Mother Jones: New Study Suggests Police Shoot Whites More Frequently Than Blacks

[Algernon Moncrieff]

LINK

In a new paper using an interesting approach, Roland Fryer finds that police officers treat blacks and Hispanics more roughly than whites, but they don't shoot them any more frequently:

The results obtained using these data are informative and, in some cases, startling. Using data on NYC's Stop and Frisk program, we demonstrate that on non-lethal uses of force—putting hands on civilians (which includes slapping or grabbing) or pushing individuals into a wall or onto the ground, there are large racial differences. In the raw data, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to have an interaction with police which involves any use of force.

In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, we find no racial differences in officer-involved shootings on either the extensive or intensive margins. Using data from Houston, Texas—where we have both officer-involved shootings and a randomly chosen set of potential interactions with police where lethal force may have been justified—we find, in the raw data, that blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites. Hispanics are 8.5 percent less likely.

Analyzing data from cities in California, Texas, and Florida, Fryer found that lethal force was used more often against whites than blacks.

[brush]

2. Get a clue. What bs. Think porportionally. Shootings of black people are a much higher percentage

of the population.

Black people make up 13% of the population but some 30-40% of the killing by police.

Pls stop with the misleading posts.

[Mass]

3. The study is problematic because of the sample

Note for example that they talk about data about Stop and Frisk, and also, in Houston, "potential interactions with police where lethal force may have been justified".

Certainly very objective data!

[uponit7771]

4. ANOTHER FAUX news meme repeated on DU without context. PROPORTIONALITY !!!! My goodness and

... blacks don't make up the plurality or majority of arrest either.

WOW people, can we stop this bullshit?!!?

[Algernon Moncrieff]

14. A FAUX news meme from Mother Jones?

[SkeleTim1968]

5. I had read that it was native Americans who were killed at the highest rate.

Police are Killing Native Americans at Higher Rate than Any Race, and Nobody is Talking About It

Americans are up in arms right now over the near epidemic number of deaths of African-American at the hands of police, and rightfully so. African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the population, yet they are the victims in 26 percent of all police shootings. That is nearly 3 times the rate of whites.

The outrage by the #Black Lives Matter movement is founded in statistical evidence which shows that the system inherently and with extreme bias disproportionately targets blacks.

That being said, there is one group who no one is talking about that is targeted more than everyone else. The racial group most likely to be killed by law enforcement is Native Americans. While Native Americans only make up 0.8 percent of the population, they make up 1.9 percent of all police killings.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-killing-native-americans-higher-rate-race-talking/


It is starting to seem futile to focus on one group or another because people like Giuliani or the news media want to use that as a way to divide people by asserting such nonsense that if only blacks are complaining it must be only a black problem , so fix yourselves and your manners.

Maybe we should all turn our attentions to getting together and fighting police brutality period.

I've seen videos of all races, of all ages, being treated like criminals by police without reason. I've seen suffering from all sorts of people whom have gotten no answers from police or justice from our courts. In fact the only people who seem to get away with all sorts of illegal actions are the police themselves or wealthy people.

How do we come together and in order to combat such a large problem?

[Algernon Moncrieff]

15. I've read much the same thing about Native Americans

Native Americans Get Shot By Cops at an Astonishing Rate

Castaway was a Lakota Sioux. His death brings up a rarely-discussed aspect of the ongoing conversation around police brutality in the United States: Native Americans are more likely than most other racial groups to be killed by police. Indian Country Today noted that according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonprofit organization that studies incarceration and criminal justice issues, police kill Native Americans at a higher rate than any other ethnic group.

The center's analysis relied on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics. It found that Native Americans, making up just .8 percent of the population, are the victims in 1.9 percent of police killings. When the numbers are broken down further, they reveal that Native Americans make up *three of the top five top age-groups killed by law enforcement:

"This is a reflection of an endemic problem in the perception of non-white people when it comes to the administration of justice," Chase Iron Eyes, an attorney with the Lakota People's Law Project in South Dakota, told Mother Jones. The group put out a report called "Native Lives Matter" in February discussing various ways the justice system disproportionately impacts Native Americans. He said the US Department of Justice needs to address police violence against Native Americans and that Castaway's death is only the most recent example of the problem.

"You can tell they're shooting out of fear," he said. "If it's not out of hate, for some reason they're pulling the trigger before determining what the situation actually is. Something does need to happen. Somebody does need to take a look and we need help."

...and yes, I realize the stats in this MJ article contradict the stats from the MJ article in the OP. I don't write the news, I simply report it.

[merrily]

6. Figures lie and liars figure.

[tonyt53]

7. Don't know the credibility of this study/chart, but poor people, regardless of color, are shot more.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

16. See Post 15, my reply to Post 5

[Humanist_Activist]

8. Is this is raw numbers or controlled for proportionality? I mean...

if police have "run ins" with whites and blacks equally, even though blacks represent 10-12% of the population, then they are profiling. The fact that legality of said encounters is either on par or slightly lower for blacks versus whites isn't reassuring when they are already singled out by law enforcement at a much greater rate to begin with.

[Rex]

9. Of course they do, statistically there are more of us.

WE make up the majority (64%) of citizens in this country. Black folks make up 14% of this country. Do the math.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

17. See Post 15, my reply to Post 5

[Mass]

10. Here is another set of data showing the opposite... Good work by Vox showing the limitations of this

study

https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bGgDW9X-q4Ui9eRlV7tk4yFKk74=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3591318/police_shooting_by_race.0.png

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/11/12149468/racism-police-shootings-data

More here about why the study is problematic

In other words, Fryer and company found that there weren’t big racial disparities in how often black and white suspects who’d already been stopped by police were killed. But they deliberately avoided the question of whether black citizens are more likely to be stopped to begin with (they are) and whether

they’re more likely to be stopped without cause (yup).

[Algernon Moncrieff]

20. See Post 15, my reply to Post 5

[Mass]

22. Yes, but too many people do not get statistics, so it is easy to make them say something they do not

say.

% of people in the general population who are killed by cops (for whatever reason) is DIFFERENT from % of people arrested by the police and killed by cops.

Both stats represent something, but something very different. Hence the importance to explain, something media do very poorly (whether because they like to write articles people will speak about or because they are just ignorant when it comes to stats -- Both probably). This is not specific to this article. Most medicine article have similar problems.

[REP]

11. This is one of those "didn't read the article" responses

I'd guess the whites that were shot were more likely to be
• "blue suicides" (engaging in behavior to provoke being shot by police)
• active shooters/endangering others
• mentally ill people whose families had called police for assistance with during an episode of disturbed behavior

And less likely to be shot for driving with expired plates.

Except for shooting the unarmed mentally ill - which seems to happen with alarming frequency to victims of all races and genders - there usually seems to be more compelling reasons for use of force when white victims are shot by police (usually; not always). By "more compelling," I don't mean "justified and there was no other solution," just that the person shot was armed.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. General NYC Stop and Frisk data (2015)

<...>

The NYPD data, which is routinely reported to the City Council, has shown that the percentage of blacks and Hispanics subjected to stop-and-frisk encounters has declined slightly, [font color="red"]but last quarter amounted to 81.5 percent: 51.7 percent of stops were blacks and 29.7 percent were Hispanics. The percentage of whites stopped was 12.1 percent[/font], Asians 4.4 percent with other ethnic groups making up the remainder.

In the first quarter of 2014, blacks were subjected to 54 percent of the stops, Hispanics 29 percent, whites 12 percent and Asians 5 percent, police statistics show.

Bratton and other police officials have maintained that police are conducting stops in line with reports of the ethnicity of crime suspects coming from largely minority neighborhoods. But some advocates, while applauding the drop in stops, said the continuing high percentage of minorities stopped reflects a skewing of policing toward quality-of-life enforcement such as public urination and littering.

<...>

http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/nypd-stop-and-frisk-encounters-down-50-but-minorities-still-stopped-more-stats-show-1.10685785

And the above was only after their new Police Commissioner had come in to put a halt to much of it as this is what they found -

The controversy over the stop-and-frisks, which resulted in federal litigation and the appointment of a special monitor, focused largely on the fact that the number of black and Hispanics stopped was 87 percent in some years.

When someone is profiled, targeted, stalked, stopped, frisked, and harassed over and over and over, what the hell do you think they might feel like after the 5th time or the 10th time or the 25th time?

Of course the OP's article from Mother Jones is citing the same faulty data cited in another OP (using the NY Times) on this forum that has been responded to. The study apparently doesn't mention that California has a black populatin of 6.4%, Texas 11.8% and Florida of 17%. See this - http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=8001555

[Algernon Moncrieff]

18. See Post 15, my reply to Post 5

[BumRushDaShow]

21. Yet with some of these types of reports

you will also see the "dueling" stats about who has the highest rate of deaths from various diseases -

Blacks
Native Americans

So it behooves to look at sample sizes, proportionality, and other factors (peer review, etc) that seem to continue to affect whether any of these studies can be or are validated.

[GeorgeGist]

13. Prof. Fryer needs to stick to economics ...

or does he cherry pick his data there also?

[Algernon Moncrieff]

19. To a degree I think everyone cherry-picks data

Some of it is how-to-lie-with-statistics. Some of it is simply how anyone (an analyst, a professor, a writer, etc.) choose to prioritize data. It would be like sportswriters writing about baseball hitters: some put emphasis on batting average; some on overall on base percentage; some on slugging percentage; some on hitting with runners in scoring position.

[raging moderate]

23. Movies. These cops are subconsciously triggered by racist movies.

They have no ability for self-examination. They just react without thinking. They have a family tradition of exciting action movies which glorify their white ancestors' struggle for dominance. A person of color appears before them, and some insignificant detail triggers a false movie memory in the little lizard brain we all have. And then they follow the prompt from that movie. And then they get unpleasant reactions. So they feel the need to unwind with a favorite movie. It's a vicious cycle.