Study: Black Officers More Likely than White Officers to Shoot Suspects

A new study by John R. Lott, Jr. and Carlisle E. Moody shows that black crime suspects are more likely to be shot by black cops than by white cops.

Lott is president of Crime Prevention Research Center and Moody is a professor of economics at William and Mary.

In conducting the study, Lott and Moody looked at “2,699 observations of police killings from over 1,500 cities in the United States from 2013 to 2015.”

They explained the depth of their data:

With respect to the incident, we have the race of the suspects killed (Black, White, Hispanic, other) and their age. With respect to the officer(s) involved, we have race and gender for 904 incidents. We also have data for the number of officers on the scene. We suspect that the more officers on the scene, the less likely it is that the suspect will resist. The police report, we believe, is also more likely to be accurate. With respect to the suspect, we have data on whether the suspect was involved in a violent crime, a property crime, or a drug-related crime. We also have data on whether the suspect was armed and, if so, the type of weapon (firearm, knife, vehicle, other).

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