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Police have a racist predisposition to shoot black males - true or false? Do we have any evidence to know the extent to which this statement has validity? Sadly enough, we do not, contends Michael Wines, whose recent column in the New York Times noted that statistics which could support or refute the contention that police shootings unfairly target blacks "do not exist. And because of that, the current national debate over the role of race in police killings is being conducted more or less in a vacuum."
While not a criminologist, I did attempt to search for data on the prevalence of shootings, including homicides, by police in the United States. Academic and government statistics provide little insight. More than 20 years ago, the federal Office of Justice Programs noted the absence of data on police use of deadly force and called for a national reporting system. Such a system never evolved; sound data about shootings by the police does not seem to exist.
The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported, as did Wines, on one of the few credible studies of the topic. Interestingly, in Wines' view, the St. Louis study revealed something counterintuitive: that black police officers shared participation, in proportion to their numbers in the department, in the homicides of black male suspects. Nothing to change the assumption that racism plays a role, but the study...
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Please join us in welcoming Laura Birdsong to Wilder Research! Laura will be working with our Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) team by facilitating trainings and providing end-user support. Before joining Wilder Research, she worked for the Wilder Foundation providing direct service to formerly homeless families and very-low-income community members. Welcome, Laura!
