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| Is Michael Brown a statistical anomaly? Frankly, there's no way to know... |
Many of my media theorist friends are wondering how to include coverage of Ferguson and Staten Island tragedies in courses next semester. Perhaps they'll be aided by some of my recent digging.
THE LIKELY VICTIMS
Searching the CDC's Fatal Injury Database for deaths attributed to "legal intervention with a firearm," Bill O'Reilly claims that police in this country are killing far more whites than blacks. "In 2012," O'Reilly says, "123 African-Americans were shot dead by police.... Same year, 326 whites were killed by police bullets."
But a ProPublica report sees it differently. Three of its reporters suggest that young black males (age 15-19) are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than their white counterparts. From 2010 to 2012, teenage white men were killed at the rate of 1.5 in 1 million. Compare that to 31 in 1 million for teenage black men.
CONFIDENCE IN A RACIALLY BALANCED POLICE FORCE
These reports shed (conflicting) light on the victims. But our country seems equally interested in the race of police shooters. Some statistics make it hard to argue that minorities are underrepresented in American law enforcement. According to the most recent U.S. Census, minorities make up 22.3% of the American population. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that minorities make up 25% of the nation's police force. Perhaps counterintuitively, it seems the balance of whites and minorities among law enforcement personnel is roughly equal to the racial balance of the general populace.
These reports shed (conflicting) light on the victims. But our country seems equally interested in the race of police shooters. Some statistics make it hard to argue that minorities are underrepresented in American law enforcement. According to the most recent U.S. Census, minorities make up 22.3% of the American population. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that minorities make up 25% of the nation's police force. Perhaps counterintuitively, it seems the balance of whites and minorities among law enforcement personnel is roughly equal to the racial balance of the general populace.
While there may be a kind of ethnic parity among law enforcement workers, clearly there are qualitative differences of trust along lines of race. A December 7 poll finds that 52 percent of whites, compared with 12 percent of blacks, have a "great deal of confidence" that police officers in their community treat blacks and whites equally. It's fascinating/disturbing to compare these new NBC/Marist numbers to previous studies. The black confidence rating is relatively unchanged. But the white confidence rating is 11 points higher than it was in September's Wall Street Journal poll. In fact, whites have more trust in officer fairness than they've demonstrated in polls going back to 1995.
A related study conducted in August by USA Today and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press concludes that both races have greater confidence in their local police forces than in police forces as a whole across the nation. I suppose we might take some comfort knowing that we have more faith in our neighbors than in the strangers we see on TV.
WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE AREN'T TOLD
Many of these studies (and, indeed, most media coverage from the networks on down to personal facebook rants) discuss qualitative perceptions. They attempt to articulate how people feel about race relations or police brutality. That's because journalists and researchers simply cannot report the facts. It is currently impossible to answer the following questions:
Many of these studies (and, indeed, most media coverage from the networks on down to personal facebook rants) discuss qualitative perceptions. They attempt to articulate how people feel about race relations or police brutality. That's because journalists and researchers simply cannot report the facts. It is currently impossible to answer the following questions:
- What percentage of Americans killed by police officers are black?
- What percentage of Americans killed by police officers are unarmed?
- What percentage of Americans killed by police officers are... [insert your variable here]?
The FBI does collect information on "justifiable homicides." But of the nation's 17,000 law enforcement agencies, only 750 contribute data. The Chicago Tribune's Eugene Robinson is among the Americans outraged by the statistics' incompleteness. Robinson lauds the quixotic attempts of civilians like Fatal Encounters' D. Brian Burghart to compile the elusive figures.
"There is no national database for this type of information," laments Geoff Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist. "We've been trying for years, but nobody wanted to fund it and the [police] departments didn't want it."
It would be cynical to think that people are intentionally exaggerating the scope of the problem. And perhaps you could forgive them for guessing in the emotional wake of recent high-profile deaths. But until there is accurate reporting of all police killings in this country, there's really no knowing to what degree Michael Brown and Eric Garner might be representative of an epidemic.
