•  
 

Per population, standardised by Pākehā rate

These figures are scaled by the per population rate for Pākehā, which allows it to be compared with with per population rates for Māori and Pacific people. The Pākehā rate is always 1.00 after scaling, so as you select different tactical options you'll see that bar never changes height.

 

Per 100,000 population

These figures are per 100,000 population for the stated ethnicity.

Caveats

These graphs show the overall impact of police use of force on various ethnicities. It shows how likely a given person is to experience certain uses of force, based on that person's ethnicity.

What these graphs do not show is how police might be more or less likely to use force on a given person, depending on their ethnicity.

There are many contributing factors to the disparity in use of force by police across ethnicities. These may include things such as Māori being more likely to encounter police than Pākehā, and differences in how police treat people based on their ethnicity. However, the data presented here don't allow any conclusions to be drawn about why we see this disparity.

2014 Data

Values for 2014 have been calculated from statistics in this report: NZ Police Annual Tactical Options Research Report #3

The "per 100,000 population" values from 2014 have been halved to make them directly comparable with data from 6 month periods.

2016 and 2017 Data

Values for July-December 2016 and January-June 2017 have been calculated from raw data released by NZ Police under the Official Information Act.

The data for July-December 2016 was requested by Emmy Rākete: Tactical options research report

The data for January-June 2017 was requested by Brooke Hart: Tactical Options Reporting Data January-June 2017

The data for July-December 2017 was requested by Brooke Hart: Tactical Options Reporting Data July-December 2017

The July 2016-December 2017 data is pooled from the above sources. 2014 is excluded from this combined set because raw data for that period has not been released.

It should be noted that 11% of the reported events for July-December 2016, 7% of those reported for January-June 2017, and 7% of those reported for July-December 2017 had not completed NZ Police's two-stage review process when they were released under the Official Information Act.

The raw data for these periods has had some information withheld for privacy reasons, such as the exact date of each event and the name of the reporter, though none of this information is relevant to the information presented in this visualisation. Also, the raw data has not been processed by NZ Police to fix mistakes that may be found, such as errors in data entry. NZ Police have requested that the data be presented alongside a proviso that "this information is raw data which has not been checked and which is therefore incomplete and unreliable".

The "per 100,000 population" values for 2016 and 2017 have been calculated using numbers from the 2013 census provided by Stats NZ: 2013 Census QuickStats about national highlights

Firearms and tasers

Firearm and taser events include both "shows" and discharges.

Sponge rounds and communication

Data for the "sponge rounds" and "communication" tactical options have been excluded. Sponge rounds underwent a trial in 2014. Data on "communication" as a tactical option is not available for 2014, and unlike other tactical options it does not involve the use of force.

Any

Values for "any" use the total number of TOR events. As a single TOR event can involve the use of multiple tactical options, the value for "any" is less than the sum of all tactical options.