Police Killings of Blacks: Here Is What the Data Say

Addendum:
I would add, a solution, perhaps partial is that spend large sums of money to create jobs for inner city youths, a special Jobs Corps, even if some of the jobs aren't beneficial to society. Pay them about $3 over the minimum wage, until it is $12 an hour for beginners, and $15 for (US-born) adults who have paid in 4 quarters in payroll tax. This enticement will drive quite a large number of black youths away from engaging in drug-dealings. Once it becomes a pattern, that mentality could spread like "wildfires." Now few inner-city youths see role models who are contented with working on minimum wage. (I added US-bron clause specifically to target inner-city black men, which would also benefit greater number of less educated whites)

I do not claim this will be a panacea but if the violent crime rate is significantly reduced a lot more than the money spent on such a program would be recouped. We, the society owe that much to black youths who have been handicapped in overt and subtle ways. A decent society is expected to do that.

I would add a controversial clause as well. Expand stop & frisk program to all parts of the country. As long as camera captures the procedure, there wouldn't be infractions. That could remove very many guns out of circulation from those who shouldn't have them.

Excellent analysis. And we need to stop blaming the police for the higher rate of police killings of African American men. That would only worsen the situation by police scaling back patrolling high-crime neighborhoods, which is indispensable to save black lives. The "Ferguson effect" has been attracted to the recent rapid escalation of black-on-killings in inner city areas.

One minor but significant point neglected in this analysis, probably deliberately is that younger black men tend to be much more violent than other groups - except perhaps poor Hispanics. Poverty maybe an incidental factor in higher violence in those neighborhoods, but not "sufficient." There are very many poor folks in different parts of the world. They may steal or cheat, but they do not engage in violent crimes at any higher rates. A

As you say, if blacks have more encounters with police that may well be because of bigotry. If cops go by a suspect's description and all black people look the same to them ... then if the suspect is black, the cop will go after the first black guy he sees. Cops behave toward blacks (and Native Americans) far differently than toward whites, as illustrated by - yes the infamous shooting in the back we all saw, but also the black kid who was beaten and cuffed because he dared use an ATM machine, the black 70-something year old who was arrested simply for standing on a corner, the black woman institutionalized because she said Obama followed her on twitter (which Obama did).

But if the killings of unarmed black people by police are reduced to the same number (proportionally) as unarmed white people who are killed by police, that won't be nearly good enough.

Because, though killed in far lower proportion, unarmed whites are nonetheless killed far in excess of any margin we could grant police for the rare unfortunate but understandable error. In other words, getting the numbers down that low is still much too high.

Extreme changes must be made to how police are selected and trained, and there is no time to lose. Police pose a grave mortal risk to the lives of unarmed US citizens on American soil.

Getting rid of their bigotry is an important step, but it is only one step.

Any intelligent person, regardless of race, wants criminals locked up. Blacks that have to live with the large percentages of black criminals should be the first people asking for longer sentances and more punishment.

Hold it. You're using the percentage of arrestees who are black as a proxy for the number of police encounters that involve black people. Why? I would have liked to know a bit more about why and if these two things are actually equivalent, or if this is just the best data you've got.

Dear Professor of Economics at Harvard

As a professor emeritus myself, I am disturbed by your analysis. (By the way, data are plural.) You have pushed the analysis back one step and found that much of the black "dis"advantage can be attributed to the higher probability of an encounter between blacks and police than whites and police. But, let's dig deeper. Why should anyone's encounter with police lead to a shooting? Have you followed the comparisons The Guardian newspaper has undertaken showing the far greater chances of death by gun shot in the US than the UK? To "explain" black deaths at the hands of police as a consequence of interaction by police is to tacitly accept the idea that interactions with police often end in gun play. So, yes, I can't argue with your statistics, but I interpret them to mean that interchanges with American police (compared to those in the UK or in any other industrialized country) are far too likely to end in a shooting. The police and the public need to stop approaching one another with guns. Until the prevalence of guns in America is reduced, you are correct, blacks will suffer disproportionately.

I think you've missed one crucial fact. Run the numbers on police killings of *unarmed* suspects. you're much more likely to be killed if you're an unarmed black than an unarmed white.

http://howardfrant.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-note-on-police-shootings.html

We've learned a lot in the past half-century about the causes of black urban violence. Yet we haven't figured out how to fix it.

We learned in the 1960s that urban poverty disproportionally affects African-Americans and is highly correlated with many social ills: high crime rates, drug use, family breakdown, lack of opportunity. Pres. Johnson's Great Society tried, with limited success, to address these problems.

Since then, much has improved for the African-American community. The black middle class grew, civil rights laws gave blacks the right to vote. But ome things have gotten worse - the dusapearance of the nuclear family, poverty.

Since the social upheaval of the 60s, a conservative backlash, much based on racism, has chipped away at the power of government. Republican political power has limited the ability of government to enact social change and help the less fortunate. The result is gridlock and a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

Bernie Sanders is right: to reverse the downward trajectory of America, we need a political revolution. Climate change may be the greatest threat to the future of the world. Economic inequality is surely the greatest threat to the future of America.

To test for racial bias in police shootings, one would need to pull the records of events in which the suspect was armed or presumed armed and determine the rates at which white suspects of that sort were shot or killed and the rate at which black suspects of that sort were shot or killed.

As for cases of presumed armed, but not actually armed, one could do a similar analysis: at what rate are black suspects presumed armed when they are not and at what rate are white suspects presumed armed when they are not. Are there differences?

The analysis presented is a good start, but as the author states, it does not get to specific elements of bias.

Blacks commit homicide at a rate that is 7.7X that of whites. Stop and think about that. It's stupefying.

Blacks commit violent crime at far greater rates than whites do. So of course they have more encounters with police. And of course people are more suspicious and fearful of them. That's not fair to individual law-abiding blacks. but it's reality.

While we may blame society in general for the disproportionate crime rate, I fail to see how we can blame the police for enforcing the law. The urban areas with higher crime rates are going to have an increased police presence and, therefore, more violent incidents. This doesn't absolve police from some infrequent stupid behavior but it is not that prevalent, only highlighted by the media.

Heather MacDonald, the journalist, has gone into numerous poor African-American communities and asked the residents what they want most with regard to the police. The number one answer is always more police protection. It would be a tragic, unintended consequence of this "Black Lives Matter" movement if it were to result in less policing of these high crime areas.

An interesting analysis. These thoughts came to mind as I read it.
-- How does the same analysis play out with respect to Hispanics?
-- Why must we "suppose" each arrest creates an equal risk of shooting? What do the data say? Also, not all the recent deaths resulted from shooting (illegal choke hold or "rough ride" in the police van) and some victims weren't yet arrested.
-- Likewise, while 30% of suspects are described as black, the encounters with several of the recent victims were not because they were suspects.
-- Finally, what is the racial breakdown of the cops who did the shooting?

The notion that white cops kill black suspects on purpose is nonsense dreamed up by those who don't like or understand cops. Killing a black suspect gets you suspended, may get you fired, will probably get you sued, will make you a target of the black community, will label you a racist, and will taint your professional record for the rest of your life. Even a racist cop knows that killing a black person is a terrible idea.

I think America is a police state and I think the drug war is, effectively, a race war. That said, certain statistics need to be (re)considered in assessing police killings.
What percentage of perpetrators encountered by police are armed?
What is the racial breakdown of the people who fire weapons at police officers?
What is the breakdown by age and sex?
(Young males dominate, obviously.)
Is anyone arguing that the police are discriminating against young men?
Of course not...
Young men are the most violent segment of society, which is why the armies of the world seek their services.
Cherry-picked data, fallacious reasoning and a divisive political agenda do not serve the cause of peace and racial justice. Print the truth so people can adapt to reality and society can move in a healthier, more peaceful direction.

Nice bit of smoke and mirrors, but the following facts are indisputable:

* Our heavily militarized Police force is effectively laying siege to black neighborhoods. This is not happening with the same force and zeal in predominantly white neighborhoods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HmgeCeGk--I

* Afro-Americans are being stopped and searched at a far higher frequency than white Americans.

* Afro Americans (13% of he US population) are consistently documented by the U.S. government to use drugs at similar rates to people of other races and are even less likely to sell drugs than white Americans (kindly google it), but Afro Americans comprise 30% of those arrested for drug law violations.

* Afro Americans (13% of he US population) represent more than 40% of those incarcerated in state or federal prison for drug law violations.

* Afro-Americans (13% of he US population) comprise 53% of nationwide drug convictions.

* Afro-Americans (13% of he US population) comprise 67 percent of all people imprisoned for drug offenses.

* Prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue a mandatory minimum sentence for blacks as for whites charged with the same offense.

* One out of three young African American (ages 18 to 35) men are in prison or on some form of supervised release.

* There are more African American men in prison than in college. That's a four times higher percentage of Black men in prison than South Africa at the height of apartheid. 

Try again!

This was a very good attempt to deal w/ the racism of the police. You pointed out correctly that to many African Americans live in neighborhoods of poverty and their economic opportunities are slim. Yet if you want to change police behavior my making the neighborhood more prosperous what policies are you ready to recommend?
For this reason despite your attempt it falls shorts for it does not provide policies to end institutional racism that has kneecapped the AfricanAmerican community. for those who don't understand institutional racism look into redlining and how it effected AfricanAmericna neighborhoods or any neighborhood where AfricanAmericans lived no matter how few.

Thank you for your careful study of the statistics. Too often numbers are cherry picked.
I have spent many hours studying the FBI statistics. They are a valuable resource.
However you stopped in your analysis just a bit too soon.
---“Living in a high-poverty neighborhood increases risk of violent-crime involvement, and in the most poor neighborhoods of the country fully four out of five residents are black or Hispanic.”---
How do crime rates in high-poverty, predominantly white neighborhoods compare to crime rates of the neighborhoods mentioned above?
(hint: heavily white Appalachian counties are among the very poorest in the nation and have well-below average violent crime rates. Look for crime in areas of URBAN poverty.)
The sad reality today is that the murder and violent crime rates among blacks are around 7 times higher than the national average. In short, when an officer is face to face with a black individual, that person is 7 times more likely to have been the perpetrator of a violent crime.

Insightful analysis. It makes sense that the police, like all of us, are moved by larger currents in our society. I suspect we are in the middle of a new consciousness-raising regarding race, and that most Americans WILL finally wake up to the unjust reality of "living while black" in America. Too bad so many young black people have to die for this to happen.

A thoughtful article. I have always believed that the disproportionate killing of blacks by police in this country has less to do with race and more with poor training and recruitment practices of police officers. Most police officers do their job well in America otherwise we would have thousands more of these incidents than we do. But too many serving officers in our decentralized law enforcement environment should never have been recruited by virtue of their ill-suited temperament. We need officers with both courage and restraint. Too often these incidents have exposed a lack of both of these essential qualities.

In addition, the bar for using lethal force is way too low. It needs to be changed from a mere perception of a threat on the part of the officer to whether a reasonable person would believe there was a genuine threat.

But one critical reason US police officers perform so poorly in comparison to their peers in other advanced countries in the number of citizens they kill annually surely rests in the threat posed by an armed citizenry and criminal class. That makes their job far more difficult - and potentially lethal.

Public education is free in this country. School quality may not be equal but graduating from high school; any high school creates more legitimate job options than dropping out or choosing illegal activities.

Bingo. The problem of police shootings of Blacks is only the tip of the iceberg.

The problems of race in this country began with the taking of land from the indigenous inhabitants and the slave trade that began soon after, but were not "solved" by the election of a Black president, were not solved by the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act, were not solved by the passage of the 13th amendment ending slavery.

The problems of race are deeply ingrained in the very structure of our society. They are reflected in the persistent poverty of Black communities which is as much an inherited disadvantage as wealth is an inherited advantage. They are reflected in media that establish racial silos in which that define the appropriate lifestyles and attitudes of members of different racial groups. And they are reflected, as this essay clearly demonstrates, in the criminal justice system.

Addressing these problems is a formidable challenge. The first requirement is acknowledging them. But based on the response to the Ferguson report, which represented a first attempt to outline the nature of the problem, there is little will in this country to do that.