Perception And Reality
July 28, 2016 at 8:40 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
A few weeks ago I wrote how the perception in the US today is that we are living in a time when violent crime is spiraling out of control, even though precisely the converse is true.
According to Pew Research, using the latest data from 2014, “The nation’s overall gun death rate has declined 31 percent since 1993. This total includes homicides and suicides, in addition to a smaller number of fatal police shootings, accidental shooting deaths and those of undetermined intent.”
Nonetheless, the perception is that violent crime is on the rise. Ask average Americans and they will likely tell you crime is on the rise.
But why?
In America today – whatever the issue – social media drives the narrative. Then the media – in the relentless pursuit of being first with the story – picks it up and runs with it.
You see this all the time.
So when the FBI uniform crime statistics are released, there is a collective yawn from the media – social and otherwise – and it is barely reported.
But when the statistics about the number of shootings in Chicago is released, it is the topic of memes and posts and you hear it on every evening news broadcast across the land.
This is not to say that there is still not a problem, but to find solutions, don’t we need accurate perceptions?
I think the same thing has happened with regard to police shooting black men and I think the media – again, social and otherwise – have fanned the flames.
Again, please don’t misunderstand. I am not diminishing the fact that sometimes police offers have grave lapses in judgement with tragic consequences. This is a problem that we must address as a society.
But I sometimes wonder about the race component. Are these officers really shooting people only because they are black? Given the same set of circumstances, would these officers have spared a white man?
It’s very difficult to say, because data on police shootings is scarce, but a recent study is somewhat instructional. Reporters Quoctrung Bui and Amanda Cox, writing for the New York Times, reported on the study this past week.
The study confirmed the perception: Black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police.
But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias.
The author of the study is Roland G. Freyer Jr., a professor of economics at Harvard University. He and his students spent 3,000 hours examining more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major city police departments in Texas, Florida and California.
“It is the most surprising result of my career,” Fryer told the New York Times.
Fryer is the youngest African-American to receive tenure at Harvard and the first one to receive a John Bates Clark medal, a prize given to the most promising American economist under 40.
Fryer told the NYT his anger after the deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others drove him to study the issue. “You know, protesting is not my thing,” he said. “But data is my thing. So I decided that I was going to collect a bunch of data and try to understand what really is going on when it comes to racial differences in police use of force.”
The study didn’t say whether the worst examples — St. Louis, Baton Rouge, et. al. – are free of racial bias. But it examined a much larger pool of shootings, including nonfatal ones. And it focused on what happens when police encounters occur, not just how often they happen.
Following is just a small snippet from the NYT’s reporting. I would encourage readers to read the entire article here:
tinyurl.com/h2ze5o3
or check out the study itself here:
tinyurl.com/gngd267
In officer-involved shootings in these 10 cities, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both of these results undercut the idea that the police wield lethal force with racial bias.
But this line of analysis included only encounters in which a shooting took place. A more fundamental question still remained: In the tense moments when a shooting may occur, are police officers more likely to fire if the suspect is black?
To answer this question, Mr. Fryer focused on one city, Houston. The police department there allowed the researchers to look at reports not only for shootings but also for arrests when lethal force might have been justified. Mr. Fryer defined this group to include suspects the police charged with serious offenses like attempting to murder an officer, or evading or resisting arrest. He also considered suspects shocked with Tasers.
And in the arena of “shoot” or “don’t shoot,” Mr. Fryer found that, in tense situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot suspects if the suspect were black. This estimate was not very precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But, in a variety of models that controlled for different factors and used different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites.
The other perception that I think is media driven is that unarmed white men aren’t shot by police.
In 2015, The Washington Post started a real-time database to track fatal police shootings, and the project continues this year. According to reporting by Wesley Lowery, as of Sunday, police have shot and killed 24 unarmed young blacks and 18 unarmed whites. Given the fact that whites make up 62 percent of the population compared to 13 percent for blacks nationwide, there certainly is an indisputable disparity.
Even so, one must wonder why it never makes national news when an unarmed white man is killed by police.
The statistical flip side is that in the nation’s 75 largest counties, a study in 2009 showed that blacks – at 15 percent of the population – accounted for 62 percent of robbery defendants, 57 percent of murder defendants and 45 percent of assault defendants.
Also, statistics from The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research show that each year, approximately 6,000 blacks are murdered. Blacks are killed at six times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. The vast majority of black murders are committed by blacks. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined. Blacks of all ages commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined, and at eleven times the rate of whites alone.
Again, I’m not saying there is no policing problem here. Clearly, there is. Black lives absolutely do matter. But even if we could wave a magic wand and immediately end all black deaths at the hands of police, it would be statistically insignificant with regard to black crime in America.
Shouldn’t we be attacking the problem armed with facts instead of emotion?
A few weeks ago I wrote how the perception in the US today is that we are living in a time when violent crime is spiraling out of control, even though precisely the converse is true.
According to Pew Research, using the latest data from 2014, “The nation’s overall gun death rate has declined 31 percent since 1993. This total includes homicides and suicides, in addition to a smaller number of fatal police shootings, accidental shooting deaths and those of undetermined intent.”
Nonetheless, the perception is that violent crime is on the rise. Ask average Americans and they will likely tell you crime is on the rise.
But why?
In America today – whatever the issue – social media drives the narrative. Then the media – in the relentless pursuit of being first with the story – picks it up and runs with it.
You see this all the time.
So when the FBI uniform crime statistics are released, there is a collective yawn from the media – social and otherwise – and it is barely reported.
But when the statistics about the number of shootings in Chicago is released, it is the topic of memes and posts and you hear it on every evening news broadcast across the land.
This is not to say that there is still not a problem, but to find solutions, don’t we need accurate perceptions?
I think the same thing has happened with regard to police shooting black men and I think the media – again, social and otherwise – have fanned the flames.
Again, please don’t misunderstand. I am not diminishing the fact that sometimes police offers have grave lapses in judgement with tragic consequences. This is a problem that we must address as a society.
But I sometimes wonder about the race component. Are these officers really shooting people only because they are black? Given the same set of circumstances, would these officers have spared a white man?
It’s very difficult to say, because data on police shootings is scarce, but a recent study is somewhat instructional. Reporters Quoctrung Bui and Amanda Cox, writing for the New York Times, reported on the study this past week.
The study confirmed the perception: Black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police.
But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias.
The author of the study is Roland G. Freyer Jr., a professor of economics at Harvard University. He and his students spent 3,000 hours examining more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major city police departments in Texas, Florida and California.
“It is the most surprising result of my career,” Fryer told the New York Times.
Fryer is the youngest African-American to receive tenure at Harvard and the first one to receive a John Bates Clark medal, a prize given to the most promising American economist under 40.
Fryer told the NYT his anger after the deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others drove him to study the issue. “You know, protesting is not my thing,” he said. “But data is my thing. So I decided that I was going to collect a bunch of data and try to understand what really is going on when it comes to racial differences in police use of force.”
The study didn’t say whether the worst examples — St. Louis, Baton Rouge, et. al. – are free of racial bias. But it examined a much larger pool of shootings, including nonfatal ones. And it focused on what happens when police encounters occur, not just how often they happen.
Following is just a small snippet from the NYT’s reporting. I would encourage readers to read the entire article here:
tinyurl.com/h2ze5o3
or check out the study itself here:
tinyurl.com/gngd267
In officer-involved shootings in these 10 cities, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both of these results undercut the idea that the police wield lethal force with racial bias.
But this line of analysis included only encounters in which a shooting took place. A more fundamental question still remained: In the tense moments when a shooting may occur, are police officers more likely to fire if the suspect is black?
To answer this question, Mr. Fryer focused on one city, Houston. The police department there allowed the researchers to look at reports not only for shootings but also for arrests when lethal force might have been justified. Mr. Fryer defined this group to include suspects the police charged with serious offenses like attempting to murder an officer, or evading or resisting arrest. He also considered suspects shocked with Tasers.
And in the arena of “shoot” or “don’t shoot,” Mr. Fryer found that, in tense situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot suspects if the suspect were black. This estimate was not very precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But, in a variety of models that controlled for different factors and used different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites.
The other perception that I think is media driven is that unarmed white men aren’t shot by police.
In 2015, The Washington Post started a real-time database to track fatal police shootings, and the project continues this year. According to reporting by Wesley Lowery, as of Sunday, police have shot and killed 24 unarmed young blacks and 18 unarmed whites. Given the fact that whites make up 62 percent of the population compared to 13 percent for blacks nationwide, there certainly is an indisputable disparity.
Even so, one must wonder why it never makes national news when an unarmed white man is killed by police.
The statistical flip side is that in the nation’s 75 largest counties, a study in 2009 showed that blacks – at 15 percent of the population – accounted for 62 percent of robbery defendants, 57 percent of murder defendants and 45 percent of assault defendants.
Also, statistics from The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research show that each year, approximately 6,000 blacks are murdered. Blacks are killed at six times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. The vast majority of black murders are committed by blacks. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined. Blacks of all ages commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined, and at eleven times the rate of whites alone.
Again, I’m not saying there is no policing problem here. Clearly, there is. Black lives absolutely do matter. But even if we could wave a magic wand and immediately end all black deaths at the hands of police, it would be statistically insignificant with regard to black crime in America.
Shouldn’t we be attacking the problem armed with facts instead of emotion?
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