Title: PolitiFact | Larry Elder mislabels statistics on fatal shootings by police
Headings: "Last year, there were nine unarmed black people killed (by law enforcement). Nineteen unarmed white people.”
"Last year, there were nine unarmed black people killed (by law enforcement). Nineteen unarmed white people.”
Larry Elder mislabels statistics on fatal shootings by police
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Content: In 2019, among those who were unarmed when they encountered police, there were five black people and 12 white people who died from tasers, beatings or other uses of force by police, according to Mapping Police Violence’s data. Off-duty officers killed four unarmed blacks and five unarmed whites. Those deaths won’t show up in the Washington Post data. What’s considered armed? Another reason Mapping Police Violence counted more unarmed people killed by police is that it considered victims in possession of toy guns, BB guns, airsoft guns or rocks to be unarmed. The Washington Post’s database doesn’t include those people in its unarmed tallies. In 2019, at least eight black people and 16 white people were killed by police while in possession of a toy weapon or something similar, according to Mapping Police Violence. There are also numerous 2019 cases, in both data sets, where the victim’s armed status remains unknown or the victim was considered armed with a vehicle. Overall, the data on whether police-killing victims were armed or unarmed is "messy," said Frank Edwards, an assistant professor at Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice who co-authored a study on police killings. Because groups that track the data often cite news reports that rely only on the word of police to establish whether a person was armed or unarmed, "the data likely over-report the armed status of victims and the danger faced by police," Edwards said.