On Tuesday's New Day, CNN correspondent Jean Casarez filed a report based on Washington Post findings that blacks are disproportionately more likely to be shot and killed by American police officers police relative to their proportion of the population as compared to whites, and hyped the possibility that the numbers could end up worse in 2016 in spite of the fact that a significant portion of suspects shot so far in 2016 have not yet had their race identified.
Her report introduced a segment showcasing a study claiming that the "anti-black disparity" cannot be explained merely by blacks being more likely to commit crimes, as presented by Professor Phillip Atiba Goff of the Center for Policing Equity.
Casarez recalled The Washington Post's findings that, in 2015, about twice as many whites as blacks were killed by the police, but then ominously intoned: "But, if you look at these numbers as a percentage of the population, a very different story begins to emerge." The CNN correspondent began her report:
The Washington Post launched a real time database in 2015 that tracks deadly police shootings based on news reports, public records, internet databases and the Washington Post's own reporting in an attempt to answer that very question. It's important to note this is raw data, and we don't know the full circumstances of each individual shooting.
She then added:
First, let's start with the shooting deaths in 2015 by race -- 990 people were shot dead by police in 2015, and, out of that number, more white Americans were killed than black Americans -- 494 to 258. But, if you look at these numbers as a percentage of the population, a very different story begins to emerge. Blacks made up 13 percent of the population in 2015, but accounted for 26 percent of those shot and killed by police. Whites, by comparison, made up 62 percent of the population but accounted for 50 percent of the police shooting deaths.
Casarez then suggested that 2016 may end up even worse for black suspects than 2015:
Now, this disparity also bore out when looking at victims of police shootings who were not carrying a weapon. Look at this. About 15 percent of black Americans shot and killed by police in 2015 were unarmed, compared with about seven percent of whites. Now, this year, 2016, there have been 215 people shot dead by the police. That is roughly a six percent increase in what we saw in the first six months of 2015, suggesting, if things don't change, we could end the year with even greater disparities.
Not accounted for by Casarez's report is that, if you crunch the numbers for 2016, nine percent of suspects shot and killed in 2016 have so far not been identified by race, while the percentages of whites and blacks so far verified in 2016 are not drastically different than 2015. About 50 percent were identified as white for all of 2016, while about 46 percent have already been identified as white in 2016. The percentage who were black was 26 percent for 2015 and so far appears to be about 24 percent in 2016. It is premature to speculate about how likely the numbers are to end up significantly different from last year.
Co-host Chris Cuomo then introduced the study from the Center for Policing Equity, which was not given any ideological label:
So that is a good starting point for a look at what happens but also why. All right, the raw numbers certainly give you a sense of what happens here. But our next guest took on the question of why, and looked at the broader subject of police force and didn't limit the definition to just shooting deaths. His findings show, even when police used nonlethal methods like pepper spray or a baton, an "anti-black disparity," as he calls it, still exists.
Below is a complete transcript of the segment from the Tuesday, July 12, New Day on CNN:
POPPY HARLOW: The police shooting deaths of two black men in Minnesota and in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, reigniting a polarizing debate over race and policing. Is race a factor when it comes to police shootings? How much so? There has been so much rhetoric. We want to lay out the facts for you. Our correspondent, Jean Casarez, has been digging through the numbers. It's so important to get it right, especially when you're talking about the proportion of the population as a whole, but it's incredibly complex. Walk us through it.
JEAN CASAREZ: It is. Thank you, Poppy. The Washington Post launched a real time database in 2015 that tracks deadly police shootings based on news reports, public records, internet databases and The Washington Post's own reporting in an attempt to answer that very question. It's important to note this is raw data, and we don't know the full circumstances of each individual shooting.
First, let's start with the shooting deaths in 2015 by race -- 990 people were shot dead by police in 2015, and, out of that number, more white Americans were killed than black Americans -- 494 to 258. But, if you look at these numbers as a percentage of the population, a very different story begins to emerge. Blacks made up 13 percent of the population in 2015, but accounted for 26 percent of those shot and killed by police. Whites, by comparison, made up 62 percent of the population but accounted for 50 percent of the police shooting deaths.
Now, this disparity also bore out when looking at victims of police shootings who were not carrying a weapon. Look at this. About 15 percent of black Americans shot and killed by police in 2015 were unarmed, compared with about seven percent of whites. Now, this year, 2016, there have been 215 people shot dead by the police. That is roughly a six percent increase in what we saw in the first six months of 2015, suggesting, if things don't change, we could end the year with even greater disparities. Chris?
CHRIS CUOMO: All right, Jean, so that is a good starting point for a look at what happens but also why. All right, the raw numbers certainly give you a sense of what happens here. But our next guest took on the question of why, and looked at the broader subject of police force and didn't limit the definition to just shooting deaths. His findings show, even when police used nonlethal methods like pepper spray or a baton, an "anti-black disparity," as he calls it, still exists. Joining us now is the president and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity, and professor at John Jay College of Justice, Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff. ...Give us what the headline is from your research. What is the reality?
PHILLIP ATIBA GOFF, CENTER FOR POLICING EQUITY: So -- thank you for having me on. Thank you for engaging with this in a serious way. There's been a conversation for years now that we see racial disparities in law enforcement outcomes, and why do we see that? On some folks' side, they say, "Well, it's because of bias on the cops." On another side, they say, "Well, what's really going on is there's more crime in those communities." And so we wanted to know whether crime is a primary or sufficient explanation for the racial disparities we see in use of force -- across the board, not just deadly force. So what we did is we controlled for crime, right, for arrests, which is the best racial demographic data that we've got, by demographics. We controlled for all offenses in the BJS data set, Bureau of Justice Statistics, we find a persistent racial bias, right, a racial disparity, that doesn't favor black people.
CUOMO: So let's tick off some of these notions: Well, the reason that you have more incidents with blacks is because blacks commit all the crime -- 70 percent, 80 percent of the crime are blacks, and that's why. It's just the number of contacts, not any other factor. Your take?
GOFF: Right, and so that's exactly the argument that we were trying to figure out. And in doing science when the data are as raw and sort of preliminary as they are right now -- and frankly sometimes so poor -- it's quite easier to say, "Hey, that's not a sufficient explanation," than to say, "This is the one explanation." So that's what we were looking at. Is crime a sufficient driver? Is it a sufficient explanation? And it turns out, just no, in the sample that we had. Now, we, in this particular report, looked at 12 cities, okay, but they were a fairly diverse range of cities. So we had transit police, we had county, we had city. We had some police departments that were majority white, some that were majority black and Latino, some that had no majority. And across every one of them -- literally every one -- when we control for all offenses, for all the different crimes that someone might commit in that area, it turns out that crime is not sufficient to explain the disparities that we see. So, when we're having these conversations about what's causing the disparities, you know, contact has got to be one of the issues because it's much more likely to happen that you have contact with law enforcement if you're black. But it's not sufficient to explain everything that's going on. And that's what we were finding in our report.
CUOMO: Is there anything statistical to support the notion that blacks resist more than whites?
GOFF: It's a great question, and the answer is unfortunately -- and I hate to be a social scientist about that -- we just don't know yet. And the reason is, you can have information about resistance sometimes recorded -- many departments do that. But it's always recorded after the fact. And it's not recorded in the same context as, "Well, I put my hand on my gun," or, "I started using verbal judo or speaking aggressively to that person," and "then they got an attitude with me." You don't have a time course to it. The data are not set up to have a good sense of, "What does resistance mean?" and "What did the officer do that might have provoked it or might have tried to de-escalate it?" These interactions are really complex. They're dynamic. And without better data -- in fact, the body camera images are going to be the best that we've got -- without that, it's really difficult to get a good sense of who might be resisting more, and, if they're resisting more, why?
CUOMO: And, Professor, a conversation for another time is: Why don't you have better data? And that is part of the sin of policing in this country, is that we do not track data there, and the government loves to track data, but why not here? Conversation for a different day. Dr. Phil Goff, thank you very much for helping us understand a complex problem a little bit better.
