The fundamental assumption underlying
the protests and riots that followed the death of George Floyd is that racism
in police departments across the US is responsible for the fact that a disproportionate
number of Black males are shot by the police.
I say “death” and not “murder” not because I have any doubts about the
facts because I suspect that the constant use of the latter term, especially by
such persons as the
Minneapolis chief of police, may make it harder for a court to do justice
in this case.
My purpose here is to question
that assumption. About twice as many White
persons are shot and killed by police officers as Black persons, according
to the Washington Post database.
That is obviously not a very useful statistic. Non-Hispanic Whites make up about 76% of the
US population; Blacks make up a little over 13%. The WaPo helpfully explains that Black
Americans “are killed by police at more
than twice the rate of white Americans”.
A
very good and recent summary of the statistics for fatal officer-involved
shootings (FOIS) can be found in “Risk
of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age,
race–ethnicity, and sex.” The
authors do not address causation but confine their study to outcomes. Here is a fascinating chart of FOIS restricted
to males.
The
chart measures deaths by police per 100,000, controlling for population share,
and tracks the numbers by age. Unsurprisingly,
the fatality rate rises dramatically at the teen years and drops steadily after
30 for all the age groups. The most
important fact is that the hump for Black males is much steeper than for any
other defined group, and much lower than for White males.
Does
this chart point to a racial bias in FOIS nationally? There is one anomaly that doesn’t support
that explanation. Asian Americans are proportionately
less likely than Whites to be killed by police.
If the difference between the White and Black curves is evidence of
racial bias against the latter, wouldn’t the low incidence for Asian Americans
be evidence for a pro-Asian bias on the part of police forces across the
country? That hardly seems plausible.
A
more significant problem is that the racial bias explanation relies on a
generally silent and implausible assumption: that, in the absence of racial
bias, the FOIS stats for each demographic group would be perfectly proportional
to its share of the total population. That,
in turn, assumes that all the demographic groups are exactly the same for all
relevant characteristics. That is also
implausible.
Another
chart leads us in the right direction.
This
is about as robust a difference as one ever sees in social science. Males are far more likely than females to be
killed by police for all groups measured here.
This not, let me go out on a limb, gender bias on the part of the
police. It is a consequence of the fact
that men are more likely than women to commit the violent crimes that might
bring them into contact with the police and far more likely to escalate once
they are exposed to the police. Here is
a bit from the Bureau
of Justice Statistics (2011) tracking stats between 1980 and 2008.
Males represented 77% of
homicide victims and nearly 90% of off enders. Th e victimization rate for
males (11.6 per 100,000) was 3 times higher than the rate for females (3.4 per
100,000). The offending rate for males (15.1 per 100,000) was almost 9 times
higher than the rate for females (1.7 per 100,000).
Is
there a connection for the Black/White differential FOIS rates and a difference
in rates of violent crime? Again from
the BJS:
Blacks were disproportionately
represented as both homicide victims and offenders. The victimization rate for
blacks (27.8 per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per
100,000). The offending rate for blacks (34.4 per 100,000) was almost 8 times
higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000).
Two
recent papers examine the relationship between police shootings and criminal activity
among Blacks and Whites: here
and here. Here is a bit from one of them:
We first reproduce the
well-known finding that Blacks are more likely to be fatally shot than Whites given
population proportions… the odds were 2.5 times higher for Blacks to be killed
by police compared to Whites given their population proportions.
However:
When fatal shooting data are
benchmarked against the number of murder/nonnegligent manslaughter reports and arrests,
the odds ratio obtained when benchmarking against population proportions flips
completely. The odds were 2.7 times
higher for Whites to be killed by police gunfire relative to Blacks given each
group’s SRS homicide reports, 2.6 times higher for Whites given each group’s
SRS homicide arrests, 2.9 times higher for Whites given each group’s NIBRS
homicide reports, 3.9 times higher for Whites given each group’s NIBRS homicide
arrests, and 2.5 times higher for Whites given each group’s CDC death by
assault data.
In
other words, given rates of homicide reports and arrests, across three
databases, Whites were more likely to be shot by police than Blacks.
The
fundamental assumption underlying the current wave of civil unrest is false. This might be an important fact. One would hope that a responsible press would
report it. One should not expect that it
will be mentioned by any major news outlet.
