACS tables -- let us know if you find anything interesting.
Field descriptions:
| Header | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|
name |
Name of deceased | Guardian |
age |
Age of deceased | Guardian |
gender |
Gender of deceased | Guardian |
raceethnicity |
Race/ethnicity of deceased | Guardian |
month |
Month of killing | Guardian |
day |
Day of incident | Guardian |
year |
Year of incident | Guardian |
streetaddress |
Address/intersection where incident occurred | Guardian |
city |
City where incident occurred | Guardian |
state |
State where incident occurred | Guardian |
latitude |
Latitude, geocoded from address | |
longitude |
Longitude, geocoded from address | |
state_fp |
State FIPS code | Census |
county_fp |
County FIPS code | Census |
tract_ce |
Tract ID code | Census |
geo_id |
Combined tract ID code | |
county_id |
Combined county ID code | |
namelsad |
Tract description | Census |
lawenforcementagency |
Agency involved in incident | Guardian |
cause |
Cause of death | Guardian |
armed |
How/whether deceased was armed | Guardian |
pop |
Tract population | Census |
share_white |
Share of pop that is non-Hispanic white | Census |
share_bloack |
Share of pop that is black (alone, not in combination) | Census |
share_hispanic |
Share of pop that is Hispanic/Latino (any race) | Census |
p_income |
Tract-level median personal income | Census |
h_income |
Tract-level median household income | Census |
county_income |
County-level median household income | Census |
comp_income |
h_income / county_income |
Calculated from Census |
county_bucket |
Household income, quintile within county | Calculated from Census |
nat_bucket |
Household income, quintile nationally | Calculated from Census |
pov |
Tract-level poverty rate (official) | Census |
urate |
Tract-level unemployment rate | Calculated from Census |
college |
Share of 25+ pop with BA or higher | Calculated from Census |
Note regarding income calculations:
All income fields are in inflation-adjusted 2013 dollars.
comp_income is simply tract-level median household income as a share of county-level median household income.
county_bucket provides where the tract's median household income falls in the distribution (by quintile) of all tracts in the county. (1 indicates a tract falls in the poorest 20% of tracts within the county.) Distribution is not weighted by population.
nat_bucket is the same but for all U.S. counties.