One or even a few incidents of improper police shootings do not point to a racial disparity or systemic racism in the police force. Here are some studies finding no racial disparity in police shootings:
Nine unarmed black men were shot and killed by the police last year and 19 unarmed white men. I know this is disproportionate to the racial demographics in America, where black men make up only 6% of the population. However, when you control for demographics who commit violent crimes, you find black men are less likely to be shot and killed by the police. People who commit violent crimes are more likely to run into the police and therefore more likely to get shot and killed.
Most of the black men shot and killed were killed by other black men. Almost half the homicide victims in America are black and almost all of the victims are kill by other black men. (Source: FBI Statistics).
We now have this massive protest focusing on a problem that might not exist. And if it does it exist, it is a minor problem for the black community compared to everything else. Lets say we reduce the 9 police shootings a year to zero. Then what? That will do nothing to reduce the homicide rate for black men.
As a disclaimer, I don’t think the police are perfect and don’t have any problems. There are other issues with racial profiling and other police encounters that do not involve police shootings that could be a problem. I haven’t looked into statistics on these issues yet. On this specific problem of unarmed shootings, I don’t see any evidence to warrant these massive protests and now massive calls for police reforms.
I’m not sure why you’re focusing on shootings. George Floyd wasn’t shot, and his situation was the instigator of the current situation. Hence questioning the current protests on the basis of this evidence is groundless.
You also take your evidence from the FBI figures, which only record those shootings voluntarily reported to the FBI by police forces, some of which choose not to report shootings to the FBI at all.
Your evidence also differentiates between armed and unarmed victims, as if the distinction between shooting someone unarmed and shooting someone with a knife in his inside pocket is fundamentally different.
Your second study had to issue a correction in response to peer criticism, and even after the correction the critics argued they hadn’t completely addressed the problems with their conclusions:
I don’t think there is a big racial disparity in police killings once you adjust for patterns in violent crime but as your first study says there does seem to be a racial disparity in the use of non-lethal force. And probably the police use too much force in general and with too little accountability. So there are genuine problems but they are exaggerated and distorted by the media and activists. The typical case of a police shooting is some armed criminal shoots at the police and is shot back. Obviously this isn’t a very sympathetic case so highly atypical cases like Floyd are highlighted instead.
I am not sure if that is a typical case. The statistics are difficult to come by. Washington Post database has 5399 fatal shootings, in 57% the civilian had a firearm. The Guardian found 1093 fatal shootings in 2016, in 46% the victim had a firearm.
Two caveats are needed. First, the firearm was documented after the fact, and may not have even been used. Second, these numbers do not included non-fatal shootings, where I suspect the incidence of firearms was lower.
I don’t think you can isolate out shootings of unarmed people from the bigger picture of police misconduct and distrust. Reform the police, and you can absolutely expect a reduction in the homicide rate for black men, and those in any other communities who don’t feel like they can get a fair shake from the police, and thus must handle their disputes themselves. Read up on the concepts of cultures of law vs cultures of honor; any people anywhere excluded from fair law enforcement can be expected to have higher rates of violence.
What counts as unarmed? A mentally ill person who is confused but not threatening who has a screwdriver in his pocket may count as ‘armed’ when the police shoot him from a distance of 50 feet. Theres a difference between shooting someone who is shooting at you, vs shooting someone who is either cooperative or too mentally ill to understand how to cooperate who has a screwdriver or pocketknife on them.
I really regret the fact that mental illness isn’t being discussed in the issue of police brutality. Police brutality affects black people, but mentally ill people are also heavy targets of police abuse and cruelty.
For 2019 the Wapo database says around 77% were with gun or knife. But yes they aren’t always using the weapon, sometimes they are just holding it.
What is clear though is that cases like Floyd where an unarmed black person is killed for no good reason are highly uncommon. Unarmed black in 2019 was 15 and if you add other and toy weapon it’s still 32. And of course some of these unarmed may have attacked the police. To put these numbers in context there are around 2 million arrests of black people every year.
Do we even know whether black men are more likely than white men to commit violent crimes, as opposed to being more likely to be arrested, prosecuted, and/or convicted of violent crimes?
To show that POLICE killings of black men are a small percentage of CIVILIAN killings of black men; the implication is that if Black Lives Matter, then they should be more concerned about Black-On-Black crime than on Police-On-Black crime.
I think that’s what was implied; that certainly is what I inferred.
I also urge anyone who hasn’t already to read the DOJ report on the Ferguson, MO police department. Reading it led me to shift my views on officer-involved shootings from parsing the precise details of any particular killing, to the broader relationship between police and community, and how police policy and practice can destroy that relationship.
Even just skimming that, it’s extremely telling. I wonder what the effect would be on policing if we did nothing more than remove the revenue incentives?
Black civilians who kill other black people go to prison. Police officers who kill black people don’t. In any case, the OP asked “is there a racial disparity in police shootings?” If the OP’s intention was to foster debate about that question, statistics regarding civilian shootings are utterly irrelevant.
That kinda begs the question of what that ratio is? What is the ratio of police killing unarmed black people (I seem to remember 9 referenced as a number for last year) vs other black on black killings? If black lives mattered as much as they think they do when killed by a police officer, do you think the outcry would be that much greater if it were orders of magnitude greater?
UNCONDITIONALLY George Floyd did not deserve to die, but them holding him up as a shining example when he had spent many years in jail for many different crimes throughout his illustrious career, is uh short sighted?
Why is it that the black community holds drug dealers and other career offenders up as THE examples when bad things happen to them?
Free MEEKMILL?
Now undoubtedly things could be done to strengthen how people view the police. Rioting and looting ain’t it.
There definitely needs to be a change with policing. I think someone mentioned in this thread , get rid of fucking economic bonus structures. That shit doesn’t belong in a civil service job, EVER.
Until the black community starts policing their own communities and holding their bad apples accountable, how can they expect ANYONE else (police, white folks, whomever the blame falls on these days) to?
It doesn’t beg that question at all. It’s not even asking that question via a quarter-inch Google Adwords listing that disappears after three seconds and is only visible on mobile devices. That question couldn’t be less relevant if it was asked on another planet.