Chicago police used more force against black people, although they resisted less often, study says
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Chicago police officers tended to use more force against black people, even though they resisted police slightly less often than white people, according to a study based on data obtained through an open records request.
The disparity between police use of force on black and white people was greatest when lethal force was used, Slate reports in an analysis of 2004 to 2016 data obtained by the Invisible Institute, a journalism production company in Chicago.
In those cases, black people were deemed to present a deadly threat to police officers slightly more often than white people, according to the analysis by freelance journalist and data science consultant Rob Arthur. But police used lethal force in deadly-threat encounters in 43% of the cases involving black people and only 28% of the cases involving white people.
Arthur analyzed the data by converting the situations to numbers. Passive resistance by a subject was given a one, more active resistance was given a two, a physical assault was given a three, and firing a weapon was given a four. Arthur also created a numerical scale for police responses, ranging from a one for a verbal command to a four for firing a weapon.
In all the cases, officers tended to use more force against black people, even though they presented less resistance than white subjects, Arthur wrote for Slate.
“For instance, black subjects offered Level 1 or 2 resistance in 47.5% of cases, as compared to 44% of white subjects who offered the same lower levels of resistance. Meanwhile, black subjects faced Levels 3 or 4 use of force 91.6% of the time, as compared to white subjects who faced those levels of force in 89.2% of cases,” he said.
The data is based on self-reporting by police, who could be downplaying racial disparities. That means that the racial bias could be even worse than the data indicates, Arthur said.
Hat tip to the Marshall Project and the Washington Post.
