A new analysis finds racial and ethnic disparities in fatal police shootings vary significantly by state – and that New York has the lowest rate of fatal police encounters across all groups in the nation.
To learn more about the disparities – and what may be contributing to the variation among states – WAMC's Lucas Willard spoke with University at Albany Professor Shawn Bushway, a co-author of the study recently published in the journal PLOS One.
Generally speaking, in every state, Black Americans have higher rates of fatal police shootings than do whites. It varies dramatically as to how many more, how much more. In all but, in 31 states, Hispanic Americans actually have less have fewer police shootings as a percentage or as a rate than do whites. Obviously, whites make up the majority of Americans, and so they are also the majority of victims of fatal police shootings, but in terms of this disparity relative to their proportion in the population, that's the general pattern you see for Black and Hispanics.
Have you, when we talk about the variance here and how states compare with each other, did you gain any insights as to what might be contributing to why some states have higher instances of police shootings versus others?
So, when you look at police shooting, fatal police shootings themselves, one of the major causes appears to be just a number of guns owned by households in the country. in the state. The more guns there are owned by people in the state, the more likely there are to be police shootings. And the story there is, if an officer encounters someone with a gun, there's more likely to be a violent incident. Something like 80% of all fatal police shootings involve the victim had some type of weapon, but there's obviously quite a few that didn't. So it's not everybody, and they don't all have firearms, but that is, that is probably the…everyone agrees about every single factor, but there seems to be a strong consensus about that the more guns you have, the more shootings you'll have.
And your study also points out that New York has the lowest rate of police shootings per 100,000 residents across all racial and ethnic groups. What do you think has contributed to the low number in New York state?
Well, in keeping with what I just said, New York also has the lowest rate of gun ownership of any state in the union. So, because they have stronger gun laws, there is just less gun owners, gun ownership, particularly in New York City, where obviously 43% of the people live, and so you just have less police shootings overall, primarily because of this, and that seems to be the main causal factor. But it's also the case that New York City, in general, has…the New York City Police are known for being reform minded around these kinds of issues. We're known for having fairly well-paid police generally, and we also have fairly we might have higher standards for training than others places do. So, there's a number of reasons, but probably the single biggest possible explanation is that there's fewer guns in the hands of civilians.
Now, I wanted to talk about the data that you actually looked at, Shawn. So this was Washington Post data between 2015 and 2020, but why did you specifically look at this time period?
Well, this is really the only time period that the Washington Post has the data for, although they continued, so it didn't start until 2015. And the reason why the Washington Post started collecting the data is because the official sources are a bit spotty. Not every police agency reports. They might have different standards for reporting, and so this is based on police reports as well as media reports and other reports, and it's considered to be the most comprehensive source of information. We stopped in 2020 because of the COVID epidemic, where you have this kind of weird conflation of fewer people on the streets originally, but then more violence. So, there was a violence spike in many cities during COVID, and it's because it's just a very different looking place. And then Washington Post discontinued collection of the data in 2024, December, I believe.
And beyond, the number of people that actually have guns and are encountered by police when they are in a possession of a weapon, is there anything else that you found that does contribute to a lower number overall of police involved shootings? Are there any positives that are helping to reduce the number of shootings beyond a factor of less gun ownership?
So, the less violence you have, the less police shootings you'll have in general. And now that is true even once you control for gun ownership. So, these things are independent, you know, related, but, but independent. And then beyond. Beyond that, there isn't a lot of consensus in the literature. There is some belief there one of the variations that you see beyond state level is also big variations across agencies, police agencies. And so, there is some belief that maybe training has something to do with that, that you know, ‘Why is it that you know what Rochester might have a very different rate than Albany?’ Maybe the training is different or something like that. So, there are discussions along the lines that are at the agency level rather than at the state level, in terms of explanations, but it isn't well understood, and the explanations for why there's racial disparity are often quite different than why there is police shootings in the first place.
And where will your research take you next? Are you going to continue studying this topic?
I think the what we wanted to do was to start looking at these within state variation in terms of agency level factors. Then might be able to explain differences in racial disparity, as well as the overall levels, I think, with the racial disparity question, it's an interesting question for me, because obviously, if African Americans are having higher rates of fatal police shootings than are whites, then if there are less shootings in general, that would be good for everybody, but, disproportionately, African Americans, since they have a higher rate. But there's also this weird thing that happens as the white rate gets very low, like it is in New York State, it becomes a very small base rate. So, when you compare it to the African American rate, you end up with a high multiple. S,o in other words, in New York, suppose that American, white Americans, get shot at point three per million, and African Americans get shot at 1.5 per million. And 1.5 per million is really low relative to the national average. It's lower than the national average. That's still a ratio of five, right? And if somehow we managed to make the ratio for whites 0.2 two, right, all of a sudden, that would be a ratio of over seven, with a very small change. So, as you get to these low base rates, so New York had one of the highest ratios of 4.5 for Black fatal shootings versus whites, but it actually is very low relative to for both. And so, this interesting conundrum you get in terms of how you think about racial disparity and trying to focus on the gains that everyone gets when there's less is an interesting area for understanding these topics, right? Because you often when the focus is on racial disparity. You can forget, for example, that say white Americans are still shot more often than any other group because they're the largest group.
UAlbany Professor Shawn Bushway, thanks so much for coming by. I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me, right around the corner.
