Police shootings: how statistics can be dangerously misleading when excluding context factors

Abstract

gun in the line of duty is quite rare.1‒4 Miller3 estimates that police use of force against citizens occurs in less than 1.5% of police contacts and that deadly force is used in approximately 360 cases per year compared to 60,000 reported cases of assault against police officers each year.5 Estimates of the use of force in general by police range from 0.1% to 31.8%.6 The problem here is that force is loosely defined by researchers and the public and varies depending on the article read. In addition, the percentage of police shootings compared to all police contacts is a rare but emotionally powerful event. As one example, in an interview with the Washington Post, First Assistant Chief Michel Moore of the LAPD commented that their officers are involved in approximately 1.5 million volatile encounters per year, yet their department had only 15 police shootings resulting in suspect fatalities in 2017.7 Police use of force and use of deadly force is a rare event given the vast numbers of police interactions per year. In approximately 90% of cases of police shooting fatalities the suspect had a weapon.8 When people hear of a shooting, it is easy to fear that police shootings are a common occurrence and that the police shootings are occurring all of the time when in fact if people slow down and examine the overall statistics, they would realize that police shootings are uncommon in the daily activity of law enforcement.9 Despite those handful of cases, less than approximately 1-3% of police shootings are deemed unjustified when all the facts and the full context of the circumstance (context) was examined. Politics also slant the issue by highlighting a police shooting that was justified but portraying the officer’s actions as being unjustified, and this is based on a few facts or opinions prior to any full investigation. Approximately 1% of police shootings appear unjustified. The problem with the statistics of course is how the data is gathered and the definitions used about appropriate degrees of force. I understand that even one unjustified use of lethal force by police is unacceptable, yet given the overall number of police shootings, the percent of unjustified shootings is extremely low. As an example, Minneapolis Police officers recently (2018) shot and killed a Black male and the community threatened to and then rioted because they wanted the police officers arrested and charged with murder. This, despite the facts that: I. The officers were responding to a call of a man brandishing and at least twice firing a gun;