How Many Police Kill Black Men

Over the years, there have been numerous cases of African-American men being shot and killed by white police officers. According to many of these police officers, it was just a rapid decision to pull the trigger. Correspondingly, implicit biases have resulted in these ideologies, making African-American men seem more violent than white men. In fact, there are many studies that demonstrate how police officers are affected by implicit biases. For example, a study had college students play a computer game where the objective was to shoot dangerous armed

Chapter 4 in The Color of Justice: Race, ethnicity, and crime in America, was about the relations between society and law enforcement officers. This has been a major topic, especially in the United States for a long time. The unfortunate statistic that minorities are more likely to encounter being killed, arrested, and victimized by excessive physical force; has been a real issue even in today’s society. However, police departments are trying to combat the way police officers interact with the community; especially those of color. Although steps have been takes there are still some instances where police aggression happens. With all of the issues that arise between certain minority populated community’s police it is evident that conflict

Ironically, “Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or, were armed or threatening the officer with potentially lethal force.” “Alternatively, some believe that these statistics are

Police shootings are unfortunate events but whenever there is a shooting, the topic of race emerges. Police shootings have always been the highlights on news channels and there is always the racially biased narrative that keeps repeating itself yet no one seems to dispute this narrative. However, did you know that studies show a police officer is eighteen and a half times more likely to be killed by a African American male than an unarmed African American male is to be killed by a police officer? In fact, a recent “deadly force” study by Washington State University researcher Lois James found that police officers were actually less likely to shoot an unarmed black suspect than unarmed Caucasian or Hispanic suspect in simulated threat scenarios. Some would argue that there are still police shootings all over America and they occur when police officers

The above study, proves that police officers show different characteristics, then they would to someone who was Caucasian. As mentioned formerly, it is almost as it is in the police officials ‘nature’; just like women may hold their purse a bit tighter when passing a man of colour on the street. It is set into our culture to be cautious of some individuals of a minority group, just like it is part of the police culture to use “extensive force”. Much like how it is part of the African American’s culture to be more cautious around police officers. Following the same point, African Americans may not feel safe in the hands of police officers, which may cause the distaste. “The internalization of negative Black stereotypes may be outside of his or her conscious awareness, the individual seeks to as simulate and be accepted by Whites, and actively or passively distances him/herself from other blacks.” (James, 2001, p.18) This statement shows evidence that it is hard-wired into minority groups inner brain to be cautious around people who are of high authority; especially if they are Caucasian. Based off of the on-going discrimination that is being brought upon them.

In the previous year, the amount of people killed by the police department has increased, and even worse African Americans are three times more likely than Caucasians to be killed by the hands of a police. In 2015, the percent of unarmed African Americans killed was 30 percent compared to 19 percent of Caucasians. Although, 2016 is not over yet already 793 people have been killed by policemen. Mike Luckovich drew this cartoon representing the fear of African Americans, and to point out that recently the shootings are reoccurring. The number has made it so difficult for African Americans to live peacefully, they are in constant fear that their life could be taken away by the police. The cartoonist drew a black man in the car conversing with

In The United States of America much of mainstream media picks up on police violences that includes shootings and beatings that get dished out to anybody caught on camera. One of the earlier and most controversial events in the media was that of Detroit in 1967 between police and African American protesters. This event started when a group of African American partygoers were arrested for having a party at an illegal bar and the Detroit Police Department aggressively arrested the partygoers, sparking a conflict with citizens. When police make a lawful arrest there is never a reason to resist or fight back, but when police starting throwing and pushing citizens around during an arrest there is understanding among protests to be started. The protests

Police need better training so they can know when to pull the trigger . if police had better training it would teach them what task to use in different situations . it also will prevent a lot of deaths agonist african americans . the better training will be a good cause so their officers aren't getting arrested for shooting someone when they weren't taught what task to use in that situation. Some officers don't get caught guilty for example the sander’s case .it isn’t ok for officers to kill innocent bystanders and get away with it .

Implicit biases can lead to race-based policing even without making a conscious decision to do so. Evidence proves that African Americans and Latinos are stopped for traffic offenses more frequently than Whites even though they do not commit more traffic offenses than Whites. (Richardson, 2015) One study revealed that police “officers were more likely to see weapons in the hands of unarmed Black individuals than in the hands of unarmed White individuals as a result of implicit bias” (Richardson). These discoveries mirror studies indicating that racial biases lead people to interpret the actions of Black individuals more suspiciously than they would interpret the same actions if they were performed by White individuals. (Richardson)

The Department of Justice data indicates that per capita, police are approximately five times more likely to shoot a Black person than a White person (Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, & Ma, 2014). Some argue that the discrepancy when use of force is concerned, is driven by the types of activities that Blacks and Whites engage in (Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, & Ma, 2014). The thought is that if Blacks conduct more crimes than Whites, it would make sense that Blacks will be overrepresented in the encounters (Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, & Ma, 2014). Even though officers were still more likely to use force against Blacks, it was largely because officers were more likely to encounter Blacks in dangerous neighborhoods (Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, & Ma, 2014). Studies using controlled racial differences in arrest rates eliminated the effect of race on shootings. It was found that race generally had little effect of sensitivity. Regardless of race, police participants were usually able to distinguish between armed and unarmed suspects well (Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, & Ma,

Racial profiling often goes hand and hand with other practices by law enforcement, often the defining moments of the life or death situation for African-Americans. In three different studies analyzing the decision time to shoot or not to shoot conducted by Correll, all findings found “participants were quicker to shoot the armed African American than the armed White. Conversely the participants were quicker to “not shoot” the unarmed White. The most common errors were shooting the unarmed African American and not-shooting the armed White. All of these results are consistent with a Black-crime implicit bias and this bias was found in both African American and White participants.

Unfortunately, police brutality is a trend that continues to increase daily. In fact, the Washington Post stated there was 807 people shot, and killed by police in 2016. Not to mention, in 2015 there was 901 people shot, and killed by police in the United States. However, there are many underlying factors that lead to any police involved shooting, or police brutality incident that occurs. Furthermore, it is important to understand these factors, so officers could prevent any more police brutality incidents from reoccurring. One factor, that has led to police brutality incidents in the past, and continues to cause police brutality incidents today is when an officer makes a negative assumption about a specific ethnic group, or a distinct group of people who share cultural characteristics (Zastrow, Kirst-Ashman, 2015). This is may cause an officer to think that because the individuals are the same race, and share a common set of physical characteristics and common beliefs, that they are all the same (Zastrow, Kirst-Ashman, 2015).

Racial Bias are a direct correlation to police violence against African Americans, stereotypes perpetuated by social constructions and media representation along with individual prejudice help by police officers view African Americans as a threat especially African American men. Police trust this ideology of “threat” to assist in their use of excessive force against African Americans to comply. (Tyler, 2011; Tyler et al., 2015, Skinner, Haas,2016).

The hoodie and jeans that the kidnapper had been wearing matched my brother’s attire. Physically, however, the two were worlds apart. The lone similarity was the color of their skin. This whole ordeal shook us up for awhile. I remember there being times when just the sound of a police siren made my heart start pounding. But to blame the cop with disregard of the situation would be unfair. Had there not been an AMBER alert, I am not sure he would have made the same decisions. But regardless of the situation, he ultimately pulled a gun out on two adolescents. Perhaps the cop made an illusory correlation between black male in a hoodie and violence? Would he have reached for the gun had he heard that the felon was white? I have no idea, but research suggests that this is a valid question. If my brother was not black, there is a likelihood that we would not have gone through that ordeal. In order to confirm prejudice as a cause for the cop’s behavior, we would have to observe a condition where the suspect is white. But I do think recent natural experiments have proposed/confirmed/provided evidence similar claims, supporting the generalizability of our

Law Enforcement kill unarmed black suspects five times more per capita than unarmed white suspects yet the Department of Justice data does not indicate whether racial bias is the reason police officers react differently to white people in comparison to people of color.