Title: Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men? – Mother Jones
Headings: Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?
Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?
The killing in Ferguson was one of many such cases. Here’s what the data reveals.
Jaeah Lee
“For whatever reason, juries are much less likely to convict” police who kill.
“You don’t have to be poor, you don’t have to be in your own community…and this can happen to you.”
Get our award-winning magazine

Content: These include people who died before an officer physically placed him or her under custody or arrest. This data, known as arrest-related deaths, doesn’t reveal a significant discrepancy between whites, blacks, or hispanics. It also doesn’t specify how many victims were unarmed. According to the FBI, which has tracked justifiable homicides up to 2012, 410 felons died at the hands of a law enforcement officer in the line of duty. * Bureau of Justice Statistics
But black people are more likely than whites or Hispanics to experience a police officer’s threat or use of force, according to the Department of Justice’s Police Public Contact Survey in 2008, the latest year for which data is available. Of those who felt that police had used or threatened them with force that year, about 74 percent felt those actions were excessive. In another DOJ survey of police behavior during traffic and street stops in 2011, blacks and Hispanics were less likely than whites to believe that the reason for the stop was legitimate. The Justice Department has investigated possible systemic abuse of power by police in at least 16 cities. Police shootings of unarmed black people aren’t limited to poor or predominantly black communities. Jones-Brown points to examples where police officers have shot unarmed black men and women in Hollywood, Riverside (California), and Prince Georges County—a Maryland suburb known as the most affluent US county with an African-American majority. “