Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force? Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015–2016

• Published in: Social psychological & personality science Vol. 10; no. 5; pp. 586 - 595
• Main Authors: Cesario, Joseph, Johnson, David J., Terrill, William
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-07-2019; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Crime; Criminal statistics; Deadly force; Fatal shooting; Police; Police brutality; Racial inequality; Shooting; Shootings; fatal shootings; Black Lives Matter; race bias; deadly force; racial disparity; police use of force; officer-involved shootings
• ISSN: 1948-5506; 1948-5514
• DOI: 10.1177/1948550618775108

Is there evidence of a Black–White disparity in death by police gunfire in the United States? This is commonly answered by comparing the odds of being fatally shot for Blacks and Whites, with odds benchmarked against each group’s population proportion. However, adjusting for population values has questionable assumptions given the context of deadly force decisions. We benchmark 2 years of fatal shooting data on 16 crime rate estimates. When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects. Multiverse analyses showed only one significant anti-Black disparity of 144 possible tests. Exposure to police given crime rate differences likely accounts for the higher per capita rate of fatal police shootings for Blacks, at least when analyzing all shootings. For unarmed shootings or misidentification shootings, data are too uncertain to be conclusive.