Injuries owing to encounters with law enforcement hold steady at about 51,000 a year, study finds

— -- In recent years, much attention has been paid to how police interact with suspects and the public, especially when that interaction ends in violence recorded on video and shared online. However, one new study has found that despite increased attention, there does not appear to be a rise in people treated for injuries in emergency rooms “owing to” to encounters with law enforcement and that just a fraction of those injuries resulted in deaths.

About 51,000 people are sent to the ER every year with injuries hospitals characterize as “legal intervention injuries” -- and less than 1 percent of these injuries result in death, according to a new study published earlier this month in JAMA Surgery.

Dr. Elinore J. Kaufman, lead author and surgeon at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medicine, said researchers' goal was to find out if increased coverage of injuries related to citizen encounters with law enforcement matched an increased number of injuries. "Legal intervention injuries" was defined as “injuries inflicted by the police or other law-enforcing agents, including military on duty, in the course of arresting or attempting to arrest lawbreakers, suppressing disturbances, maintaining order, and other legal action.”

“With any health problem, the first step is to count the numbers. If you haven’t counted it, you’re not going to fix it,” Kaufman said.

Approximately 356,000 emergency room visits between 2006 and 2012 were attributed to “legal intervention injuries,” reported the researchers from New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medicine. Researchers reviewed statistics from the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, a database that includes both discharges and hospital visits. NEDS is a database that contains some 135 million emergency department visits, a sample that is roughly 20 percent of all visits nationwide.

The number of injuries in this category remained steady each year at approximately 51,000 per year. The study did not examine whether the people who were injured were arrested or charged with a crime.

“Although this issue has been getting more attention, this is a longer-term phenomenon,” Kaufman said of the study results.

The vast majority of injuries were minor in severity, with 78 percent of injuries occurring through being struck. Nearly 4 percent of injuries were due to gunshot wounds, approximately 3 percent due to cut or stab wounds and nearly 16 percent were unspecified injuries.

People with alcohol or drug in their system, people with a history of alcohol or substance abuse or dependence, or people with mental illness made up a significant portion of those brought to the ER in this study. Of those injured, 20 percent were reported as having some form of mental illness. Nearly 10 percent were identified as having alcohol intoxication or dependence. Another 6 percent had drug intoxication or dependence.

Kaufman pointed out that understanding who is more likely to be treated in the ER for injuries related to law enforcement can help police departments, medical providers, and local communities work together to diminish the numbers of those injured.

“Mental health issues were very common in our population, something to take into account going forward,” she said of her study group. The “next step is to look at communities to look at where we can improve, where we have strengths and what we can share with each other.”

More injuries occurred in the South and West regions of the U.S. compared to the Northeast and Midwest. More than 85 percent of patients were men, with an average age of 32 years old. Over 80 percent of patients lived in urban areas, with most in areas with household incomes less than the national average.

Kaufman said more study would need to be done in order to account for people who died before they reach the hospital, those who do not show up at the ER for treatment and for people who come back for continuing treatment.

“None of these counts are perfect. As researchers, our job is to use the data the best we can,” she said.

Chris Gu, MD, is a radiology resident at the Mayo Clinic and a former resident in the ABC News Medical Unit. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisGuMD.