WHEREAS, approximately 16,000 people die as a result of homicide and 33,000 die from suicide in the United States each year; and

WHEREAS, violent deaths, including homicides and suicides, cost the United States more than $52 billion in medical care and lost productivity every year; and

WHEREAS, the number of violent deaths tell only part of the story. Many more survive violence and are left with permanent physical and emotional scars; and

WHEREAS, violence also erodes communities by interfering with quality of life, decreasing property values, and overburdening social services; and

WHEREAS, violence prevention has been hampered by fragmented and incomplete information on the circumstances surrounding homicides and suicides that does not afford an accurate assessment of factors associated with violent death; and

WHEREAS, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) collects data on violent deaths from a variety of sources, including law enforcement reports, death certificates, medical examiner and coroner reports, and crime laboratories. Individually, these sources provide data that explain violence only in a narrow context. Together, these sources offer a comprehensive picture of the circumstances surrounding a homicide or suicide. As a result, NVDRS provides insight into the optimal points for intervention, thus informing and improving violence prevention efforts at the state and local levels; and

WHEREAS, NVDRS seeks to link records on violent deaths that occurred in the same incident to help identify risk factors for multiple homicides or homicides-suicides; provide timely preliminary information on violent deaths (e.g., basic counts of murders and suicides) through faster data retrieval; describe in detail the circumstances that may have contributed to a violent death; and to better characterize perpetrators, including their relationships to victim(s).

WHEREAS, current annual funding for NVDRS supports the collection of information in only 18 states; and

WHEREAS, the mission of the International Association of Chiefs of Police to promote officer, citizen, and community safety is actively undertaken through a broad range of programming commitments including: Safe Shield, Project Safe Neighborhood, the National Center for the Prevention of Violence Against the Police, officer suicide prevention, and a national gun violence reduction initiative; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) duly assembled at its 117th Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida, promotes increased law enforcement awareness of and agency participation in the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) as well as expanded federal funding to enable every state, Tribe, territory, and the District of Columbia to be included in the NVDRS.