The Epidemic Myth

On a recent VP post I mentioned that the notion that there's an epidemic of killing of unarmed black men by racist white police is a myth, that in fact, more unarmed white men are killed by police than are unarmed black men. To flesh this out a bit here are some stats from the Washington Post.

The following data only reflects deaths by shooting. I could find no racial breakdown on deaths by other means such as chokeholds, tasers, etc. The data should also be seen against the backdrop of the fact that approximately 1000 people are fatally shot by police each year so the number of unarmed men, both black and white, killed by police is a very small percentage:

• In 2015 36 unarmed blacks were killed by police compared to 31 whites, but since then the number of shootings of both unarmed men and women has dropped and the ratio of black to white has reversed.
• In 2016, police killed 22 unarmed whites and 19 unarmed blacks.
• In 2017, 30 unarmed whites were killed compared with 20 unarmed blacks.
• In 2018 police had killed 18 unarmed people by May of that year, with 10 whites and seven blacks among them.
• In 2019 there were 19 unarmed white persons killed and 9 unarmed black victims.

Yet if one were to take to our media seriously one would think that not only were the numbers of unarmed men killed by police much higher, one would also think that unarmed black men were being massacred in far greater numbers than unarmed whites.

One response to the inconvenient fact that police kill more unarmed white men than they do unarmed black men is that blacks only make up 13% of the population. When the demographic difference is factored in, we're told, blacks are actually killed at more than twice the rate of unarmed whites.

The disparity is cited as evidence of police racism and it would certainly be persuasive were the circumstances surrounding these deaths similar, but they're not.

Most hostile interactions and confrontations between police and civilians occur in communities where crime, particularly violent crime, is highest. There are about 7,300 black homicide victims nationwide each year, not to mention the rates of other violent criminal acts. According to black author Voddie Beacham in his book Fault Lines, a National Academy of Sciences study found that when race-specific violence is considered the disparities between white and black victimhood disappears or is reversed.

An article at The Manhattan Institute states that,

Much of modern policing is driven by crime data and community demands for help. The African American community tends to be policed more heavily because that is where people are disproportionately hurt by violent street crime.

In New York City in 2018, 73% of shooting victims were Black, though Black residents comprise only 24% of the city’s population. Nationally, African Americans between the ages of 10 and 34 die from homicide at 13 times the rate of white Americans, according to researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Justice Department. (italics mine)

Where and when police are significantly more likely to encounter violent people it's no surprise that there will be more lethal confrontations. Moreover, just because an unarmed man is shot by police it doesn't follow that the shooting was unjustified. Again, from The Washington Post:

A review of the shootings of unarmed people shows that officers were reported to be under physical attack in about 40 percent of the cases. The remaining 60 percent involved a variety of circumstances, including individuals’ making provocative movements or verbal threats (31 percent) or fleeing, or being shot unintentionally or in undetermined circumstances, according to a review of news reports and video of the incidents

. Clearly, some killings of unarmed men by police are unjustified - Eric Garner, Philando Castile and George Floyd come to mind - but the notion perpetuated by our media that there's an epidemic of unarmed black men being killed by police is simply false.