Injuries by police fall as diversity and income rise [View all]

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.