MPV Data Analysis - Auto-Updating Blog Post

Overview

This blog post automatically updates whenever the website is rebuilt. It downloads the latest data from Mapping Police Violence and regenerates all visualizations.

How It Works

1. R Markdown: The post is written in R Markdown (index.Rmd), which contains both text and R code
2. Automatic Download: When the site builds, the R code downloads the latest MPV Excel file
3. Data Processing: The code cleans and analyzes the data
4. Visualization Generation: All charts are generated fresh with the latest data
5. HTML Output: The .Rmd file is knitted to index.html, which is then served by Hugo

Build Process

When you rebuild your website (either locally or via Netlify):

1. Hugo/blogdown processes all .Rmd files
2. The R code chunks execute in order
3. Fresh data is downloaded from: https://mappingpoliceviolence.us/s/MPVDatasetDownload.xlsx
4. Visualizations are created and embedded in the post
5. The HTML output includes the latest data and charts

Key Features

Data Disclaimers

The post includes prominent warnings that:

• This data captures killings only, not all uses of lethal force
• Most police shootings are survived, so these numbers undercount total incidents
• The statistics are descriptive only and don’t establish causation

Automatic Updates

• No manual intervention needed - just rebuild the site
• Data is always current as of the last build
• Date stamps update automatically

Comprehensive Analysis

Includes visualizations for:

• Cumulative trends (all deaths and shootings only)
• Demographic patterns (race, age)
• Behavioral context (armed status, mental health)
• Temporal patterns (seasonal, day of week)
• Geographic distribution (maps, states, cities)
• Per capita rates
• Accountability and socioeconomic factors

Required R Packages

The analysis requires:

• tidyverse
• readxl
• lubridate
• gghighlight
• ggthemes
• ggrepel
• slider
• sf
• rnaturalearth
• rnaturalearthdata

These should be installed in your R environment where the site builds.

Customization

To modify the analysis:

1. Edit index.Rmd
2. Rebuild the site locally to test: blogdown::serve_site()
3. Commit and push changes

Data Source

Data automatically downloaded from: Mapping Police Violence: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

The database is continuously updated and currently includes data through 12/31/2025.

Notes

• The download happens at build time, so there’s a brief delay
• The .Rmd file has cache=FALSE on the download chunk to ensure fresh data
• All file paths are temporary to avoid cluttering the repository
• Visualizations are embedded directly in the HTML (no separate image files needed)