Our database of police officers who shoot citizens reveals who’s most likely to shootIn the debate over fatal police shootings of minority citizens, one theme is persistent: White officers, rather than nonwhite officers, are primarily responsible for black Americans being shot by the police.
For example, look to Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s handling of the recent shooting of black resident Eric Logan in his hometown of South Bend, Indiana. This shooting has consistently been tied to the race of the officer, who was white. When Buttigieg was asked about the city’s attempts to increase diversity on the police force, he apologized that he “couldn’t get it done.â€
Is it true, however, that black citizens are more likely to be shot by white officers?
To answer this question, we spent over 1,500 hours creating a national database of information about all officers involved in fatal police shootings in the U.S. in 2015.
Our paper based on this data, published on July 22, reveals that white officers are not more likely to fatally shoot minority civilians compared to black or Hispanic officers.
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Although organizations such as The Washington Post have tracked fatal officer-involved shootings in recent years, these databases have primarily focused on information about civilians. The few studies that have looked at officer information have been able to obtain data for only a small number of shootings.
Our database includes 917 fatal shootings by on-duty police officers in 2015 from over 650 different police departments.
Between the WashPost's DB and this study's DB, the race-baiting activists' claims are proven false. Police officers, as a population, do not target blacks or Hispanics. Nor do white officers, as a population, target black or Hispanic civilians. The WashPost has maintained their DB since 2015, know the truth, but do not call out the activists' falsehoods.
