This is important. Locally, we had a sheriff who was being heavily, heavily criticized due to several deaths at the county facility. This was at the height of the protests a few years ago.
It was a lot of work to find data on policing nationwide, because the question really was "Is the sheriff doing a bad job, or do bad things happen sometimes?"
After some hard work trying to identify other cities with similar socioeconomic circumstances and populations, it became clear that our local sheriff was actually better than average, and that much of the outrage was fabricated.
That's also when I learned that many people don't want to listen to statistics unless they agree with their own preconceptions.
It was a lot of work to find data on policing nationwide, because the question really was "Is the sheriff doing a bad job, or do bad things happen sometimes?"
After some hard work trying to identify other cities with similar socioeconomic circumstances and populations, it became clear that our local sheriff was actually better than average, and that much of the outrage was fabricated.
That's also when I learned that many people don't want to listen to statistics unless they agree with their own preconceptions.