Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings

[ExPatty 502]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html1234

Considering the recent hysteria is primarily over shootings, this is quite interesting. I don't expect people to use the findings honestly, of course.

[Jacque67 7,328]

Hi. Clicked on the link but the message "page could not be found" came up .could you summarise the findings, please.

[ExPatty 502]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html

[Jacque67 7,328]

Cheers. Will read. On another note, kristaz you need to change your name;) dragonflies and all;)

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 a thousand 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 nations debate on police shootings are free of racial bias. Instead, it examined a much larger pool of shootings, including nonfatal ones.

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.

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.

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.

In officer-involved shootings in these cities, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both of these results undercut the idea that the police wield lethal force with racial bias.

But this line of analysis included only encounters in which a shooting took place. A more fundamental question still remained: In the tense moments when a shooting may occur, are police officers more likely to fire if the suspect is black?

To answer this question, Mr. Fryer focused on one city, Houston. The Police Department there allowed the researchers to look at reports not only for shootings but also for arrests when lethal force might have been justified. Mr. Fryer defined this group to include suspects the police charged with serious offenses like attempting to murder an officer, or evading or resisting arrest. He also considered suspects shocked with Tasers.

And in the arena of shoot or dont shoot, Mr. Fryer found that, in tense situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot a suspect if the suspect was black. This estimate was not very precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But, in a variety of models that controlled for different factors and used different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites.

The study, a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, relied on reports filled out by police officers, and a set of police departments willing to share those reports. Recent videos of police shootings have led many to question the reliability of such accounts. But the results were largely the same whether or not Mr. Fryer used information from narratives provided by officers.

And intriguingly, he found that the rise of mobile video did not substantially change the results in Houston. Racial gaps were about the same in years when iPhones and Facebook were prevalent and in years when they werent.

Such results may not be true in every city. The cities Mr. Fryer used to examine officer-involved shootings make up only about 4 percent of the population of the United States, and serve more black citizens than average.

Moreover, the results do not mean that the general publics perception of racism in policing is misguided. Lethal uses of force are exceedingly rare. There were 1.6 million arrests in Houston in the years Mr. Fryer studied. Officers fired their weapons 507 times. What is far more common are nonlethal uses of force.

And in less extreme uses of force, Mr. Fryer found ample racial differences, which is in accord with the publics perception and other studies.

In New York City, blacks stopped by the police were about 17 percent more likely to experience use of force, according to stop-and-frisk records kept between 2003 and 2013. (In the later year, a judge ruled that the tactic as employed then was unconstitutional.)

That gap, adjusted for suspect behavior and other factors, was surprisingly consistent across many different levels of force. Black suspects were 18 percent more likely to be pushed up against a wall, 16 percent more likely to be handcuffed without being arrested and 18 percent more likely to be pushed to the ground.

Even when the police said that civilians were compliant, blacks experienced more force.

[smilesammich 10,727]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html1234

Considering the recent hysteria is primarily over shootings, this is quite interesting. I don't expect people to use the findings honestly, of course.

use the findings honestly?

[Jacque67 7,328]

Interesting that the focus was on the southern states, especially Texas. Hmmm.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Okay. I think it's so complicated to break down huge arrays of incidents and come to firm conclusions but I think the study in the OP hits the nail on the head. I fully believe that people of color, and specifically Black people historically and currently have a much different experience, mainly bad, when it comes to police interactions. These experiences are shared, and all too common even for Black people who are not involved in criminal activity, and contributes to the sense, when there is an officer involved shooting of a Black person, that the shooting was simply an extreme use of force due to the more common bad experiences that didn't end up with shooting. Generally speaking shootings are rare, and more importantly, most likely warranted but not the result of a free for all license to kill.

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

Okay. I think it's so complicated to break down huge arrays of incidents and come to firm conclusions but I think the study in the OP hits the nail on the head. I fully believe that people of color, and specifically Black people historically and currently have a much different experience, mainly bad, when it comes to police interactions. These experiences are shared, and all too common even for Black people who are not involved in criminal activity, and contributes to the sense, when there is an officer involved shooting of a Black person, that the shooting was simply an extreme use of force due to the more common bad experiences that didn't end up with shooting. Generally speaking shootings are rare, and more importantly, most likely warranted but not the result of a free for all license to kill.

Well thought out rational post that accurately captured both sides of the coin.

Reported?

[smilesammich 10,727]

Okay. I think it's so complicated to break down huge arrays of incidents and come to firm conclusions but I think the study in the OP hits the nail on the head. I fully believe that people of color, and specifically Black people historically and currently have a much different experience, mainly bad, when it comes to police interactions. These experiences are shared, and all too common even for Black people who are not involved in criminal activity, and contributes to the sense, when there is an officer involved shooting of a Black person, that the shooting was simply an extreme use of force due to the more common bad experiences that didn't end up with shooting. Generally speaking shootings are rare, and more importantly, most likely warranted but not the result of a free for all license to kill.

i agree up until the last sentence. they are rare when considering the whole of police interaction but still far too common when considering a person's location/race dictates how often they interact with police.

i also don't believe cops are currently acting on some sort of unspoken free for all license to kill, the issue is more vaguely subconscious yet somehow intrinsic at this point.

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

i agree up until the last sentence. they are rare when considering the whole of police interaction but still far too common when considering a person's location/race dictates how often they interact with police.

i also don't believe cops are currently acting on some sort of unspoken free for all license to kill, the issue is more vaguely subconscious yet somehow intrinsic at this point.

A lot more than race and location dictate how much you interact with police. If your demographic commits a majority of crime widely dissporporinate to your demographic, you gonna interact with the fuzz more

[smilesammich 10,727]

A lot more than race and location dictate how much you interact with police. If your demographic commits a majority of crime widely dissporporinate to your demographic, you gonna interact with the fuzz more

can we just accept that we disagree here and let it go? you're not going to convince me of your slant, ever.

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

can we just accept that we disagree here and let it go? you're not going to convince me of your slant, ever.

I had no idea we disagree. I am hurt

[smilesammich 10,727]

I had no idea we disagree. I am hurt

one way to plug the feels is to let it go..

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

one way to plug the feels is to let it go..

Not letting go is in my DNA

[Jacque67 7,328]

Not letting go is in my DNA

Oooohhhh!