As widespread protests in response to George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis officers continue, Americans are calling for reform. Civilian deaths at the hands of police are easier to track and analyze, but documenting use-of-force by police officers presents research obstacles.
As widespread protests in response to George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis officers continue, Americans are calling for reform. Demonstrators carry signs listing the names of black Americans killed by law enforcement and share videos of officers using excessive force on black civilians.
Police disproportionately shoot and kill black AmericansIn March, Dr. Matthew Miller, a veteran gun violence researcher and professor of health sciences and epidemiology at Northeastern University, co-authored a study on civilians who were shot and killed by police officers between 2014 and 2015. In the new study, black Americans were three times more likely to be shot and killed by police officers during interactions where the victim appeared to pose little or no threat to officers, the researchers found.
"We know more about fatal force than we do non-fatal force," said Justin Nix, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Then there are problems with the field itself. Unlike other areas of science, where scientists run randomized controlled studies, you can't run a real-life experiment on racial bias in policing. Officers know they are under a microscope during laboratory simulations, experts say. Large datasets that contain aggregate data don't tell us much about individual incidents, which are inherently subjective.
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