As we talk about the necessary reforms to police tactics that certainly should be achieved and championed; shouldn’t the starting point be to find out how many black people and other races are killed during police custody and encounters?
I spent a few hours this past weekend researching studies and sources to obtain accurate records of just how many people die while in police custody each year. Here is the information and sources that had varied numbers and include a combination of both private and government agencies and groups. These include the US Justice Dept. which has been specifically tasked with gathering and publishing the data since Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) in 2014.
The news media and Fatal Encounters Project are open information sources that have become key to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ data collection effort. A technical report the agency released in July 2019 illustrates the importance of these sources. From 2003 to 2009, the report states, the agency’s Arrest-Related Death program identified 375 to 496 arrest-related deaths per year. In 2011, when program officials began collecting data from open information sources, they identified 689 deaths that year. The number of deaths of people while in custody has been declining for the last 7 years for both black and white people.
In 2014, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) of 2013. The DCRA specifies that states are responsible for reporting information to the Attorney General on deaths in custody, which includes deaths during the process of arrest. This law includes potential sanctions for non-reporting states of up to 10% of their Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) funds. Because BJS’s statutory authority precludes its data from being used for anything other than statistical or research purposes, the Department of Justice has determined that data-collection responsibilities for DCRA reside with the Bureau of Justice Assistance.
Reporting differences by manner of death to cover manner of death, BJS includes (justifiable and non-justifiable) law enforcement homicides, suicides, deaths due to natural causes, deaths resulting from accidents, and undetermined or unknown manners of death in its definition of arrest-related deaths. The media often report on law enforcement homicides, but other manners of death may not receive comparable news coverage. Overall, 63% of the arrest-related deaths identified were reported to be justifiable or non-justifiable law enforcement homicides, followed by suicides (18%), accidents (12%), and deaths due to natural causes (1%). See here
There has been an average of 437 police custody deaths per year for 2018 & 2019.
Suicide, accidents & death due to natural causes total 31%.
Homicides while in custody, including both justifiable and un-justifiable equate to an average of 302 deaths per year.
The rates [of death] were higher among non-Hispanic blacks (0.6 per 100,000 population) and Hispanics (0.3 per 100,000) than among non-Hispanic whites (0.1 per 100,000),” according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), an division of the DOJ.
In addition to Texas and California, there were eight states with more than 10 arrest-related deaths in the study period. In five states (Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania), more than 75% of arrest-related deaths were identified using media sources. In the remaining three (Missouri, Ohio, and Washington), 75% or fewer of the deaths were initially identified using media sources.
Another study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded a black man in the U.S. has an estimated 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police during his lifetime. They claim that is 2.5 times the odds for a non-Hispanic white man. That it is 1 in 2,000 chance in a lifetime for a white man.
But this study in my view is flawed for several reasons as it does not specify what number of years they are pulling data from, as well as other variables they are using as a basis for the factoring or extrapolation of data.
Here is a breakdown of confirmed data points including those from the BJS and DOJ death in custody records compared to the claims of the PNAS study.
US Population 328,000,000
Black American Population 37,144,530
Current US Documented Life Expectancy for white males 78.54 years
Current US Documented Life Expectancy for black males 75.4 years
The PNAS study says a black man has a 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police in his lifetime. So… let’s do the math.
37,144,530 total black populations
Dived by 1,000 (for the per 1,000 base number) = 37,144 deaths
Divided by 75.4-year average life black life expectancy = 493 deaths per year
But according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics we average a total of 437 deaths per year for all people in custody for all races and death types. These deaths include all causes including justifiable or non-justifiable law enforcement homicides, suicides, accidents, and deaths due to natural causes.
If we use the data from the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) of 2013 that is gathered from police departments nationwide, and compare to the flawed PNAS study, these numbers are drastically different. For example, according the DCRA the number of deaths of people in custody between 2013 and 2019 annually averages 437 deaths for all races combined.
According to U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics… from the 2015 – 2019 the percent of arrest-related deaths – white deaths represented 45.7% of all arrests, and blacks were 32.9% of all arrests. Again – the average number of deaths per year is 437. These deaths range anywhere from the point of police encounter, all the way to the point of long-term imprisonment after being convicted of a crime.
With 32.9% of deaths of 437 annually are blacks in custody. That is an average of 144 per year. Not during an arrest, but from the point of arrest through prison incarceration after conviction; and include all causes of death including natural causes, homicides both justified and unjustified, etc.
144 deaths of black residents per year with a population of 37,144,530 black Americans – is not a 1 in 1,000 chance of dying in police custody as stated by the Journalist Resource organization. It is a 0.29 chance in 1,000 of dying in police custody. That makes the PNAS study wrong by a factor of 3 times.
That is 144 deaths per year of black Americans while in custody. Including justifiable or non-justifiable law enforcement homicides (63%), followed by suicides (18%), accidents (12%), and deaths due to natural causes (1%). If we use the 63% number that represents both justifiable and non-justifiable law enforcement homicides, that comes to an average of 91 deaths per year. This makes the chances of a black person dying from homicide while in police custody to a 0.18 in 1,000 chance of it happening to a black person in their lifetime. Which makes the PNAS study wrong by a factor of 5 times.
It would seem that we cannot merely trust whatever data and numbers are being circulated on social media and in the mainstream media.
So yes… George Floyd’s death was murder. It should have never happened. Yes… we need review and reform of police tactics and safety policies when arresting people and when detaining for probable cause and crimes.
Do the statistics suggest that we have a systemic problem of racism among law enforcement across the nation? NO.
There are approximately 687,000 police officers in the United States. With an average of 91 black deaths in custody, including both justified and unjustified homicides, that is 1 death for 7,549 police officers. Do those real numbers suggest we have a “systematic racism” problem or excessive use of force problem among our nations police? I certainly do not think so.
Is it possible that there are certain jurisdictions that have more cases of race driven violence and excessive force at the hands of police? Yes.
We already know that the officer that killed George Floyd has been the subject of at least 7 incidents of excessive force in the last several years. Shouldn’t we demand new training and policies in places like Minneapolis that have officers with too many bad incidents? Yes. Shouldn’t this require reforms to the Minneapolis Police Internal Affairs Division? Shouldn’t we focus the investigations on the police department staff, the District Attorney’s Office and Internal Affairs who let this officer keep his job and return to community policing? Absolutely yes to all of these questions.
Based on the numbers, the real documented data… it seems very irresponsible to claim that there is inherent racism in police agencies across our nation.
While the death of George Floyd causes us to be legitimately outraged, it would be very irresponsible to use this information as an emotionally driven pretext to disband, defund, and abolish police departments. What information or data do we have that would indicate that crime would decrease if we moved to a “community policing” approach? I am not sure we have any such data as it’s a social experiment that has never been attempted in our nation.
We do know how dangerous life was on the western frontier before law enforcement was established there. They don’t call it the ‘Wild West’ for nothing. We also have concrete data on just how crime increases in places like New York City, Los Angeles and even Minneapolis when there is a reduction in professional law enforcement officers in those localities. It’s not very pretty, encouraging or supportive of this new push to defund and abolish police departments.
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Here are some other sources I accessed for data.
The study I find to be flawed when compared to others