TABLE 2—

Police Violence Within the Life Events Dimensions Proposed by Dohrenwend

Dimension	Description	Relevance for Police Violence
Valence	Positive/negative	Police violence is universally of negative valence for the person being victimized.
Fatefulness	Extent to which an event is uncontrollable as opposed to a consequence of the individual’s behavior	The power inequities, lack of recourse or accountability, pervasive community presence of the police, and the stigma of reporting police violence all provide a context of fatefulness around police violence. There is evidence that people involved in criminal activities are more likely to be victims of police violence,11 which would suggest some degree of controllability, although other research has shown that race may be a better predictor of exposure to police violence than the behaviors that elicited police contact.34
Predictability	Expected likelihood of occurrence	Police violence is more common in the United States than any economically similar country, but is sufficiently rare in many contexts to suggest that it is generally unexpected or unpredictable. There is some evidence that the association between police violence and mental health outcomes is actually stronger among groups that face a lower likelihood of exposure,11 which may relate to their lower expected likelihood of contact. However, even for groups with higher rates of exposure, each individual incident is likely to be unpredictable.
Magnitude	The amount of effect on one’s activities as a result of experiencing the event	The effect of police violence can be of substantial magnitude, as suggested by several features of our model. Most notably, the effects of police violence can result in mortality or a complete restriction of freedom through incarceration, and avoidance of reminders of such incidents is nearly impossible given the pervasive presence of police officers. Though it is obvious that magnitude can be extreme, the magnitude likely varies from circumstance to circumstance, suggesting that research should seek to address this variability.
Centrality	Relation of the event to a person’s ability to maintain or achieve their life goals	The top of the centrality hierarchy is threat to life, and violent confrontations with police carry the potential for threat to life given the availability of a firearm. Further, incarceration and being classified as a “felon” further limits one’s ability to maintain goals across a variety of life domains.
Physical impact	Direct or indirect physical effects of the life event	Police violence can potentially have significant physical effects, particularly physical assault with a weapon or sexual assault, and these assaultive forms of police violence have been identified as the strongest correlates with a variety of mental health outcomes.11,12,14
Specific	Specific characteristics of an event that contribute to its impact	Several features of police violence appear to be unique or at least much more significant for police violence compared with other forms of violence, in particular the power inequities (in this case, state rather than individual power), risk of incarceration, and the pervasive community and national presence of police officers.

Source. Dohrenwend.⁶