The Police and the Use of Deadly Force: Racial Disparity and Crime

Thoughts from the Middle

The Police and the Use of Deadly Force:  Racial Disparity and Crime

By Robert James Fischer

Reporting on the Police Use of Deadly Force

It is both interesting and disconcerting to note that even though the Federal Bureau of Investigation reports on numerous crime related issues in its National Crime Report issued each year, what is notably missing from this report is complete data on deadly force used by police officers.  A recent Time article (July 20/July27, 2020) asked the simple question; “Why don’t we know how often police kill people in America?” 

There have been three efforts to address this problem of lack of reporting.  The first was a provision in the 1994 Crime Bill signed by President Bill Clinton.  The second was an effort in 2015 by President Obama to order the FBI to collect use of force data from state and local jurisdictions.  And the third was an Executive Order signed by President Trump in 2016 which tied grant funding for various police programs to voluntary reporting.  That program finally began in January 2019.  However, despite these combined efforts, only 5,043 out of 18,514 law enforcement agencies participated. (It should be noted that although a low number of agencies responded, many are larger agencies, employing 41% of all police officers.)  In addition to the government efforts, the Washington Post began a fatal police shooting project in 2015 in an effort to determine the full extent of police involved deaths.  This is perhaps the most comprehensive data base covering fatal police shootings.

The Data

Officer Involved Homicides

The Washington Post has recorded over 5,000 fatal police shootings since initiating the project in 2015.  The project relies on media accounts of “fatal in the line of duty police involved shootings.”  There are several consistent findings.  The annual number has remained steady, around 1,000 incidents per year.  While over 45% of those shot by police are white, the data indicates that blacks are killed at a higher rate.  While blacks make up approximately 13% of the population, they are killed at over twice the rate of whites.  Of the total, 95% are males, with the majority between 20 and 40 years of age. While shootings occur across the United States, it is no surprise that they occur more frequently in larger cities.

Other notable trends:

• Police shootings of unarmed persons have declined since 2018.
• In the first two years of the study, 86 people were killed because they were using “lookalike” guns.
• Approximately 20% of the time, officers’ names are not disclosed.

Arrests for All Crimes

The FBI gets reports on all crimes from all police agencies.  Their annual publication, Crime in the United States is an excellent source for crime data.  In 2018 the FBI reported a total of 7,710,900 crimes.  Sixty nine percent were committed by whites, 27% by blacks, 2% by American Indians, and less than 1% each by Asians, Pacific Islanders and Hispanics.  According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Whites make up 76% of the population, Blacks 13%, American Indians 1.3%, Asians 5.9%, Pacific Islanders 0.2%, and Hispanics 18.5%.

Crimes and Police Shootings

When comparing crimes committed and persons killed by police officers, a logical conclusion is that the percentage of individuals killed by police officers should be similar to the percentage of those involved in criminal behavior.  Using the known statistics from the Census Bureau, the FBI, and the Washington Post, a comparison across race is possible.  The following table shows race as a percentage of the population, participation in criminal activities by race, and percent of  victims of police shootings by race.*

Race                % Population             % Criminal Involvement       % Victims of Police Shooting

White              76                                69                                            45

Hispanic          19                                  1                                            17

Black               13                                24                                            27

Asian                 6                                  1                                              1

Native Am.        1                                  2                                              1

Other                 1                                  1                                              1

*PERCENTAGES are rounded up

The Black Anomaly

While I am in total agreement with the concept “Black Lives Matter,” I do not agree with the focus being solely on police officer involved shootings and the Black community.  As a society we should also be focusing on the problem of fatal shootings of Blacks by other Blacks. For example, the homicides in Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago are predominately Black on Black.  In 2016, according to FBI statistics there were 17,250 homicides, of which 2,570 were known black on black.  

Tio Hardiman, the Executive Director of Violence Interrupters, an organization attempting to decrease violent crimes in our cities, has said “… it’s a Black man’s responsibility to reduce the gun violence in their communities.” Hardiman believes that much of what is happening in the inner cities is the result of learned behavior, passed on from generation to generation.

 Hardiman is a Black man from Chicago who believes that waiting for others to solve the violence issue is not going to solve the problem. (Louis Casiano, Stephanie Pagones, (www.foxnews.com/us/chicago-homicide-victimes-black-police-data-show, July 2020)

Thus, the police should not be singled out as the sole cause of this discrimination.  As a former Chicago police officer has said, the police do not randomly show up; they are called to, or see, crimes being committed.   As the above table indicates, a disproportionate amount of crime is attributed to Blacks.  It therefore holds that if the police are responding to those crimes, they will likely also encounter a disproportionate number of hostile reactions that could lead to the offender’s death. 

What. then, are the reasons that our Black population is overrepresented in crime statistics?

The answer to this question is not simple.  However, a quick look at poverty provides a partial explanation of this complex issue. While 7.3% of the white population live in poverty (defined as a single income of less than $11,770 or a family of four making less than $24,250), 18.5% of the Black population live in poverty, and 15.7% of Hispanics live in poverty.  The percentage among all other races is less than 10.5%, except for Native Americans who represent the highest figure—25%.

Summary

Other reasons involve social, economic, cultural and psychological factors that are complex and interactive.  But let it suffice to say that the issue of police shootings of Black people is a complex one that cannot be explained simply by racism among the law enforcement profession.  “Black Lives Matter” should focus on all cases of violent deaths in the Black population, as well as on solutions that address all socioeconomic, psychological, and cultural factors.