Because I’m a curious guy, and happen to have extra time right now, I decided to look into the numbers behind the issue of police violence. The BLM movement says the problem with cops killing black people is really bad and I wanted to see just how bad it is.
To do so, I compiled data from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and the Washington Post. Since 2015, the Washington Post has been keeping a database of every case where the suspect died after being shot by the police. The database is free and available to everyone and they do a good job of keeping it current.
I’m not trying to convince you of anything here. I’m just going to show you what the numbers tell us. If there’s any interest, I’ll make another post with an analysis of the numbers.
But first, a couple of notes. As I mentioned, the Washington Post database only counts instances where the suspect was shot and killed. So, George Floyd is not included in the data. The data indicates whether or not a suspect was armed and the threat level. However, there is no data indicating if the suspect was dangerous. For example, one could be unarmed and still be dangerous (be sure to read to the bottom of this post). For this exercise I assumed that if the suspect was unarmed and attacking then he would be considered dangerous and if he was unarmed and not attacking, he wasn’t dangerous. I realize that just because someone isn’t attacking doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous, but the data won’t let me dig any deeper. However, it is important to note that this will skew the results in favor of the suspect and not in favor of the law enforcement officers.
I did not consider anyone who was identified as being armed. The assumption I made was that if the suspect was armed, the suspect was dangerous.
Finally, I looked at 2018 since it was the most recent year for which I can find a complete set of data. Taking a quick look at 2019 and 2020, the numbers appear to be similar for all three years.
Here we go…
In 2018 the U.S. Population was 328,239,523 comprised of 72.2% white and 12.7% black. Since the issue contrasts black vs. white, other races are ignored (sorry).
By race, the percentage of all crimes is 69% white and 27% black.
The total number of arrests for all black and white suspects is 9,842,400.
WHITE SUSPECTS
- Total unarmed white suspects killed: 25
- Total unarmed and attacking white suspects killed: 11
- Percent of arrests where white suspect was killed: 0.0001620%
- Percent of arrests where white suspect was not killed: 99.99984%
- Total unarmed and not attacking white suspects killed: 14
- Percent of arrests where white suspect was killed: 0.0002061%
- Percent of arrests where white suspect was not killed: 99.9997939%
BLACK SUSPECTS
- Total unarmed black suspects killed: 23
- Total unarmed and attacking black suspects killed: 9
- Percent of arrests where black suspect was killed: 0.0003387%
- Percent of arrests where white suspect was not killed: 99.99966%
- Total unarmed and not attacking black suspects killed: 14
- Percent of arrests where black suspect was killed 0.0005268%
- Percent of arrests where black suspect was not killed: 99.9994732%
Totals (both races):
- Total – 48
- Unarmed and not attacking – 28
- Percent of arrests where suspect was unarmed and not attacking and was killed: 0.0005080%
- Percent of arrests where suspect was unarmed and not attacking and was NOT killed: 99.9994920%
Since the claim is that law enforcement personnel are unjustly killing people (meaning the officer had no reasonable fear for his life or the life of others) I’m including the following data so that it may be considered.
Also during 2018:
- 55 law enforcement officers killed during felonious incidents (46 white and 7 black and 2 other)
- Percent of arrests where law enforcement officer was killed: 0.0020697%
- Percent of arrests where law enforcement officer was NOT killed: 99.9979303%
- 58,866 law enforcement officers were assaulted in 2018. 18,005 sustained injuries from those assaults.
- 79.3 percent of officers who were assaulted in the line of duty were attacked with personal weapons (e.g., hands, fists, or feet).
- 24.7 percent of the officers who were attacked with personal weapons (hands, feet, fist, etc.) suffered injuries.
Final note, if you try to work backwards to verify the numbers you won’t get an exact match. It’s a rounding error because I didn’t include all the digits to the right of the decimal place.
