In the study—titled “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force”—Fryer arrives at what he describes as a “startling” finding: Blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot by police, relative to Whites.
“Partitioning the data in myriad ways, we find no evidence of racial discrimination in officer-involved shootings,” the study states. “Investigating the intensive margin—the timing of shootings or how many bullets were discharged in the endeavor—there are no detectable racial differences.”
The study consists of complex formulae that—no matter how robust they portend to be—are not likely to stem the tide of protests over police shootings of Black men.
Further, though it is consistent with at least one other study, it is at odds with other reports—including two databases, one created by ProPublica and one created by the Washington Post—and drew a skeptical response in some quarters because of its narrowness.
“The study is definitely useful in some regards: Researchers examined the circumstances of police shootings (like whether police were attacked before firing their guns) with much more detail than previous work has, for example,” states one critique by Vox.
“But it’s narrower than a lot of existing research on racial disparities in criminal justice—so narrow, in fact, that it kind of misses the point of why police killings of young black men are so frequently outrageous.”
