Association between police funding and community firearm violence incidence in 61 US cities, 2015-2022.

Publication date: Jun 26, 2025

To understand if increased investment in policing is associated with decreased rates of community firearm violence (CFV), we examined temporal trends in shooting rates and police funding and explored associations between police expenditure and CFV incidence in United States (US) cities. We conducted an ecological space-time panel analysis utilizing data from 61 large cities in the United States from 2015 to 2022. Police expenditure was obtained from city budgets and shooting data were abstracted from Gun Violence Archive. Negative binominal mixed-effects regression was performed, controlling for social factors known or theorized to impact CFV incidence. There was a mean of 42. 8 shootings/100,000 population, with a mean increase of 2. 9 shootings/100,000 population/year. Police funding also increased by an average of $286,781/100,000 population/year. No significant association was observed between police expenditure and shooting incidence in the mixed effects model (IRR 0. 95; 95 %CI:0. 78,1. 16). Sensitivity analyses using one-year lags for shootings and police expenditure did not substantively change results. Shootings and police funding increased in cities throughout the US during the study period. We did not observe a significant association between police funding and CFV incidence.

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