What These Findings Do Not Show
Our analyses test for racial disparities in FOIS, which should not be conflated with racial bias . Racial disparities are a necessary but not sufficient, requirement for the existence of racial biases, as there are many reasons why fatal shootings might vary across racial groups that are unrelated to bias on the behalf of police officers.
For example, we found that a person fatally shot by police was much more likely to be White when they were suicidal. This does not mean that there are department policies or officer biases that encourage fatal shootings of suicidal White civilians. A more plausible explanation is that White civilians are more likely to attempt suicide by cop than minorities . Similarly, Black and Hispanic officers were more likely to fatally shoot Black and Hispanic civilians. This does not mean that there are department policies encouraging non-White officers to fatally shoot minorities. Rather, the link between officer race and FOIS appears to be explained by officers and civilians being drawn from the same population, making it more likely that an officer will be exposed to a same-race civilian.
March : Breonna Taylor
Former police officer Derek Chauvin – who had knelt on Mr Floyd – was convicted on charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter after a three-week trial.
Three other officers who were involved in the incident will be tried later this year accused of aiding and abetting Mr Chauvin.
The Claim: Us Police Killed Eight Unarmed Black Men In 2019
In response to the nationwide Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd, Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of the conservative group Turning Point USA, posted a statement on Facebook.
Kirk claimed in a during the Blackout Tuesday campaign that, according to the Washington Posts database of police shootings, police killed eight unarmed Black men in 2019. Other Facebook pages have reposted the video, adding to its viewership.
Kirk uses this figure while arguing that systemic racism does not exist within law enforcement. He did not mention in the video that Black Americans make up 13% of the population but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans, as the Post reported. He also did not mention, as explained by Naomi Zack in her book on racial profiling and police homicide that “when 4.4 million random stop and frisks were conducted in New York City, during the period from 2004 2012, even though Blacks were disproportionately singled out, the incidence of further police action was less for Blacks than for whites.”
Kirk’s claim that police killed eight unarmed Black men in 2019 is incorrect for several reasons.
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Already A Particularly Deadly Year For People Killed In Police Encounters Cbc Research Shows
CBCâs Deadly Force database looks at role of race, mental health in deaths
Inayat SinghCBC News ⢠July 23, 2020
It has already been a particularly deadly year in terms of people killed in encounters with police in Canada â and Black and Indigenous people continue to be over-represented among the fatalities.
There were 30 people killed after police used force in Canada in the first half of 2020, which is the full-year average for such deaths over the past 10 years . This is according to the Deadly Force database, updated and maintained by the CBCâs own researchers.
The database shows Black and Indigenous people are disproportionately represented amongst the victims compared to their share of the overall population.
The data also finds most of those killed in police encounters suffer from mental illness or substance abuse.
There is no government database listing deaths at the hands of the police available to the public in Canada, so CBC News created its own. The CBCâs research librarians have collected detailed information on each case, such as ethnicity, the role of mental illness or substance abuse, the type of weapon used and the police service involved, to create a picture of who is dying in police encounters.
The database focuses onfatal encounters where police used force. It does not include in-custody deaths, self-inflicted wounds as a result of suicide or attempts to evade police, or accidental police-caused deaths .
The Air We Breathe: Implicit Bias And Police Shootings
Nathaniel Pickett Sr., 65, said that Nate was the only child he had with Dominic Archibald, a two-time combat veteran and retired Army colonel. After their divorce in 1990 when Nate was not quite 5, the boy went to live with his mom. He became a Boy Scout and fancied Frank Sinatra music, art and sports except football because he didn’t like getting dirty. Archibald eventually enrolled him at the Fork Union Military Academy, an all-boys college preparatory boarding school in Virginia. She agreed to let him transfer in his senior year to Woodrow Wilson High School, a public school in Washington, D.C.
“We just wanted him to be happy,” Pickett said.
Less than three years after Pickett’s death, Woods was involved in a second on-duty shooting of another unarmed man.
Woods was not wearing a body camera. Martinez did not respond to a request through his mother for an interview.
“He was shot 3” times, his mother, Kathy Searcy, said in a Facebook message to NPR that included photos of his bullet wounds. “Plus, he was being tased at the same time.”
Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County district attorney at the time of both shootings, declined to charge Woods, saying the deputy was justified in shooting both men. He said in a recent phone interview with NPR that he doesn’t remember the cases but said he always adhered to the law when deciding whether to charge an officer with killing someone.
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Woods, 28, could not be reached for comment.
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Eliminating Preventable Deaths Due To The Use Of Lethal Force
The need for effective strategies to reduce preventable legal intervention fatalities has resulted in numerous recommendations from policing organizations, policy-makers, federal and state agencies, researchers, and concerned communities. One recommendation has been to increase training in tactical disengagement and conflict de-escalation., Recent reports have called for restructuring police culture around the core principle of sanctity of all human life, emphasizing the need to slow the situation down or tactically disengage as an alternative to the current model of never back down, move in and take charge., Several police departments around the U.S. are currently implementing training in tactical disengagement, de-escalation, and preservation of life, some modeled on programs in other countries like the United Kingdom, that have successfully reduced their use of force., Related approaches may include changes to training or policy on use of less than lethal force technologies, such as chemical sprays or conducted energy devices, to control or incapacitate combative individuals, with some evidence suggesting decreased officer and civilian injuries associated with agency adoption of these tools., Further research is needed to assess the effectiveness of these approaches in reducing both civilian and LE injuries.
More Than 250 Black People Were Killed By Police In 2016
U.S. police killed at least 258 black people in 2016, according to a project by The Guardian that tracks police killings in America.
Thirty-nine of these people were unarmed. Four were killed by police stun guns and another nine died in custody, a continuing problem in American jails. But the majority of black people killed by police were fatally shot.
Based on a tracker from The Washington Post, at least 232 black folks were shot and killed.
The Post found that 34 percent of the unarmed people killed in 2016 were black males, which is quite disproportionate since black men make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population. There was also a considerable uptick in deaths caught on camera via cellphone and police cameras.
Take the case of Keith Lamont Scott, who was shot and killed by an officer in Charlotte, North Carolina, in September. Scott was the 173rd black person to be fatally shot by police in 2016, based on The Washington Post tally.
Police were searching for another man when they came across Scott, who they claim was armed. Charlotte police Chief Kerr Putney said in a news conference on Tuesday that officers told Scott to drop his weapon, but that Scott got back into his car and came out again still holding the gun.
A woman who identified herself as Scotts daughter recorded the shootings aftermath on Live. Scott, according to her and other witnesses, did not have a gun and was disabled. Scotts killing has touched off violent protests in Charlotte.
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In One Year 57375 Years Of Life Were Lost To Police Violence
A new study finds that police killings exact a toll greater than accidental gun deaths.
People killed by police in 2015 and 2016 had a median age of 35, and they still had an average of about 50 years left to live when they died. Its this metricthe gap between how long someone lives and how long they were expected to livethats the focus of a new study by Anthony Bui, Matthew Coates, and Ellicott Matthay in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
To find the true toll of police violence, the authors focused on years of life lost. They used data from The Counted, a Guardian database of people killed by police, to find the races and ages of everyone who died at the hands of police in the United States, then compared them to the average life expectancy for those groups.
Of the 1,146 and 1,092 victims of police violence in 2015 and 2016, respectively, the authors found that 52 percent were white, 26 percent were black, and 17 percent were Hispanic. Together, these individuals lost 57,375 years to police violence in 2015 and 54,754 to police violence in 2016. Young people and people of color were disproportionately affected: 52 percent of all the years of life lost belonged to nonwhite, non-Hispanic ethnic groups. Whites also tended to be killed by police at older ages than African Americans and Hispanicsthough this is partly because, in the general population, whites are older on average than the other groups.
The Role Of Mental Illness And Suicide In Deaths Due To The Use Of Lethal Force
Agencies of LE frequently serve as first-line responders to mental health emergencies, including crises involving violence., Officers in a study of three U.S. cities reported responding to an average of 6.4 calls/month involving mental health crises. About 20% of people hospitalized for severe mental illness, in another study, had been arrested or picked up by police for a suspected crime in the prior 4-month period. Indeed, two decades of research have documented high rates of LE contact, arrest, and incarceration rates for individuals with mental illness. Officers often report feeling inadequately trained to assess and respond effectively as gatekeepers for both the criminal justice and mental health systems, and community leaders have raised concerns for many years about the safety of citizens with mental health crises who often encounter, and rely on, LE.,,,
Related incidents in which the victim engaged in life-threatening or criminal behavior to provoke the use of lethal force by policewidely referred to as suicide by cophave also been recognized by LE and criminal justice researchers for several decades as a unique challenge. In the current study, 17.9% of fatalities due to the use of force were identified as potential suicide by cop incidents, a number within range of prior estimates.,
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Fatal Police Shootings Of Unarmed Black People In Us More Than 3 Times As High As In Whites
Overall fatal shooting rate not budged in 5 years public health emergency say researchers
The rate of fatal police shootings of unarmed Black people in the US is more than 3 times as high as it is among White people, finds research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
And the total numbers of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour killed in police shootings hasnt budged over the past 5 years, prompting the researchers to describe the figures as a public health emergency.”
Deaths caused by police violence in the US are disproportionately high among BIPOC, but its not clear if the rate of these deaths might have changed over time.
The researchers therefore looked at trends in fatal police shootings, overall, and according to whether the victim was armed, to quantify years of life lost across racial/ethnic groups between 2015 and 2020.
They drew on publicly available data compiled by The Washington Post on every person killed by on-duty police officers in the US during this period.
The data, which were sourced from local news reports, independent databases, and additional reporting at the paper, include details of the race, age and sex of the victims, as well any item in their possession perceived to be a weapon.
Estimates of years of life lost were based on national historical life expectancy data for US citizens in the victims birth year compared with their actual age at death.
March 201: Stephon Clark
Stephon Clark died after being shot at least seven times in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento, California, by police who were investigating a nearby break-in.
Only a mobile phone was found at the scene, and Mr Clark was unarmed.
The release of a police video of the incident sparked major protests in the city.
In March 2019, the authorities announced that the two officers involved would not face criminal prosecution as the officers had feared for their lives, believing Mr Clark had a gun.
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William Wade Burgess Iii
St. Louis, Missouri
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 27-year-old William Wade Burgess III was killed by an off-duty St. Louis sheriff’s deputy. Burgess had allegedly stolen a pickup truck and tried to run over the truck’s owner and a young boy.
Burgess crashed the truck and the deputy chased and eventually shot him in the chest, the Post-Dispatch reported. Burgess, who was not armed when he was shot, died at the hospital.
Burgess’ mother said he had been in a mental health facility months prior and that, at the time of the incident, he was battling heroin addiction and paranoia.
The Number Of People Killed By Police Dropped Slightly In 2016
This year the number of people killed by police stands at 957, down slightly from 991 in 2015, according to the Washington Post. While white men accounted for the most deaths by police, black men were three times more likely to be killed when population rates were factored in. Washington Post Reporter Kimbriell Kelly, one of the authors of the year-end report, joins Alison Stewart to discuss.
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Young Black Men Again Faced Highest Rate Of Us Police Killings In 2016
The Counted project points to continuing racial disparities, with black males aged 15-34 nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed
Young black men were again killed by police at a sharply higher rate than other Americans in 2016, intensifying concerns over the expected abandonment of criminal justice reform by Donald Trumps incoming administration.
Black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers last year, according to data collected for The Counted, an effort by the Guardian to record every such death. They were also killed at four times the rate of young white men.
Racial disparities persisted in 2016 even as the total number of deaths caused by police fell slightly. In all, 1,091 deaths were recorded for 2016, compared with 1,146 logged in 2015. Several 2015 deaths only came to light last year, suggesting the 2016 number may yet rise.
The total is again more than twice the FBIs annual number of justifiable homicides by police, counted in recent years under a voluntary system allowing police to opt out of submitting details of fatal incidents. Plans to improve the government records have been thrown into doubt by the election of Trump, who campaigned as a law and order conservative.
Police Killing Of Blacks: Do Black Lives Matter
Data collected by the Washington Post on the use of lethal force by police officers since 2015 indicate that, relative to the proportion of the population, Blacks are over-represented among all those killed by police. As is evident in the figure below, according to the US Census estimates, Blacks made up 12% of the population. However, from 2015 2019 they accounted for 26.4% of those that were killed by police under all circumstances. In other words, Blacks were the victims of the lethal use of force by police at nearly twice their rate in the general population. Whites make up the majority of victims of police use of lethal force from 2015 2019, BUT they also currently make up the majority of the population . Asians make up about 5% of the US population but just 2% of the victims of the lethal use of force by police. Hispanics make up 18% of the US population and just over 18% of the victims of the use of lethal force by police. Native Americans make up 1% of the US population and 1.7% of the victims of the use of lethal force by police.
Is that the right comparison? Shouldnt we compare the percent of those killed by police to the percent of interactions with the police? Even more precise, shouldnt we compare the percent of those killed by police to those encounters that were actually life-threatening to either the police officers or other people? There are several problems with such comparisons.
Mapping Police Violence puts it this way :
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