Our second project comes in a time of necessary, and troubling, reflection of the use of force in our society. We are a group from Minneapolis, and it seemed fitting to explore this topic and to put data to use in helping to further the discourse into the use of force by police in Minneapolis.
I was responsible for creating the map data you see. Two different maps show the use of force incidents by neighborhood. It was sobering seeing the disparity in reaction from the police to the suspect: many times the use of force was justified because the suspect was tense, which is a natural reaction.
Our project shines a light on the disparity between the number of incidents in neighborhoods populated by wealthy households (predominantly white neighborhoods) and neighborhoods populated by low-income households (predominantly neighborhooods with Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color). Lower income neighborhoods see more incidents, which we can infer is due to higher amounts of patrols in these neighborhoods.