Updated: November 15, 2017
Also see this 2020 update. And an important caveat.
Using data from 2014 through mid November 2017 (killedbypolice.net for 2014 and the Washington Post thereafter) Oklahoma City Police kill an average of 6.3 per year; NYPD 0.57 a year. The rate in Oklahoma City is 11 times as high. The rate per officer is 27 times higher in Oklahoma City. That means a person is Oklahoma City is 11 times more likely to be killed by police and a police officer is 27 times more likely to kill.
Original Post:
I’ve said for a while that when it comes to police use of lethal-force, an exclusive laser-like focus on race is misguided. It’s is a red herring. If one actually wants to reduce police-involved shootings — as opposed to simply being outraged at the latest incident — there are easier ways to do this than eliminating racism and racial disparity in America. There are low-hanging fruits to reduce the overall level at which cops shoot people.
There will be the next police-incident worthy of outrage. We can go from incident to incident, outrage to outrage, and pretend it’s just about race. But it’s not.
I’m not saying race doesn’t play a factor. This is American. And indeed, blacks make up a greater percent of unarmed people killed by police. The disparity could be racial bias; it could be related to violence in segregated America; it could be something else. Honestly, we’re never going to settle the debate, and I don’t know if we need to. Police misconduct doesn’t only happen to blacks. And the numbers of innocent unarmed people killed by police is simply not that large. Nor is it increasing.
Police have shot and killed 706 people this year. Forty-one were unarmed. Fifteen of those were black. (Keep in mind “unarmed” does not mean no threat, and conversely somebody could be armed and not be an imminent threat.) I get the argument that murder is worse at the hands of the state. I even agree with it. I understand police need to be held accountable. But at some point the numbers matter, at least to put things in perspective.
This is a country of 320 million people. There are 765,000 sworn police officers. There are 15,000 murders (and murderers). What’s an acceptable level of police-involved shooting? What’s the goal? And if you’re not happy addressing that question, or if you think the only acceptable answer is zero, than you’re not a productive part of the solution.
Look, I know some cops do shitty things. And others make honest mistakes. But there are more cops in America than residents of Baltimore. We can and should criticize individual incidents. But we don’t harp on every crime in Baltimore — and there are a lot — to show how the whole city is filled with evil. (And I do wish we cared a bit more about victims like Michael “Chef Mike” Bates who was just shot and killed even after he complied with the three men who robbed him.)
Does a bomb in Chelsea mean we should ban Muslims from America? (No, is the answer.) There will be the next horrific crime and the next terrorist attack just as sure as there will be the next bad police-involved shooting. Instead we’re seeing something close to a moral panic, with police as the Folk Devils, we need to reduce how often they happen.
There are probably a few dozen bad (as in criminally bad) police-involved shootings a year. That’s a couple a month, keep in mind. And if they’re all recorded, that’s one every other week. But far more numerous are shootings which may be legally justifiable but did not have to happen. They’re justifiable but not necessary. We’re talking perhaps something in the rage of a few hundred a year. And the bulk of these happens west of the Mississippi (see a future post). The best way to reduce bad shootings is to reduce the overall level of police lethal force.
Twenty-five percent of those who are shot and killed by police are black. Since blacks are only 13 percent of the general population, some claim this represents an “epidemic” of police violence against African Americans. But using the overall population as the denominator for interactions with police makes no sense.
America is filled with racial disparities in poverty, violent crime, calls for police service, and those who felonious kill police officers. I mean, 96 percent of those killed by police are men, and men make up less than half the population. Is there an epidemic of misandric cops gunning for other men? I don’t think so. It’s more likely that men are more likely to pose lethal threats to police officers.
And this brings me back to Oklahoma, where Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by a police officer even though he wasn’t an imminent threat. A while back I red-flagged Tulsa and Oklahoma because I couldn’t help but notice: they sure do seem to be a hell of a lot of police-involved shootings in Oklahoma. And now we have more data than we did a year ago.
We’re not seeing an epidemic of police killing black people in particular in Oklahoma. The Sooner State is pretty white (72 percent, 8.6 percent Native American, and 7.4 percent black). The racial disparity in Oklahoma is pretty much in line with the rest of the nation. Since 2014, nationwide, the average annual rate of being shot and killed by police is 3.2 per million. It’s higher for blacks (6.93) and lower for whites (2.37). That’s a 3:1 ratio.
What we see is that more white people get killed by cops in Oklahoma than all people killed by cops in majority minority New York City. Simply put, police in Oklahoma are shooting a lot of people and the NYPD isn’t. In Oklahoma, cops shoot and kill 28 people per year. In New York City, which has more than twice as many people as the entire state of Oklahoma, police kill about 5 people a year. What gives?
People in the state of Oklahoma are 12 times as likely as New Yorkers to be killed by police.
People in Oklahoma City are 20 times [11 times, see update, above] as likely as people in New York City to be shot and killed by police! New York City has about 2.5 times more police officers per capita. That means an officer in Oklahoma City is about 50 times more likely than an NYPD officer to shoot and kill somebody. [27 times, see update above]
These differences are huge! Shocking! Unbelievable!
And yet nobody seems to notice or care. [See all the states in this post.]
I assume most of the police-involved shooting even in Oklahoma are legally justifiable. I’m not saying these cops are committing crimes, but I am saying a large percentage of these shootings aren’t necessary. They don’t need to happen. I mean, it’s likely cops in Oklahoma will always shoot more people than cops in New York City. Sometimes police have no choice but to shoot somebody. And Oklahoma isn’t New York. But it doesn’t have to be 12 or 20 times more. I can’t conceive of how a per-capita disparity this large could be justified or explained away by any variables except police training.
So I look at the Terence Crutcher being shot, and I think: maybe that really is how police in Tulsa roll. I don’t know. And I wonder what it is about NYPD training and policy that so reduces use of lethal force. Whatever it is, and I’m sure it’s a combination of things, it shouldn’t be that hard for somebody to copy best practices. Instead of asking what individual police officers are doing wrong (though we can ask that, too), why don’t we figure out what the NYPD is doing right? We have models that work. The solution involves some combination of better hiring standards, better policy, better training, and more accountability.
Just reducing Oklahoma’s use of lethal force to the national average would save 14 lives a year. That seems doable. And good. It’s good for the people not to get shot. And it’s good for social and racial justice. And it’s also good for police officers who get to go home without killing somebody. Cops don’t want to shoot people. You think Officer Betty Shelby wouldn’t like to go back in time and not shoot?
And let me mention I’m only picking on Oklahoma because of the recent Tulsa shooting. Oklahoma isn’t even the worst state when it comes to high levels of police-involved shootings. Currently, in 2016, it doesn’t even crack the top five.
[I did some brief computations on crime (some 2015 UCR data is already out!) because police violence is best predicted by public violence. In 2014 and 2015, Oklahoma has an annual murder rate of 5.4 per 100,000. This is 30 percent higher than New York City’s 4.1. Aggravated assaults and total violent crime, however, are 35 percent higher in New York City. So it seems that Oklahoma does have a violent murder problem separate from any crime problem. But nothing here would even get close to accounting for twelve- and twenty-fold differences in police use of lethal force.]
Notes: Annual rate is based on the sum total of Jan 1, 2014 to Sep 20, 2016, multiplied by 0.367.
2014 data: http://www.killedbypolice.net/
2015-present: https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings
Oklahoma crime stats: https://www.ok.gov/osbi/documents/Crime%20in%20Oklahoma%2C%202015.pdf
Crime stats: http://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/crimnet/ojsa/indexcrimes/Regions.pdf
Race data is from the Washington Post, so it starts in 2015. Annual rate is the sum from 2015 to Sep 20, 2016, multiplied by 0.58. National rates based on 318.9 million with a white population of 200 million and a black population 36 million. Feel free to double check my math. Corrections and comments always welcome.
I've seen you work this angle up before Peter, but the question still remains, WHAT is the NYPD doing? I'd like to see (maybe you have some way of making this contact and getting this commentary?) what some UoF trainers from NYPD think about shootings like Tulsa, and what they train NYPD to do differently. Because I buy your line of reasoning but I've tried to figure out the differences and I just don't know the answers.
Interestingly when it comes to hiring standards both agencies seem very similar, although NYPD is more detailed in specifying what they expect, and Tulsa does not seem to give a specific list of disqualifying issues the way NYPD does.
nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/applicant_processing/candidate_resource_booklet.pdf
tulsapolice.org/join-tpd/candidate-study-guides.aspx
If I knew, I'd tell you. I'm trying to work with some of my NYPD connections. One problem is that people who know what they're doing, they don't know what they're doing differently than another locale. A proper research project is bigger than I'm willing to do. I'm putting all this data out here partially in the hope that somebody else can help figure things out!
And I suspect those officially listed standards are less meaningful than what happens in the black box of the hiring process. I can assure you that the background investigators in the NYPD do take their job seriously. But what does that mean?
I think training is more important that hiring. And even it's not, it's easier to focus on training in terms of making productive changes.
On the street, and why I think there will always be differences, east vs west, is less density out west. So less back up. No two-person patrols. A more disperse drug culture, perhaps. And gun laws and gun culture. Most NYPD officers have never touched a gun before becoming a cop. Maybe those cops don't think of the gun as the go-to answer? But that's delving into psychology, which I try to avoid.
Is there any statistics about if two person patrols get into more or less officer involved shootings than solo? Or what the use of force difference is if there are less occurrences in two person patrols as opposed to solo
Cultures and communities really are different…not only across police departments but across states, cities, and neighborhoods. Just look at the political differences between cities and rural areas. We act and talk about the US as if it is this huge unified mono-culture, but it isn't. I've lived in Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Dubois, Id (population 450), Provo, Ut, New York City, Williamsburg, VA, Baltimore, and now Denver. I also spent time in Mosul, Iraq, and the states of MO, LA, GA, and OK while serving in the Miltary. People are very different in all of these locations. Interestingly, a big difference I've noticed in values and behavior is between those from the eastern and western parts of the US.
To cut it short, i completely agree that each police department is different and that best practices need to be shared across departments. But I'm not so sure you are going to find some magical policing best practice by comparing the rate of police shootings in NYC to the entire state of Oklahoma (or even the city of Tulsa). These cities are completely different beasts.
For starters, guns are much more prevalent in Oklahoma, which should not be underestimated…but apart from that, libertarian and macho attitudes towards crime and authority will be much more common in OK..not to mention the stronger military presence and influence on the population. This is only scratching the surface, but from a data perspective I think it would be more fruitful to compare apples to apples–i.e. cities that are more similar in terms of size, values, heritage, diversity, religion, geography, and so on–when trying to identify policing best practices.
I felt as though this is an interesting post. I have seen others postings similar to this on police shootings in Oklahoma. I have been monitoring this situation and believe also that it is related to training, here in Oklahoma. Considering that there are only two major cities in Oklahoma, and their departments train their own staff and have designated trainers and training departments within their agency. They have designated resources to affect the responses of officers to such situations of use of deadly force.
However the smaller departments may not have any designated in house trainers with the skills and abilities to affect change in their use of deadly force arena. This is a problem that is related to budgets for training and overtime cost, with outsourcing such training.
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