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Cartwright, J. K., & Morgan, J. K. (2019). With a broad brush: A response to Reingle Gonzalez et al., 2018. Journal of Public Health. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdz072
We recently read a study1 that presents an analysis of officer-involved shootings in relation to military history and deployment. Although the results presented are not incorrect, per se, they are limited by a lack of inclusion of confounding variables and mediators and result in an overstating of the conclusions by authors. To state simply that officers with a military history are more likely to be involved in discharging their weapons on the job (and providing a review of literature on Veterans and violence as the introduction) mischaracterizes this nuanced relationship and purports a homogeneity among Veterans that does not exist. There is a concern that the conclusion would be read as generalizable and that the limitations to this study would not have been made clear; indeed, only twelve days after this study was published, The Marshall Project ran a piece citing this study titled ‘Police with Military Experience More Likely to Shoot’2.