Interactive Dashboard for Mapping Police Violence Data
Exploring Patterns in Fatal Police Encounters
I’ve developed an interactive dashboard to explore data from Mapping Police Violence, a comprehensive database tracking police killings in the United States. The dashboard automatically pulls the latest data and provides multiple analytical views to examine temporal trends, demographic patterns, and geographic distributions.
Dashboard Features
The MPV Analytical Engine includes several key analytical modules:
Overview Panel
- Real-time statistics including total incidents, per capita rates, and demographic breakdowns
- Cumulative trajectory visualization comparing year-over-year trends
- Temporal heatmaps showing patterns by day and month
- Day-of-week analysis
Demographics
- Racial and ethnic distribution of victims
- Age distribution and age-by-race breakdowns
- Analysis of unarmed victims by demographic group
Behavioral Context
- Armed/unarmed status of victims
- Types of alleged weapons
- Fleeing status at time of incident
- Mental health-related encounters over time
- Body camera adoption trends
Geographic Analysis
- National map of incidents
- State and city-level breakdowns
- Top jurisdictions by incident count
Accountability
- Criminal charges filed against officers over time
- Neighborhood income disparities
Interactive Dashboard
Note: The dashboard may take a moment to load as it downloads and processes the latest data from Mapping Police Violence.
Important Methodological Notes
This dashboard presents descriptive statistics only. The data shows observed patterns but cannot establish causal relationships without additional controls for:
- Local crime rates
- Police deployment density
- Population demographics
- Socioeconomic factors
- Jurisdictional policies
The dashboard uses US Census population projections (2013-2025) to calculate per capita rates. All racial categorizations follow the source data from Mapping Police Violence.
Data Source
Data is automatically synchronized from Mapping Police Violence, which aggregates information from: - Fatal Encounters - The Washington Post’s Fatal Force database - Additional cases identified through crowdsourcing and research
Technical Details
The dashboard is built using:
- R Shiny with the bslib framework for modern UI components
- tidyverse for data manipulation
- plotly for interactive visualizations
- sf and rnaturalearth for geographic mapping
The app automatically downloads fresh data daily and includes robust data cleaning pipelines to standardize variables across time periods.
Code Availability
The complete source code for this dashboard is available in the academic-website repository.
This dashboard is provided for research and educational purposes. The data presented reflects reported incidents and should be interpreted within the context of broader research on policing, public safety, and racial justice.
Ian T. Adams, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice
My research interests center around policing policy, people, behavior, and technology.