Forensic reporting of TASER exposure: An examination of situational and exposure characteristics.

The current study examines the content of autopsy reports (N = 184) for deaths that occurred following TASER exposure by police. Guided by previous research and national autopsy standards for other weapon-specific deaths, we evaluate 1) whether reports document situational characteristics of the police-citizen encounter and 2) whether reports document characteristics of the TASER exposure. We find a large portion of reports are often missing a police report summary and information regarding the TASER exposure. Considering the expanding use of TASERs by police, we emphasize the importance of creating national standards that require documentation of police report summaries, TASER injuries, and TASER logs.

Do you see what I see? Perceptual variation in reporting the presence of disorder cues.

A growing body of literature considers the causes of variation in perceptions of disorder; thus far, few explanations are adequate. We ask: when exposed to the same environment, do individuals homogenously report the presence of the same disorder cues? Using a dataset that cluster samples residents within city blocks and hierarchal logistic regression, we assess whether individuals residing within 1-2 blocks of each other report the same disorder cues. We find that (1) there is significant variation in reports, (2) individuals tend to disagree on the presence of disorder, not its absence, and (3) that reporting various disorder cues has significant ties to an individual's characteristics, their routine activities, and how attached they are to their neighborhood. How individuals report and interpret disorder seems to be dependent on the confluence of social, historical, economic, and place-based factors. Our results suggest revisiting the theorization of how individuals report on and interact with disorder.