A Few Pesky Facts About Police Brutality and Race

With only a little analysis, because the data speaks for itself

Over the past few weeks I’ve had several “discussions” with people about the true magnitude of police brutality against Blacks in the United States. I’ve been told things like that it’s some sort of “woke” drama conspiracy and that I don’t know what I’m talking about — until the numbers are laid out and the reality becomes unassailable. I decided to share some of that information in a neat and fairly succinct package here — both for my own future reference as well as yours.

Of course, for some people, data isn’t as relevant as their strong personal belief about the way things truly are, based as far as I can tell, primarily on being a White guy who doesn’t want to face the fact that his cultural centrality is eroding. The way they congratulate each other on being brave and wise enough to see through to the reality would be funny if it weren’t also so sad and destructive.

“Of course these are real issues, but all the hoopla is just too overblown to be believable,” is the gist of what these men seem to be saying. The mythical “woke” are blamed as if that were some homogenous and monolithic force who live in a fantasy land of baseless drama. I’m sure there are some women who say this nonsense too, but I haven’t encountered any in person.

I don’t know about you, but I decide what I believe based on what the evidence dictates — not what feels best to me. Aside from the lived experience of millions of people, there’s data up one side and down the other around police brutality and race and none of it is in dispute. Here are just a few facts from a variety of different sources that all paint the exact same picture:

Assertion: More Whites are killed by the police each year than Blacks.

Truth: In gross numbers, that assertion is true, but it doesn’t reflect the fact that Whites make up 60% of the population and Blacks made up %13. Proportionally, Blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than Whites.

“About 1,000 civilians are killed each year by law-enforcement officers in the United States. By one estimate, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime. And in another study, Black people who were fatally shot by police seemed to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed.”

“Based on information from more than two million 911 calls in two US cities, he concluded that white officers dispatched to Black neighbourhoods fired their guns five times as often as Black officers dispatched for similar calls to the same neighbourhoods (see ‘Answering the call’).”

“That data shows that of more than 10.5 million arrests made every year, the bulk are for noncriminal behavior, drug violations, and low-level offenses. Since 1980, arrests for drug violations have increased by 170 percent, and racial disparities in enforcement have grown even more stark. Still, a majority of victims don’t report their experiences to police, and police solve only a fraction of the crimes that are reported.

In recent years, after a series of police killings sparked nationwide protests, a growing movement for police accountability also exposed systemic problems with everyday policing practices. Most arrests are ultimately dismissed, but aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses, especially in communities of color, causes long-term damage to those communities and their relationship with police.” (emphasis mine)

Only about 5% of arrests are for violent crimes. With very, very few exceptions there is no reason that anyone of any demographic who is unarmed should die in police custody, particularly during traffic stops and other low-level offenses. De-escalation techniques work a large part of the time. Just ask social workers and special needs teachers, as well as the few cities that have embraced them whole-heartedly in policing.

“Although Black people represented 12 percent of the population in the states we studied, they made up 25 percent of the deaths in police shootings,” Miller says.

By comparison, Miller says, white people represented 62 percent of the population — and made up 54 percent of the deaths in encounters with police.

Instead of approaching the study with a point of view to be proved or disproved, Miller and his fellow researchers set out on a fact-finding mission. They analyzed the two-year database of 603 firearm homicides by police. They tagged and coded the narratives to put each shooting into context, and then ran the detailed results through a computer program — a meticulous process that took two years to complete.

The study found that the racial disparity was even more pronounced in those cases in which the victims were unarmed and offered minimal to no threat to police.

“Many other studies have shown that Black people are more likely to be killed per capita by law enforcement than are white people in the United States,” Miller says. “That is not a disputed statistic.”

This doesn’t mean that all cops are horrible overt racists. One of my partners is a police officer and I feel no qualms at all about his integrity or his commitment to his community.

It is instead a reflection of the institution of policing as it has evolved in this country, which although it gives lip-service to “serve and protect” is firmly based in nearly all jurisdictions in furtherance of the patriarchal dominance hierarchy that our culture is steeped in. For more about that system of societal organization, read this.

“From the 18th-20th centuries, those who engaged in police brutality may have acted with the implicit approval of the local legal system, such as during the Civil Rights Movement era. In the contemporary era, individuals who engage in police brutality may do so with the tacit approval of their superiors or they may be rogue officers. In either case, they may perpetrate their actions under color of law and, more often than not, engage in a subsequent cover-up of their unlawful activity.”

In other words, our culture is built around social stratification — not just around race, of course, but also around class, wealth, gender, sexuality, religion, and many others — that’s what patriarchy truly means. Helping to maintain that pyramid of power is a part of what the police have always been tasked to do. The confluence of race, poverty, and social class in many cases intensifies the likelihood of Blacks being greater targets of police brutality, although it happens to middle-class and wealthy Blacks as well.

Police unions often help to cover up problematic behaviors as does the blue wall of silence, where the cohesion of the brotherhood is seen as more important than taking problem officers to task and holding them responsible. It’s the ultimate negative example of tribalism.

Pretending that isn’t actually taking place in ways that are unacceptable and alarming is to purposely turn away from the truth. Police brutality is a serious problem and where that intersects with race, all the more so. Refusing to acknowledge that is not “seeing through the hype”. It’s refusing to deal with reality because it’s inconvenient.

For more about the history of police brutality in this country, check out this entire wiki, filled with citations and information.