Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings

[mystery-ak]

This article was sent to me thinking it would be good for discussion.
It is several years old but has updated links.


Research Article
Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings

View ORCID ProfileDavid J. Johnson, Trevor Tress, Nicole Burkel, Carley Taylor, and View ORCID ProfileJoseph Cesario
PNAS August 6, 2019 116 (32) 15877-15882; first published July 22, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903856116

    Edited by Kenneth W. Wachter, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and approved June 24, 2019 (received for review March 5, 2019)

Significance

There is widespread concern about racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings and that these disparities reflect discrimination by White officers. Existing databases of fatal shootings lack information about officers, and past analytic approaches have made it difficult to assess the contributions of factors like crime. We create a comprehensive database of officers involved in fatal shootings during 2015 and predict victim race from civilian, officer, and county characteristics. We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race. This suggests that increasing diversity among officers by itself is unlikely to reduce racial disparity in police shootings.

more
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877

[mountaineer]

White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.

Never mind.