Hamilton County is one of the top places in Ohio where residents die at the hands of police, a new report finds.
Statistics from the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health show that police have killed 10 people in Hamilton County from 2015 to 2020. The rate of police shooting fatalities in Hamilton County for the same time period is 2.04 per million people.
Franklin County and Cuyahoga County both had more police shooting fatalities, according to the report. Franklin County led Ohio with 38 fatalities, at a rate of 4.81 deaths per million. Cuyahoga had 17 fatalities, at a rate of 2.29 deaths per million.
The national average rate of police shooting fatalities is 2.99 deaths per million.
The Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health also finds disparities among the races of police victims throughout the state. White residents made up the majority of the deaths reported, but Black residents were killed at a higher rate from 2015 to 2020. Police killed 6.96 Black residents per million people vs. 1.59 white residents per million — a 339% difference.
There were 169 deaths between 2015 and 2020 that could be attributed to police in Ohio, the organization found.
The Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health gathered data for the report, released Feb. 31, from the Washington Post’s Police Shootings Database, which represents fatalities that occurred from Jan. 1, 2015 through Dec. 31, 2020. The Post stipulates that police are not obligated to report statistics and often fail to do so, so the newspaper’s data “relies primarily on news accounts, social media postings and police reports.” It documents deaths that occurred only while police were on duty.
The Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health is a collaborative of individuals from public health, government, education, health systems and service organizations. It was originally formed from an alliance between the Ohio University College of Health Sciences and Professions and University of Toledo College of Health and Human Services.
Read the group’s full report.