Title: Here’s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People – Mother Jones
Headings: Here’s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People
Here’s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People
Plus: the crazy way the FBI classifies all police shooting victims as criminals.
Jaeah Lee
The FBI’s data only counts “felons,” but its definition of a felon differs from the common legal understanding of a felon as someone who has been convicted of a felony.

Content: Note: Most arrest-related deaths by homicide are by law enforcement, not private citizens. Rate calculated by dividing deaths by the average Census population for each race in 2003-09. “ Other” includes American Indians, Alaska Natives, Asians, Native Hawaiians, other Pacific Islander, and persons of two or more races. • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System offers another view into officers’ use of deadly force. In 2011, the CDC counted 460 people who died by “legal intervention” involving a firearm discharge. In theory, this includes any death caused by a law enforcement or state agent (it does not include legal executions). The CDC’s cause-of-death data, based on death certificates collected at the state level, also reveals a profound racial disparity among the victims of police shootings. Between 1968 and 2011, black people were between two to eight times more likely to die at the hands of law enforcement than whites. Annually, over those 40 years, a black person was on average 4.2 times as likely to get shot and killed by a cop than a white person.