WI_Red
Redcafes Most Rested
https://www.nber.org/papers/w22399
Based on data from NY. No difference between races regarding lethal use of force from the police, but Afro-Americans and Hispanics more likely to be put in handcuffs or walled without an arrest being made.
I think there is no actual data to support that American cops are more likely to kill a black man compared to a white man. So, on average I think the police killings are not in themselves racially motivated. What they are, are symptoms of an incompetent/untrained police and a "terror balance" with a high density of weapons in the population due to lax weapon regulations.
What can be said is a symptom of racism, is the use of non-lethal force. Here, there is data to support a claim of racism/racial bias.
I remember the furor when this paper came out a few years ago.
Taking a quick look at the paper I am struck by a few things.
-The paper is completely reliant on police reports with no interviews of witnesses. Considering the documented examples of police "exaggerating" reports to frame a narrative, I am suspect of reliability of the data,
-The CI bars on the lethal use of force graph (figure 4) are huge meaning there is large variability in the sample data set. This data is also only from one city, Houston.
-The data for the rest of the paper is from only 10 cities in 3 states. This is not necessarily a representative data set.
-The basis of their lethal use of force analysis is if the victim was carrying a weapon, which ignores the face that the issue we are discussing is the shooting of UNARMED black men.
-The paper also only looks at police interactions, it does not investigate the frequency of interactions by race, nor the cause of the interaction to begin with.
-My above observations are based on a 5 min skimming of the article, so please take them with all the grains of salt.
Also, this is the first part of the papers conclusion. I am just going to leave this here:
"The importance of our results for racial inequality in America is unclear. It is plausible that racial differences in lower level uses of force are simply a distraction and movements such as Black Lives Matter should seek solutions within their own communities rather than changing the behaviors of police and other external forces."
p.s.: The author of this paper was placed on a two year suspension from Harvard for sexual harassment. Tenure is a "wonderful" thing.