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Are police officers more likely to kill African-American suspects?
1College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA. gkleck@mailer.fsu.edu
Abstract:
In recent psychological research decisions by police officers to shoot criminal suspects are often assumed to be racially biased, and it is concluded that officers are more likely to shoot African-American suspects. This assumption was tested with national data on persons killed during legal interventions and with data bearing on the African-American proportion of criminal suspects law enforcement officers face. Analysis indicates that the African-American share of persons killed by law enforcement officers, while higher than the African-American percentage of the U.S. population, is lower than one would expect based on the estimated African-American proportion of suspects confronted in violent encounters or the African-American percentage of suspects who kill police officers.
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