Police shootings of black men have been in the news lately, in case you haven't noticed. The shooting deaths of Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile have given Black Lives Matter protestors more reason to rally. There was also the shooting deaths of five police officers at the hands of Micah Xavier Johnson, who said that he wanted to kill white people, especially white cops. I have seen numerous people picking out instances of a black man being killed by cops, and a white man not being killed for somewhat similar behavior. Even though most of these that I saw were bad equivalents, that is not the point. The point I wanted to make was to focus on the totality of police shootings to see if there is a pattern which shows police racism against blacks. The total numbers give us a better picture than some facebook post, or some video compilation.
On the FBI's page when looking for statistics on race and crime the latest stats I could find were from 2013. I did find Washington Post's data on police shooting deaths by race in the time they have been counting it, but that data is about what happened in 2015. I wanted to get an idea of what went on recently, so I can assume that the race and crime ratios from 2013 are similar to what they were in 2015. According to the Washington Post's 2015 statistics there was 990 fatal police shootings in 2015. In most of them the person killed had a weapon. 494 whites were shot dead by police, while 258 blacks were. That's a ratio of 1.91/1. There are far fewer black people than white people in the country, and many adjust for population to try and prove that pattern of racial bias by police. The problem with that is that those that commit crime are most likely to encounter police. I wanted to look at crime, and especially violent crime. Going back to the 2013 there were 2.44 times more whites arrested in than blacks. Using data estimates for population based on the 2015 census, that
would mean that blacks are 2.38 times more likely to be arrested than whites. Now I am using 2013 crime statistics, and 2015 population statistics, but the ratio should be similar if I had 2015 crime statistics. It is important to look at violent crime. I'll just guess that a person arrested for murder or robbery, is more likely to get into a confrontation with police than one arrested by embezzlement.
In terms of violent crime that white/black ratio drops to 1.51/1. That is a ratio lower than the police shooting death ratio. If we just adjust for violent crime whites are more likely to be shot dead in a confrontation with police. Factoring in other crime doesn't give a clear picture. Adjusting for the 2015 population again, blacks are 3.84 times more likely to be arrested for violent crime than whites, and 6.68 times more likely to be arrested for murder and non negligent manslaughter.
My data isn't quite good enough to either show a correlation, or disprove one, since I am using 2013 crime data, and 2015 population data. I also cannot adjust for the types of crime, at least not in the way I want to. There is also the fact that the Washington Post article falsely list Hispanic as a race. There was a study done at Harvard that I just found out about today. According to the study data police are bias to blacks in terms of use of force, but not in terms of shooting. The fact that police are more likely to use force against blacks they encounter can be explained by that fact that blacks are more anti police, but what about the other finding. The study doesn't show bias against blacks by police in terms of shootings. The study adjust for how, when and where they encounter police, it least it does for use or force, and most likely for shootings as well. This goes along with other data I've found on fatal police shootings, and police killings. When you get past pointing out an example here or there, we don't have strong evidence of racial bias against blacks by police when comes to police killing.
The Blacks Lives Matter movement arose behind a false story. The false 'Hands up don't shoot' Michael Brown narrative that has been proven wrong by the evidence. It also is motivated by an inaccurate narrative of police targeting black men. BLM is like a religion though, so I don't expect something as awful as the facts to get in the way of their movement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/
http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43
Harvard Study
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bias-found-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings/ar-BBubfce?li=BBnb7Kz
No comments:
Post a Comment