Introduction

• The statistics surrounding American Law Enforcement are astounding in that they reflect a huge societal problem: Racism
• George Floyd, Jayland Walker, and Donovan Lewis are just a few of the many black lives taken by law enforcement under the influence of racial bias

Data Source

• Data was taken from Fatal Encounters, an independent research database dedicated to providing information on individuals killed during police interactions

https://fatalencounters.org/

• Census data regarding the population distribution of race in 2018 was taken from the Kaiser Family Foundation

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D

US Population - Reference Point

• To fully understand the severity of the racial biases within American law enforcement, it must first be understood that Caucasian individuals make up the majority of the US population compared to their non-Caucasian counterparts

Deaths Involving Police Interaction

• While Caucasian individuals constitutes the majority of police-related deaths, the frequency of black deaths from police interactions is almost double that of the population (seen on the left pie chart)

• Even worse for those under 18, where just under half of all minors who died from police interactions are black individuals(seen on the right pie chart)

Over The Years

• The major cause for concern is the ever-increasing rate of police-related deaths for all races. From 2000 to 2020, white and black victims are slowly increasing
• Although white deaths are prominent, it does not change the fact that the percentage of victims of colour is not proportionate to their population percentage

References

• Peeples, L. (2020) What the data say about police brutality and racial bias - and which reforms might work, Nature News. Nature Publishing Group. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z (Accessed: October 23, 2022).

• Schwartz, S.A. (2020) “Police brutality and racism in America,” EXPLORE, 16(5), pp. 280–282. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2020.06.010.