wapoposh
Use R to access Washington Post Police Shootings dataset. Provides convenient functions to spend less time data wrangling and more time generating findings.
Installation
You can install the development version of wapoposh from GitHub with:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("parmsam/wapoposh")
Example
This is a basic example which shows you how to interact with the dataset:
library(wapoposh)
library(dplyr)
# basic example code
tail(policeshootings_v2, 4)
#> # A tibble: 4 × 19
#> id date threat_t…¹ flee_…² armed…³ city county state latit…⁴ longi…⁵
#> <dbl> <date> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 8706 2022-12-02 shoot not gun Sali… Rowan NC 35.6 -80.4
#> 2 8697 2022-12-03 shoot foot gun John… Washi… TN 36.4 -82.4
#> 3 8703 2022-12-03 threat not knife Norc… Gwinn… GA 33.9 -84.2
#> 4 8702 2022-12-04 <NA> <NA> undete… Tucs… Pima AZ 32.2 -111.
#> # … with 9 more variables: location_precision <chr>, name <chr>, age <dbl>,
#> # gender <chr>, race <chr>, race_source <chr>,
#> # was_mental_illness_related <lgl>, body_camera <lgl>, agency_ids <chr>, and
#> # abbreviated variable names ¹threat_type, ²flee_status, ³armed_with,
#> # ⁴latitude, ⁵longitude
glimpse(policeshootings_v2)
#> Rows: 7,999
#> Columns: 19
#> $ id <dbl> 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, …
#> $ date <date> 2015-01-02, 2015-01-02, 2015-01-03, 2015-0…
#> $ threat_type <chr> "point", "point", "move", "point", "point",…
#> $ flee_status <chr> "not", "not", "not", "not", "not", "not", "…
#> $ armed_with <chr> "gun", "gun", "unarmed", "replica", "other"…
#> $ city <chr> "Shelton", "Aloha", "Wichita", "San Francis…
#> $ county <chr> "Mason", "Washington", "Sedgwick", "San Fra…
#> $ state <chr> "WA", "OR", "KS", "CA", "CO", "OK", "AZ", "…
#> $ latitude <dbl> 47.24683, 45.48742, 37.69477, 37.76291, 40.…
#> $ longitude <dbl> -123.12159, -122.89170, -97.28055, -122.422…
#> $ location_precision <chr> "not_available", "not_available", "not_avai…
#> $ name <chr> "Tim Elliot", "Lewis Lee Lembke", "John Pau…
#> $ age <dbl> 53, 47, 23, 32, 39, 18, 22, 35, 34, 47, 25,…
#> $ gender <chr> "male", "male", "male", "male", "male", "ma…
#> $ race <chr> "A", "W", "H", "W", "H", "W", "H", "W", "W"…
#> $ race_source <chr> "not_available", "not_available", "not_avai…
#> $ was_mental_illness_related <lgl> TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, FAL…
#> $ body_camera <lgl> FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, F…
#> $ agency_ids <chr> "73", "70", "238", "196", "473", "101", "19…
You can use latest_data()
to get the latest dataset from the
Washington Post Github
repo.
# get latest data
latest <- latest_data()[[1]]
tail(latest, 4)
#> # A tibble: 4 × 19
#> id date threat_t…¹ flee_…² armed…³ city county state latit…⁴ longi…⁵
#> <dbl> <date> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 8711 2022-12-05 shoot foot gun Memp… Shelby TN 35.1 -89.9
#> 2 8712 2022-12-05 attack <NA> blunt_… Seel… Imper… CA 32.8 -116.
#> 3 8713 2022-12-06 shoot <NA> gun Wood… Refug… TX 28.2 -97.3
#> 4 8714 2022-12-06 flee foot undete… Fres… Fresno CA 36.8 -120.
#> # … with 9 more variables: location_precision <chr>, name <chr>, age <dbl>,
#> # gender <chr>, race <chr>, race_source <chr>,
#> # was_mental_illness_related <lgl>, body_camera <lgl>, agency_ids <chr>, and
#> # abbreviated variable names ¹threat_type, ²flee_status, ³armed_with,
#> # ⁴latitude, ⁵longitude
Update Frequency
Note that the repo is scheduled to update the package data on a weekly
basis. However, it will require a reinstall to pull the latest processed
data (.rda) file. As an alternative, the latest_data()
function will
pull most current public dataset from the Washington Post.
Credit
Credit goes to the Washington Post and their research and reporting/database development team for compiling and sharing the dataset on their Github repo.
Hex icon created using the hexmake app from ColinFay.
Police icons created by surang - Flaticon
Note
The dataset was originally and is still published under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. The dataset in the package has been slightly cleaned and provided in an R data file format.
Code of Conduct
Please note that the wapoposh project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.