The Fatal Shootings Study

Psychologists led by David J. Johnson of the University of Maryland created a database of 917 fatal shootings of civilians by police in 2015. They correlated various factors—characteristics of the police officer, the civilian who was shot, and the county in which the incident occurred—with the race of the victim.

First, they found no evidence of bias against victims of color. “Controlling for predictors at the civilian, officer, and county levels,” the analysts wrote, “a person fatally shot by police was 6.67 times less likely . . . to be Black than White and 3.33 times less likely . . . to be Hispanic than White. Thus, in the typical shooting, we did not find evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity.”

This accords with national data compiled by the Washington Post, not exactly a pro-police publication, for a five-year period (2015-2019). The Post tallied 4,263 fatal shootings by police for which the race or ethnicity of the victim was known. Of these, 53 percent were white, 28 percent were black, and 20 percent were Hispanic. In other words, nearly twice as many whites as blacks were fatally shot by police.

Professor Johnson and associates examined the 2015 incidents in detail to determine the reasons for the shootings. They found that “[t]he vast majority—between 90 percent and 95 percent—of the civilians shot by officers were actively attacking police or other citizens when they were shot.” This confirms the claims of police shooters in Chicago, as noted above.

It also reinforces Roland Fryer’s highly publicized study on race and the use of force by police. Fryer found, after controlling for numerous factors, that blacks were 27.4 percent less likely than non-Hispanic whites to be fatally shot by police.

A second major finding of the Johnson study was the absence of any correlation between the race of the officer and that of the victim. That is, after controlling for other factors, white police officers were no more likely than black officers to fatally shoot black civilians. In fact, the more black officers on a police force, the more African Americans were fatally shot.

The most significant finding of all, though, was the correlation between violent crime and police shooting. The more violent crime by blacks in a county, the more blacks shot to death by police. In the words of the study:

[O]fficer race, sex, or experience did not predict the race of a person fatally shot beyond relationships explained by county demographics. On the other hand, race-specific violent crime strongly predicted the race of a civilian fatally shot by police, explaining over 40% of the variance in civilian race. These results bolster claims to take into account violent crime rates when examining fatal police shootings.

It is possible, of course, that police discriminate more when nonlethal force is involved. The Fryer study drew that very conclusion, finding, for instance, that police were 18 percent more likely to shove a black person than a white in similar circumstances. But this analysis, which was limited to New York City during the aggressive “stop-and-frisk” years, did not include data on crime rates within each police precinct broken down by race or ethnicity. Unlike the Johnson study, in other words, Fryer did not correlate nonlethal force with the violent crime rate of minority groups.

Police Violence and Criminal Violence

American police must face down armed violent criminals. That’s their job. Often those violent threats come from young, male, urban African Americans. As long as that is the case there will be violent confrontations between police and black civilians. Increasing the number of black police officers won’t change this. Nor will study commissions, police budget reductions, chokehold prohibitions, or the elimination of qualified immunity from civil suits, to mention a few of the proposals to curb police being bandied about. Some of these proposals may be wise, some not. But none will dramatically reduce the number of violent confrontations between police and African Americans.

This situation will change significantly when black violent crime rates decline significantly. That won’t occur any time soon, but it will happen. It happened to Irish-Americans who committed crime at exceptionally high rates in the 19th century, and to Italian-Americans who did likewise in the early 20th century. As the United States continues to reduce obstacles to black social advancement, and as African Americans take advantage of the opportunities that this country affords them, their crime too will become a distant memory.

Charged with a duty to apprehend offenders, police officers must be prepared to use force. Armed confrontations in these circumstances are inevitable.