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Black Lives Matter vs. the statistics: Blacks killed by the police

In 2015, 26% of civilians shot and killed by police in the US were black [1]. Blacks are, however, 13% of the general US population. According to Black Lives Matter and prevailing Progressive thought, blacks are being killed disproportionately as a result of racism and race-related police brutality. But do the data reflect this?

Despite being around 13% of the US population, half of the homicides in the US are committed by blacks (primarily against other blacks), more than half of the robberies, more than a third of all violent crime, and 40% of illegal possession/carrying of a weapon [2]. Blacks are a quarter of people being shot by police, but almost half of people committing the serious crime.

A counter- explanation offered for these higher crime rates is that black people are simply more likely to be targeted and arrested by police, skewing crime data unfairly. However, for the most part, these rates are corroborated by the Justice Department’s National Crime and Victimization Survey [3], which relies on victim-based reporting (excluding murder victims, obviously). Moreover, using three decades of data and not relying on arrest rates, the US Justice Department estimated that 52% of homicides from 1980-2008 were committed by blacks [4], again corroborating the FBI figures.

Some more interesting facts:

Blacks are only 4% more likely to be killed when under arrest. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks constituted 32% of arrest-related deaths between 2003-2009 [5]. Blacks were roughly 28% people arrested in those years according to BJS estimates [6].

Blacks are also more likely to kill police officers. Of more than 600 individuals who feloniously killed police officers between 2005-2014, just over 40% were black [7,8].

More things to consider:

Lastly, the black population is disproportionately situated in high-crime urban areas and neighbourhoods where it is generally well above the 13% US average. In these places, police interaction (and potentially deadly police interaction) is more likely to occur. Therefore, blacks are disproportionately more likely to have encounters with police not only through committing more crime on average, but also through simple geographic factors. This would also factor into arrest probabilities.

But despite actually being the minority of armed and unarmed civilians killed by police, the great majority of stories that see widespread circulation by the media involve the deaths of black people. Consider the effects this has on public perceptions.

Reply 1

username521617

Additionally, an estimated 35% of gang members in the US are black (and only 11% non-Hispanic white) [9]. Based on law enforcement reporting, the Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center concluded that gangs are responsible for an average of 48% of violent crime in most jurisdictions [10]. The National Drug Intelligence Center states that gangs are the primary distributors of illegal drugs on US streets [11]

Reply 2

QE2

I think this is another of those issues that you are not supposed to look at too closely, lest all of a sudden, you find out you're a bigot. Apparently.

Reply 3

username521617

Original post by QE2

I think this is another of those issues that you are not supposed to look at too closely, lest all of a sudden, you find out you're a bigot. Apparently.

The information is publicly available. All one has to do is look. Instead people let themselves be misled by trending news stories with clickbait titles.

But facts are racist (when they're inconvenient).