Injuries by police fall as diversity and income rise

The study is published in the Journal of Urban Health and was conducted as part of the School of Public Health's Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project.

Most previous research on police-civilian interactions focuses on fatalities, the researchers explained.

"The problem is, for every fatal injury, there are more than 100 nonfatal injuries," said author Lee Friedman, a research professor at UIC and co-lead of the Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project.

The analysis of nonfatal injuries revealed a more granular picture of what is happening across the state, allowing the researchers to evaluate how community-level characteristics are associated with injuries during police-civilian interactions. These injuries can not only harm people's mental and physical health, they can also erode community trust in police, they said.