PolicingWhite Police Officers Far More Likely to Use Force in Minority Neighborhoods than Nonwhite Officers
White police officers are far more likely to use force than their nonwhite counterparts, especially in minority neighborhoods, according to a study from Texas A&M University. Researchers found that the outcome is dramatically different when a white officer responds to a call versus a black officer in an otherwise similar call. White officers use force 60 percent more often, on average, than black officers, and fire their guns twice as often.
White police officers are far more likely to use force than their nonwhite counterparts, especially in minority neighborhoods, according to a study from Texas A&M University researchers.
The outcome is dramatically different when a white officer responds to a call versus a Black officer in an otherwise similar call, they found. White officers use force 60 percent more often, on average, than Black officers, and fire their guns twice as often, saidTexas A&M Professor of Economics Mark Hoekstra.
He and doctoral student CarlyWill Sloan detailed their findings in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. While white and Black officers discharge their guns at similar rates in white and racially-mixed neighborhoods, white officers are five times as likely to fire a gun in predominantly Black neighborhoods, according to the study.
As an economist, Hoekstra said he’s interested in fairness and equity concerns, as well as efficiency. The results of the study indicate issues with policing in each of those elements, he said.
“The main question we were trying to answer with the project is, is there a race problem when it comes to use of force? Many people clearly believe that race matters,” he said. “On the other hand, others think these incidents are rare, or that some cops use too much force but without regard for race. In addition, most prior research has concluded race isn’t much of a factor. We found clear evidence that race matters, and clear evidence of a race problem.”
Rather than studying cases where police initiate interactions with the public, or only observing interactions that ended in force and making assumptions about the unobserved interactions, the Texas A&M researchers used a method that differs from previous studies. They obtained data from two major U.S. cities, which are not named in the study, and combed through more than two million calls to 911 emergency lines recorded by dispatchers that contain detailed call addresses, descriptions and priority levels given by the operators.
