Despite the fact that public attention has surged around law enforcement-caused injuries in recent years, the number of emergency department visits for people injured by law enforcement remained steady from 2006 to 2012, according to research published in JAMA Surgery.
During that seven-year span, the annual number of people coming to the ED with law enforcement-induced injuries was stable at around 51,000.
Elinore Kaufman, MD, with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, and colleagues used the Nationwide Emergency Sample, a representative sample of ED visits in the U.S., to see if visits for injuries from law enforcement increased relative to total ED visits.
They found frequency did not increase over time.
Here are seven additional things to know about ED visits for patients injured by law enforcement:
1. About 0.3 percent of such visits resulted in death
2. More than 80 percent of patients visiting the ED with injuries from law enforcement were men
3. The average age of patients was 32 years old
4. Most injuries from law enforcement were being struck
5. Gunshots and stab wounds accounted for fewer than 7 percent of visits
6. Substance abuse and mental illness were common in patients injured by police
7. Injuries from law enforcement were more common in the South and West and less common in the Northeast and Midwest
"While it is impossible to classify how many of these injuries are avoidable, these data can serve as a baseline to evaluate the outcomes of national and regional efforts to reduce law enforcement-related injury," the authors wrote.