Abstract
In the spring and summer of 2016, seven studies that examined the impact of subject race on police use of force were announced in the media and the paraphrased headlines ranged from “there is bias in the use of force,” “there is no bias in the use of force,” and “there is bias in some types of force, but not others.” The purpose of this research note is to examine these disparate findings and the methods that might explain them, with attention to sample characteristics, the types of analyses, the number and character of agencies studied, and how concepts are operationalized. This analysis will help research consumers analyze critically the results from race-and-force studies and, hopefully, add to our understanding of this important national issue.
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Notes
Threat perception failures “occur when an officer [mistakenly] perceives that a suspect is armed due to the misidentification of a nonthreatening object … or movement” (Fachner & Carter, 2015, p. 30).
Some of their analyses also considered Asian, Hispanic and other races.
Fryer Study #2 used less lethal only.
The developing FBI system will collect data on deadly force that results in subject death.
Similarly suspect is the Fryer attempt to see if race determines “whether or not the officer shoots the suspect before being attacked.” A close look at the coding does not answer the concerning question raised by these variable definitions: Why are officers attacking when only defensive resistance is being used by the subject? These definitions raise questions about the validity of the study.
In a similar vein, Fryer summarizes his findings by reporting that he found racial differences in incidents involving non-lethal force, but no racial differences in officer-involved shootings. It is very important in interpreting these collective results to know that the less lethal force data came from one type of encounter in one city, and the OIS data came from another type of encounter in another city. One cannot compare less-lethal force used within NYC stop and frisk encounters to Houston OIS’s and draw conclusions about how less lethal force and lethal force might be similar or different in terms of racial bias.
Furthermore, the absence of a key control variable may result in omitted variable bias, which may unpredictably affect parameter estimates from multivariate regression models.
Fryer does refer to a “compliance model” that seems to imply that he is measuring compliance during the stop, but the data used for this is never described sufficiently and the only clue he provides as to the behaviors that might be included references behavior before the stop (subject changes direction upon seeing the police).
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I thank Jon Maskaly for comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
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Fridell, L.A. Explaining the Disparity in Results Across Studies Assessing Racial Disparity in Police Use of Force: A Research Note. Am J Crim Just 42, 502–513 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-016-9378-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-016-9378-y