Policing and population health: The relationship between militarization and lethal use of force

At present, the United States has no reliable and accessible federal surveillance system for lethal use of force by law enforcement. National dialogue on use of force has highlighted police militarization as a particularly concerning and potentially related trend but poor data limit the ability of researchers and practitioners to study this relationship. This dissertation uses innovative integration of interdisciplinary data to advance the study of militarization and use of force with the goal of supporting evidence-based and health-oriented policing practices. It includes construction of a new conceptual framework for militarization, a multistage data linkage process of four crowd-sourced lethal use of force databases, and a nationally representative, cross-sectional ecological analysis of the association between militarization and lethal use of force from 2013-2017.