Police officers are more likely to ...
with blacks than with whites
in similar situations
use hands 2,165for every 10,000 stops
in New York City 1,845for every 10,000 stops
in New York City 17% more likely
push into wall 623 529 18%
use handcuffs* 310 266 16%
draw weapons 155 129 19%
push to ground 136 114 18%
point weapon 54 43 24%
use pepper spray or baton 5 4 25%
* Handcuffs exclude arrests. Counts represent at least that level of force, based on stop-and-frisk data from 2003 to 2013. Similar situations account for gender, age, police precinct, the reason for the stop, whether the stop was indoors or outdoors, the time of day, whether the stop took place in a high-crime area or during a high-crime time, whether the officer was in uniform, the type of identification provided, and whether others were stopped at the same time.
A
new study confirms that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police.
But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias.
“It is the most surprising result of my career,” said
Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study and a professor of economics at Harvard. The study examined more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major police departments, in Texas, Florida and California.
The result contradicts the mental image of police shootings that many Americans hold in the wake of the
killings (some captured on video) of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Laquan McDonald in Chicago; Tamir Rice in Cleveland; Walter Scott in South Carolina; Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati; Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.; and Philando Castile in Minnesota.
The study did not say whether the most egregious examples — the kind of killings at the heart of the nation’s debate on police shootings — are free of racial bias. Instead, it examined a much larger pool of shootings, including nonfatal ones. It focused on what happens when police encounters occur, not how often they happen. (There’s a disproportionate number of tense interactions among blacks and the police when shootings could occur, and thus a disproportionate outcome for blacks.) Racial differences in how often police-civilian interactions occur have been shown to reflect
greater structural problems in society.
Official statistics on police shootings are poor. James Comey, the F.B.I. director, has called the lack of data “
embarrassing and ridiculous.” Even when data exists, the conditions under which officers decide to fire their weapons are deeply nuanced and complex.
Mr. Fryer is the youngest African-American to receive tenure at Harvard and the first one to receive a
John Bates Clark medal, a prize given to the most promising American economist under 40. He is not afraid of controversial questions. In previous work, he has
paid students to read books; considered the possibility of
genetic differences in intelligence; and shown that high-achieving black and Hispanic students have
fewer friends.
Photo
Roland G. Fryer Jr., a professor of economics at Harvard. CreditErik Jacobs for The New York Times
Mr. Fryer said his anger after the deaths of Michael Brown and
Freddie Gray and others drove him to study the issue. “You know, protesting is not my thing,” he said. “But data is my thing. So I decided that I was going to collect a bunch of data and try to understand what really is going on when it comes to racial differences in police use of force.”
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Victor
4 minutes ago
All of these departs from racial profile, stop and frisk and brown people tax that is the rule and general accepted in this country even for...
Mark Kessinger
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The study assumes that the "police narratives," the coding of which forms the basis for the study, are themselves perfectly objective,...
EBurgett
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I lived in the US for many years and was never stopped by police, because I am a white and well-dressed man. Yet, the few black colleagues I...
He and a group of student researchers spent about 3,000 hours assembling detailed data from police reports in Houston; Austin, Tex.; Dallas; Los Angeles; Orlando, Fla.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and four other counties in Florida.
They examined 1,332 shootings between 2000 and 2015, systematically coding police narratives to answer questions such as: How old was the suspect? How many police officers were at the scene? Were they mostly white? Was the officer at the scene for a robbery, violent activity, a traffic stop or something else? Was it nighttime? Did the officer shoot after being attacked or before a possible attack? One goal was to figure out whether police officers were quicker to fire at black suspects.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html
