There Is No Epidemic of Racist Police Shootings

A new study debunks a common myth.​

The Democratic presidential candidates have revived the anti-police rhetoric of the Obama years. Joe Biden’s criminal-justice plan promises that after his policing reforms, black mothers and fathers will no longer have to fear when their children “walk[] the streets of America” — the threat allegedly coming from cops, not gangbangers. President Barack Obama likewise claimed during the memorial for five Dallas police officers killed by a Black Lives Matter–inspired assassin in July 2016 that black parents were right to fear that their child could be killed by a police officer whenever he “walks out the door.” South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg has said that police shootings of black men won’t be solved “until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism.” Beto O’Rourke claims that the police shoot blacks “solely based on the color of their skin.”

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demolishes the Democratic narrative regarding race and police shootings, which holds that white officers are engaged in an epidemic of racially biased shootings of black men. It turns out that white officers are no more likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot black civilians. It is a racial group’s rate of violent crime that determines police shootings, not the race of the officer. The more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that members of that racial group will be shot by a police officer. In fact, if there is a bias in police shootings after crime rates are taken into account, it is against white civilians, the study found.

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Schism said:

Serious question:

Can anyone find a video clip of Obama addressing the subject of systemic racism among LEO during his administration?

I have NOT been able to find one.

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RabidAlpaca said:

I typed in Google "Obama on systemic police racism" and got dozens of examples. Be completely honest, you didn't even look, you're just trying to be theatrically partisan and dishonest.

In Wake of Police Shootings, Obama Speaks More Bluntly About Race

Republicans opposed doing something about it then and they oppose doing something about it now. It's just a fake news myth right?

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Schism said:

Yes, I found those links too. What I didn't find was Obama speaking about systemic racism among law enforcement officers.

In fact, I can't find Obama using the term systemic racism at all. Can you?

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Schism said:

There Is No Epidemic of Racist Police Shootings | Manhattan Institute



Here's the study:

Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings | PNAS

In today's headlines and rush for ad-clicks, there's too much disparity between the emotional claims being made and the facts. I've read articles and forum comments that support the narrative of systemic racism, and 'white cops killing innocent unarmed black men'. The data doesn't lie, the data isn't emotional, and the data doesn't support the two narratives.

It's because neither narrative is true. The data exposes the facts.

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<snip>
Although use of force with citizens who suffer from mental health problems is an important issue, another important issue is use of force for young, unarmed, mentally healthy (nonsuicidal) men. To examine racial disparities in this group, we specified an alternative model that focused on young (age 20 y), unarmed male victims that showed no signs of mental health problems and were not suicidal in a county with equal proportions of Black and White citizens. The intercept of this model suggested that victims with these characteristics are 13.67 times more likely to be Black than White, 95% confidence interval = 6.65, 28.13 (OSF | Racial Disparity in Fatal Use of Force).

The stark contrast between the published finding and our finding contradicts Johnson et al.’s (1) claims that their results hold across subgroups of victims. Contrary to this claim, their data are entirely consistent with the public perception that young male victims of fatal use of force are disproportionally Black. Importantly, neither the original finding nor our finding addresses the causes of racial disparities among victims of deadly use of force. Our results merely confirm other recent findings that racial disparities exist and that they are particularly large for young males (2).<snip>

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Schism said:

Yes, I found those links too. What I didn't find was Obama speaking about systemic racism among law enforcement officers.

In fact, I can't find Obama using the term systemic racism at all. Can you?

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Jonsa said:

didn't look very hard.

In Wake of Police Shootings, Obama Speaks More Bluntly About Race

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Jonsa said:

Hmm, seems there is more to the story with more from PNAS:


Young unarmed nonsuicidal male victims of fatal use of force are 13 times more likely to be Black than White


ain't peer review cool.

The data doesn't lie, but it sure as hell can be manipulated by or even conveniently ignored thru its criteria selection and the analytical conclusion process.

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Schism said:

There Is No Epidemic of Racist Police Shootings | Manhattan Institute



Here's the study:

Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings | PNAS

In today's headlines and rush for ad-clicks, there's too much disparity between the emotional claims being made and the facts. I've read articles and forum comments that support the narrative of systemic racism, and 'white cops killing innocent unarmed black men'. The data doesn't lie, the data isn't emotional, and the data doesn't support the two narratives.

It's because neither narrative is true. The data exposes the facts.

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Rogue Valley said:

That data is from 2015.

Many police departments do not report/publicize police shootings due to union agreements and/or civil lawsuits.

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Schism said:

In the article from your link Obama doesn't use the term systemic racism, nor does he imply systemic racism as being a problem among LEO as a whole or nationwide.

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Schism said:

When you narrow the scope of a study to a small, specific control group, you can create any statistic you want.

From your link: "we specified an alternative model that focused on young (age 20 y)"

Really? Why not age 21? or 25? Why not an age group of 18-24 or 16-32? -> Because the narrative falls apart.

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Jonsa said:

Yes funny how you can do that with just about any way you want to slice the data. It points out the weakness in one of the conclusions in the original analysis.

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Schism said:

You have an objection to the article or supporting study? State your case.

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