Data shines spotlight on high rate of deaths
A new study shows Franklin County has one of the highest rates of fatal law enforcement shootings in Ohio and is among the highest in the nation.
The county ranked 18th among the 100 most populous counties nationally, based on average annual fatality rate, according to the study by the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health released Tuesday.
The study, conducted through a partnership with Ohio University, analyzed six years
“There is something going on in communities with higher death rates in the way that police interact with citizens that leads to more shootings.”
Rick Hodges
Director of the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health
of data compiled by The Washington Post’s fatal police shooting database, which did not previously factor in population or denote the county where a shooting happened. The report and The Post’s database used information on shootings that occurred between Jan. 1, 2015 through Dec. 31, 2020.
The research team calculated a death rate per 1 million people in order to accurately compare counties across the country, director of the alliance Rick Hodges said.
Hodges, the former director of the Ohio
Department of Health, said he was struck by the results which, broadly speaking, demonstrate that you can’t come in with any preconceived notions about policing in America.
“It’s very geographically diverse and has more to do with social determinants of health and cultures of communities,” he said. “It’s something in the culture, economics or racial demographics.”
The study found that overall, more police interventions turned fatal when it involved a white victim, but when adjusted for population, there is a greater disparity involving Black victims.
Franklin County is home to one-fifth, or 20% of the state’s Black population, but the county accounts for one-third, or 33%, of deaths of African Americans shot by law enforcement in Ohio. Meanwhile Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), which is 25% Black, accounts for only 16% of African Americans fatally shot by law enforcement. Hamilton County (Cincinnati) is 14% Black by population, but accounts for 11% of African Americans fatally shot by law enforcement, the study found.
“You look at Columbus and Cleveland – two very similar cities, two very different stories,” Hodges said. “What’s the difference? You can’t explain it by blaming the Black community or that police are bad cops/people.”
Since Jan. 1, 2015, there have been 38 fatal police shootings in Franklin County. By comparison, there have been 17 in Cuyahoga and 10 in Hamilton, with the those counties ranking 56th and 61st for police fatalities among the 100 most populous U.S. counties, respectively.
Nationally, Cook County, Illinois, home to much of Chicago, is ranked 64th and Fulton County, Georgia, home to Atlanta, is ranked 24th.
While the study shows the annual death rate by police shootings was lower in Ohio than the national average, the racial inequity in communities like Columbus demonstrates that neither national nor state trends can explain county-level disparity, Hodges said.
“You have to ask yourself, ‘What are the dynamics in that community and what is going on in that community that creates that situation?’” he said.
The friction between Columbus police, the Franklin County Sheriff ’s office and the Black community is well-documented in Columbus as the city reels from the recent deaths of Casey Goodson Jr. and Andre Hill at the hands of law enforcement. But that friction predates
those shootings and the civil unrest and protests that occurred Downtown during the summer of 2020.
In August 2019, the Matrix Consulting Group’s report showed a “significant disparity” between how force was used and how often it was used against Black residents versus non-black residents. The report also found through an internal police survey, which about 100 of the Columbus Division of Police’s approximately 1,900 employees responded to, that 30% of respondents had witnessed what they considered to be discrimination against a member of the public.
“I look at this really as a hotspot study,” OU professor and data analytics expert Anirudh Ruhil said. “We began looking at policing in the general context of public health and we’re spotlighting hotspots around the country and around Ohio.”
Ruhil, who works with Ohio Alliance for Innovation and Population Health, said the research, so far, does have enough data to draw sweeping conclusions about Franklin County.
And while the state’s central hub was the urban county with the highest death rate, that doesn’t provide an answer for why seven rural Ohio counties – albeit with significantly lower total fatalities – had higher death rates than Franklin, the professor added.
Orman Hall, the alliance’s research lead and an OU executive-in-residence, suggested that policy difference within various law enforcement departments might account for the disparity between Franklin and the rest of Ohio’s counties.
“We can’t decide what the underlying factors are,” he said, “all we can say with confidence is that there are dramatic differences in the data.”
Hodges believes that discrepancy might be rooted in policy, but also a legacy of suspicion that police departments may have held toward the Black community, the nature of crimes and communications.
“There is something going on in communities with higher death rates in the way that police interact with citizens that leads to more shootings,” he said.
The Dispatch reached out to Sheriff Dallas Baldwin and Interim Columbus Police Chief Michael Woods for comments on the report. Baldwin was out of the office and unavailable to comment.
Columbus Public Safety spokesman Glenn Mcentyre said Woods did not feel comfortable commenting on the report without more time to evaluate the report and its findings.
Dispatch reporter Bethany Bruner contributed to this story. cdoyle@dispatch.com @cadoyle_18