As mentioned earlier, I initially believed that race unquestionably plays a dynamic and decisive role in many instances of use of lethal-force. This perspective was driven by the research we most often consume. Each year, nearly 1000 people are shot and killed in the US. Considering that this number is consistent annually, at large, this indicates that police shootings that result in death are rare events.

If we look at the use of lethal-force and police shootings overall (whether they result in death or not) the reporting by law enforcement agencies is inconsistent and murky. In particular, records from government agencies including the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report and the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System often, censor important information like the names of officers involved, lack independent evaluations for the justification for the shooting, and are selectively published. Further consider that FBI data is incomplete, and may also be structurally biased by the reporting behaviors of police considering that most police agencies don’t file fatal police shootings or, do so selectively. Quite frankly this is unacceptable.

For this reason, actors such as The Washington Post and Campaign Zero filled this gap by creating their own databases to track police killings. Through an American context, your understanding about the disparities in the use of lethal-force are likely derived from these widely used and most complete databases that display the use of lethal-force against Black people. These databases paint clear pictures of the disparities in use of lethal-force against Black people, and in my opinion illustrate that race plays a critical role in the use of lethal-force. Specifically, the literature indicates that a Black American is more likely to be shot whether they are unarmed or armed. Many other studies that I’ve assessed have similar findings as they all use a similar statistical method. What is this method? Generally, these databases and studies benchmark the number of people killed from a race against their population size to reveal a disparity. Here, the existence of this disparity is used to suggest the existence of discrimination, in essence presenting the idea that disparity and discrimination are mutually constitutive concepts. At large, this method and these findings present as the industry standard and general social facts. But should they be?

The Population Benchmark Method for Police Shootings

In particular, The Washington Post found that Black Americans are killed at a much higher rate than white Americans. Using data collected beginning in 2015 up to the present, their database indicates that there are 42 million Black people in the US, but 1,466 Black people were killed during this time, translating to 35 deaths per million. The population size for white Americans is 197 million, while 2,801 of them were killed during this period, translating to 14 deaths per million. The Washington Post also reported that of 242 out of the 954 people fatally shot by police in 2015 were Black. 2/3 of Black victims at this time were unarmed, and overall, The Washington Post indicates that Black victims were killed at three times the rate of white people or other minorities when adjusting for the population of the census tracts where shootings occurred.

Similarly, the site Mapping Police Violence by Campaign Zero tracks the killings of Americans by police officers. The subtle difference in their data is that they also track deaths by chokeholds, headlocks, and beatings in addition to shootings. Similar to The Washington Post, they find that Black Americans are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people. They also found that they are 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed compared to white people, and that the police killed Black Americans at higher rates than white people in 47 of the 50 largest US cities between 2013 and 2020, notably, with Chicago police killing Black people at 22 times the rate of white people per the population from 2013-2020. Data from Cody Ross supports this finding. Ross found that the median (not the average) probability across counties of being Black, armed, and shot by police, is 2.94 times the probability of being white, armed, and shot by police. In terms of being unarmed and shot by police, the median probability across counties is 3.49 times the probability of white people.

Further consider that Jeffrey Fagan and Alexis Campbell found that Black suspects are more than twice as likely to be killed by police than persons of other racial or ethnic groups. This is the case even when there are no obvious circumstances during the encounter that would make the use of deadly force reasonable. Their data suggests that about 25 percent of police involved fatalities were Black, while over 50 percent were white.

Overall, the data using this method conclusively indicates that a greater number of white Americans are shot and killed than any other race; however, this method requires you to understand that white Americans represent over 70 percent of the US population, but represent less than 60 percent of police killings. In terms of Black Americans—who represent approximately 13 percent of the US population—the literature using this method indicates that Black Americans represent nearly 30 percent of police killings.

In saying these statistics, I’m sure the picture of what is being painted is starting to register. You’re likely asking this question: how can Black people represent 13 percent of the population yet, represent 30 percent of killings by the police? And this is a great question. But you should also ask this: because Black people represent approximately 13 percent of the population, does this mean that they should only be involved in nearly 13 percent of police killings? Further ask yourself, if violent crime is concentrated in predominantly Black neighbourhoods, wouldn’t this mean greater interactions with police and more aggressive policing? Of course, one could argue that negative perceptions of Black people play a role in the over-policing of Black communities, and I believe this is true. We could also dig deeper and ask why violent crime is concentrated in Black neighbourhoods and attribute it to a mixture of effects stemming from slavery and segregation, namely poverty, inequality, and lack of opportunity. I agree with this. But does the presence of this truth mean that predominantly Black and low-income communities won’t be more heavily and aggressively policed if it’s a hub for crime?

Consider that the Black population commits nearly 50 percent of murders and other violent crimes, primarily against other Black people. To be clear, this statistic isn’t a suggestion that Blacks are innately prone to crime. You also shouldn’t fail to remember that Black people are certainly over-policed. But what this statistic conveys is the materialization of the higher rate of offending thesis, which indicates that an array of social and historical factors has created the conditions Black people currently face, resulting in higher crime, and therefore, under our current law enforcement system—which has a ‘tough on crime’ approach—will create more aggressive interactions with police officers. In criminology it’s believed police officers are more aggressive in major crimes (murder, armed robbery) than minor crimes (i.e., speeding, littering). I consider this to be true. Being so, we must understand that disparity doesn’t necessarily mean discrimination. It certainly could be the case, and the result of this is increased and more aggressive attention these incidents (and this increased attention, not aggression, is often the desire of Black people), but overall, it conveys that context in the benchmark of population is important, and that the method may not be the best approach.

The Police Interaction Benchmark Method for Police Shootings

A study by Roland Fryer uses a different method, and his findings contradict that of the industry. Instead of benchmarking deaths against the population, Fryer uses interactions with police officers to assess whether there is racial discrimination in police shootings. In his study, Fryer found that in the most extreme uses of force—this being officer involved shootings—there were no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. In particular, he found that there are no racial differences in officer-involved shootings in terms of the timing of the shootings and how many bullets were discharged, as well as in the randomly chosen set of interactions where lethal force may have been justified. After controlling for suspect demographics, officer demographics, encounter statistics, and suspect weapon, he found that Blacks are actually 27.4 percent less likely to be shot at by police in relation to non-Blacks. In this regard, Fryer found no evidence of racial discrimination in officer-involved shootings, while further suggesting that in absolute numbers (and in terms of contribution to crime and violence) deadly use of force is used more against white people. His research further suggests that the rewards for compliant behaviour for Blacks and whites, are the same. Using this method, which I believe is more accurate, the findings are different from the industry standard method.

Non-Lethal Use of Force

The research on non-lethal use of force is far more conclusive regardless of the evaluative method used (i.e., benchmark against population or police interactions). With both methods there are significant and rather large racial disparities in non-lethal use of force. What this means is that removing the specificity of killings of Black people by police, and focusing on non-lethal force and police brutality against Black people as a whole is essential.

Non-lethal force refers to putting hands on civilians, indicative of actions such as slapping, grabbing, pushing individuals into a wall, using pepper spray, or baton. The literature finds that Black people face greater levels of non-lethal force than any other race. We see this in the work of Lorie Fridell and Hyeyoung Lim who analyzed data from 2004 to 2007 from a police department serving a large urban city in Texas. They assessed 4,105 use of force reports, and benchmarked them against the implicit-bias perspective, which claims that officer’s biases should produce a greater tendency to use force against Black subjects. Consistent with the implicit bias perspective, they found that officers use higher levels of force against Black subjects. Police were 1.49 times more likely to use non-lethal use of force against Black subjects compared to non-Black subjects. Using data from New York’s stop and frisk program, Fryer also found large racial differences in the data. In particular, on non-lethal uses-of-force, he found that Blacks are more than 50 percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. As police officers escalate the type of force they are using, for instance, moving from handcuffing civilians without arrest to drawing or pointing a weapon, or using pepper spray or a baton, the probability that any civilian is subjected to such treatment is small, but the racial difference remains constant. Most noteworthy is that 0.26 percent of interactions between police and civilians involve an officer drawing a weapon, and 0.02 percent involve using a baton, indicating these events are rare overall. Nonetheless, they are significantly rarer for white people than Black people; Black people are 21 percent more likely than whites to be involved in an interaction with police in which at least a weapon is drawn. Blacks are also approximately 1.3 percentage points more likely than whites to report any use of force in a police interaction. Do you see the issue? However, we look at it, and what ever evaluative method we use, Black people face greater levels of police brutality. Yet our focus and rage are on the most egregious levels of police use of force. Again, I understand the rationale behind our focus. It comes from a trauma induced response. But my point is we need that energy—that effort, buy-in, and commitment beyond the deaths of Black people, and more consistently.

Shifting our Focus

Though we have a tendency to lean towards the industry approach, I find Fryer’s approach interesting and useful in terms of where our attention should be. Should our focus and energy be on police killings? Consider that each year, there are about 50 to 60 million encounters between civilians and police officers, and about 10 million arrests. Put into perspective, 1000 of 10 million interactions between police and civilians ends in the death of a civilian, representing a 1/10,000 chance of dying. The conversation that has to be had about these numbers and these perspectives is the context in which these deaths occur. The data, unfortunately, fails to provide the context of these killings, limiting our ability to assess how many are justified (in terms of the context, not necessarily in terms of the law) and unjustified. Certainly, some of these cases are justified and others are unjustified; but they aren’t all unjustified, and the context of these situations varies significantly.

Officer training, the officer’s perception of what’s about to take place, and the aggression of the suspect, all differ. But in arresting 10 million people each year, shootings will continue to happen in both justified and unjustified circumstances, thus this question is important to be addressed to assess whether our solutions and approaches to address these issues are working? I also find Fryer’s approach interesting because police often tend to focus their resources and efforts on areas that have high crime rates, specifically high violent crime. Often, these geographic areas are disproportionately inhabited by non-white residents. What this means is that a major driver of racial disparities is police come into contact with a higher percentage of Black and Brown populations than they do white populations. In this case, using interactions with police officers as opposed to population representation as a benchmark appears to be more accurate and effective.

Another point of emphasis in shootings against Black people has been the race of the police officer. We often consider them racist when they shoot Black people. Again, this may be the case. However, the question of race must be addressed as evidence suggests that Black and Hispanic police officers are more likely to shoot Black and Hispanic suspects than white police officers. Here, I ask does the race of the police officer during the shooting determine whether it was an act of discrimination? Or is the perception that systemic racism is widespread and intrinsic in police agencies (making the race of the shooting officer is irrelevant) prompting them to fear, or be more aggressive with, Black people? I’m of the opinion that in a minority of situations the police officer is actually racist. But the system creates a blue wall of loyalty and silence. It overarchingly creates police officers (whether they are Black or another race) who subscribe to using aggressive policing tactics against Black people.

In any case, I’ve demonstrated that racial discrimination towards Black people is a major issue in policing. Although I believe Fryer’s method would lead to a more accurate depiction of racial disparities in lethal use of force, in general, police are more aggressive and discriminatory towards Black people. In this regard, I implore us all to closely consider our feelings. Consider the concerns we have when a member of the Black community dies, and ourselves, does that passion and outrage remain beyond the headlines? Many of us scream BLM the loudest—and others only scream it—when a Black person is killed; however, don’t discount the non-lethal actions which in fact happen more often, and are likewise indicative of bad police officers abusing their authority and engaging in professional misconduct. If we can focus our efforts on these interactions, and eliminate repeat offenders who are eager to use non-lethal force, it’s quite possible that we may be able to save lives.

Black Lives Matter.

Suggested Readings:

• Racism and Police Brutality in America: Cassandra Chaney and Ray C. Robertson
• A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011-2014
• Race and Reasonableness in Police Killings: Jeffrey Fagan and Alexis D. Campbell
• An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force: Roland G. Fryer, Jr

If you wish to support Black communities, here are some resources:

• • Shoot For Peace
  • Nia Centre for the Arts: First Black Arts Centre in Toronto
  • Fundraising | reachingup
  • The Jamaican Canadian Association | Donate (micharity.com)
  • blackurbanismto – Black Urbanism Toronto – Community Development
  • Fundraiser by BLACK LIVES MATTER TORONTO : COVID-19 Black Emergency Support Fund (gofundme.com)
  • Donate Now – WOMEN’S HEALTH IN WOMEN’S HANDS (canadahelps.org)
  • Fundraiser by STRAPPED TO : Toronto Protestor Bail Fund (gofundme.com)
  • BLACK BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION (BBPA) | Charity Profile | Donate Online | Canadahelps
  • Eritrean-Ethiopian COVID Solidarity Fund | Chuffed | Non-profit charity and social enterprise fundraising