Harvard study: no racial differences in police shootings

[Thanks_Tom RR]

 

Here is maybe one of the best sources of evaluating the national trends of police use of force as it is reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Police Use of Nonfatal Force, 2002-2011 (which is the most recent report available). For those interested, this report concludes that (1) police-resident contact involving white residents occur significantly more often than with any other individual race (Table 1), (2) black residents experience threats or the use of force significantly more often than white residents (Table 1), and (3) every type of police-initiated contact (i.e., traffic or street stops) resulted in threats or the use of force significantly more often when it involved contact with black residents than white residents (Table 3). This shows a snapshot of how the experience of African Americans with police officers are, on average, different than the experiences of white residents.

 

I would like to highlight some points here. This report notes that threats or the use of force by police during police-resident contact occur at a rate of 1.4% (445,500 of 32,879,500) for white residents and 3.5% (159,100 of 4,597,500) for black residents. Thus, there is a low rate of encounters in which police use any form of threats or force, on average around 2-4%. Further, we are talking about a difference of 1.4% and 3.5% which mean that for ever 100 encounters between police and the public, there are about 2 more occasions where black residents experience threats or use of force by the police than white residents. Now, I would like to share a few options about these results: (1) this does not seem like much of a difference (2 more incidences involving police use of force per 100 encounters), but when you multiple it by the millions of encounters reported, the magnitude of the discrepancy because more clear, (2) the low rate of police use of force would suggest that, on average, most police restrict their use of force and only deploy such tactics as necessary, and (3) the racial bias emerges during these 2-4% of encounters suggesting that it could be the by-product of a subset of police officers (whether these offending officers are distributed equally across the nation or if the discrepancy is targeted to particular precincts or regions the data are not clear from this report).

Tom,

 

Let me share one hypothesis here. First, I am not saying there is (No Bias) just that there might be some additional reasons For the numbers you have relayed.

 

These are not the exact words used but; From the Presidents Town Hall meeting, one of the officers made reference that the inordinate number of calls made in areas that are predominantly "African American" and carry a larger % of criminal activities, is one that adds to the perception of bias. They are there to police and keep people safe but the fact remains, that they may feel more threatened knowing these facts. Not sure if the study looks at (geographic) mapping or considers that it can truely skew the numbers, if not.

 

Unfortunately, this report does not include the officer perception of a situation or geographic mapping of each incident, two things worth exploring. The officer's perception of a situation is definitely something to consider, as the safety of our law enforcement officers should be considered one of the most important aspects of police-resident contact. In kind, the safety or perceived safety of the civilians during police contact should be considered a major issue. The report does include that the perception that police threatened or used excessive force is higher in black residents (2.8%) than white residents (1.0%) (Table 4). Interestingly, however, the perception of police threats or use of force by all residents is equal to the rate of actual threats or use of force by police (white residents: Actual use: 1.4%, Perceived use: 1.4%; black residents: Actual use: 3.5%, Perceived use: 3.5%). This would suggest that in addition to a potential issue, that you acknowledged, that officers may have a greater perception of threat while in a given neighborhood or interacting with a particular population, African Americans have a heighten perception of threat to their personal safety while interacting with police compared to white citizens. This double-sided issue of "mistrust" (if that is the right term to use here, probably not nuanced enough) could compound the issue of race relations in the US.

 

One more statistic that adds to the issues of police-community relations and race relations is that threats and the use of force by police occurs twice as often when it is an interracial officer and resident interaction (2.0%) compared to an interracial officer and resident interaction (0.8%) (Table 7). This expands beyond the relations between police and the African American community and highlights a discrepancy in how members of different races in the US interact with one another.

[StPaulHusker]

Snopes had an interesting write up about this just the other day.

 

http://www.snopes.com/2016/07/15/harvard-study-officer-involved-shootings/