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Race & Lethal Police Force

Are police more or less likely to use lethal force when arresting black people than when arresting white people?

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Consistent with a 2018 study published in an academic journal, a 2016 study of arrest data by the left-leaning Center for Policing Equity found that police are 42% less likely to use lethal force when arresting black people than when arresting whites. The authors of the study buried this data on the 20th page of their report, and the Washington Post cited this study as evidence of police brutality towards blacks. Media outlets and activists commonly focus on less than 0.1% of the 15,000+ murders that are committed in the U.S. every year, making an issue of race only when the victim is a black person and the perpetrator is a police officer or white person. This is a common strategy of racists and demagogues, who use rare anecdotes to demonize broad groups of people based on the actions of a few.




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