In 2011, for example, New York officers fired at 41 suspects and killed nine of them — an astonishingly low number in light of New York’s population and the size of its police force. Virtually all of these shootings were justified.
Blacks were 22% of those fatalities; whites were 44% of them. Yet blacks were 67% of all suspects who fired at the police; no white suspect fired at the police.
Moreover, blacks made up 73% of all shooting perpetrators in the city in 2011, according to the victims of, and witnesses to, those shootings, though they are only 23% of the population. Whites committed less than three percent of all shootings, though they are close to 35% of the city’s population.
This pattern holds nationally. The black percentage of suspects killed by the police, historically around 29%, is lower than one would expect based on the best available data on those who represent a mortal threat to the police, according to Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member