Disproportionate killing of black men by police

“The gun could be in their car, or on them, but it was there at the time they were killed,” says Menifield. “This shouldn’t be surprising because of the availability and ease of getting a gun in the United States.”

High-profile killings of unarmed black men in the last few years –  like that of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, which gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement –  have led many to speculate that white police officers may target nonwhite suspects with lethal force, Menifield says.

The Rutgers-Newark research found, however, that white police officers actually kill black and other minority suspects at lower rates than would be expected if killings were randomly distributed among officers of all races.

The disproportionate killing of black men occurs, according to the researchers, because Institutional and organizational racism in police departments and the criminal justice system targets minority communities with policies – like stop and frisk and the war on drugs — that have more destructive effects.

“The question of the basic causes of racial disparities in police killings has profound real-world implications for policing a diverse society,” Menifield says, suggesting that appropriate reforms for a fundamentally institutional problem would target racism in police department practices and criminal policy that result in over policing of minority populations.

“Today, we have politicians who are arguing for tougher stances on immigration,” Menifield says. “These things have a way of trickling down to other things like tougher sentences on crime and policies that have a disparate impact on minority communities.”

Addressing the problem will not be easy. Menifield says the U.S. Department of Justice needs to enforce the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 that requires police organizations to report data on police killings. This data will allow researchers to thoroughly investigate each case and determine if other variables are driving police behavior.

In addition, he says, police departments need to bring in external reviewers to examine all of their institutional practices including hiring, promotions and training. The long‐running racial discrepancies in the way that force is applied to suspects have significantly eroded trust between law enforcement and the public whom they serve, the researchers argue.

“There is definitely a problem when one race of people are being killed by police at much higher rates than other populations,” Menifield says. “This unfortunate state of affairs is unlikely to improve until fundamental changes in public policy and policing are undertaken.”