About the Police Firearm Injury Explorer (PFIE)

The Police Firearm Injury Explorer builds on data made available by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA). GVA is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that compiles information on incidents of gun violence from over 7,500 law enforcement, media, government, and commercial sources daily in an effort to provide near-real-time data about the results of gun violence.

Frequently Asked Questions

What cases are included in the PFIE dataset?

PFIE was constructed using GVA data which recorded law enforcement officers who were victims of any type of firearm violence (e.g., firearm homicide, assault, accident, suicide).

Cases included:

• Victim is a sworn, active-duty law enforcement officer.
• Shot fatally or nonfatally with a firearm by a suspect.
• Shot somewhere on their body or on-person equipment (e.g., radio, ballistic helmet).

Cases excluded:

• Victim was a retired or off-duty law enforcement officer.
• Victim was a corrections or federal law enforcement officer (FBI, ATF, Marshals, etc.).
• Victim was shot by another law enforcement officer (blue-on-blue shootings).
• Victim shot themselves accidentally or intentionally (training accident, suicide, etc.).

Who created PFIE?

Michael Sierra-Arévalo (University of Texas) and Justin Nix (University of Nebraska–Omaha) designed the coding scheme and led data cleaning and coding.

Coding was supported by Aidan Bach, Tommy Flaherty, Ciara Garcia, Kateryna Kaplun, Philip Phu Pham, and Jamie Villarreal.

The PFIE application was written by Michael Sierra-Arévalo.

Preferred Citation

Sierra-Arévalo, M., Nix, J., Bach, A., Flaherty, T., Garcia, C., Kaplun, K., Pham, P. P., & Villarreal, J. (2024). The Police Firearm Injury Explorer. Retrieved from https://pfiexplorer.com