An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force | Roland G. Fryer, Jr.
Harvard University set out to do an exhaustive study on the role of race in police encounters and, specifically, police shootings.
In order to do this, they pulled data from four main sources:
1: NYC's Stop, Question, and Frisk program
2olice-Public Contact Survey ("a triennial survey of a nationally representative sample of civilians, which contains { from the civilian point of view } a description of interactions with police, which includesuses of force"),
3: "Event summaries from all incidents in which an ocer discharges his weapon at civilians { including both hits and misses { from three large cities in Texas (Austin, Dallas, Houston), six large Florida counties,and Los Angeles County"
4: "A random sample of police-civilian interactions from the Houston police department from arrests codes in which lethal force is more likely to be justified: attempted capital murder of a public safety ocer, aggravated assault on a public safety ocer,resisting arrest, evading arrest, and interfering in arrest."
The conclusions are summarized as follows:
"On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force –officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account"
So, do we suspect that our elected officials are just by-and-large ill-informed enough not to be aware of these and similar studies, or is there some other motivation for gaslighting the populace about the increased probability of minorities being shot by police?
Harvard University set out to do an exhaustive study on the role of race in police encounters and, specifically, police shootings.
In order to do this, they pulled data from four main sources:
1: NYC's Stop, Question, and Frisk program
2olice-Public Contact Survey ("a triennial survey of a nationally representative sample of civilians, which contains { from the civilian point of view } a description of interactions with police, which includesuses of force"),
3: "Event summaries from all incidents in which an ocer discharges his weapon at civilians { including both hits and misses { from three large cities in Texas (Austin, Dallas, Houston), six large Florida counties,and Los Angeles County"
4: "A random sample of police-civilian interactions from the Houston police department from arrests codes in which lethal force is more likely to be justified: attempted capital murder of a public safety ocer, aggravated assault on a public safety ocer,resisting arrest, evading arrest, and interfering in arrest."
The conclusions are summarized as follows:
"On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force –officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account"
So, do we suspect that our elected officials are just by-and-large ill-informed enough not to be aware of these and similar studies, or is there some other motivation for gaslighting the populace about the increased probability of minorities being shot by police?