The racist police killing spree - that doesn’t exist

The most visceral, emotionally charged debate now roiling across American society centers upon the longtime practice of American law enforcement officers gunning down young black men. This important discussion is critically flawed, however. There is no such practice by American cops.

Many of the folks who comment on police-related killings have little idea what they’re talking about, or even how social science quantifies such occurrences. This debate is quickly degenerating into political kabuki theater.

Political ideology aside, anyone who expends the two or three minutes required to read the remainder of this piece will possess more verified background on this topic than most of the talking heads who will spout their "expertise" in the coming weeks.

Here are a few facts unlikely to be publicized, or understood, by most media outlets:

- Overall, there’s very little use of law enforcement violence (lethal or otherwise) in the U.S. when examined in light of the number of citizen-police contacts per year and the current violent crime rate and assaults on officers. About 40 million to 60 million residents age 16 or older (about 25% of American adults) have at least one encounter with police each year. Some studies, most notably the National Crime Victimization Survey, put the number a little lower, around 21 percent to 23 percent.

At any rate, these millions of contacts produced a use of any type of physical force in only about 0.75 percent of cases, and generally, fewer than 1,000 of these contacts result in a use of lethal force by law enforcement.

Not all police killing is justified, naturally, but the vast majority are. The majority of cases unquestionably concern shootouts and confrontations with bad guys actively trying to kill officers or a third party.

American cops kill more white people every year than black, both in the aggregate and, more importantly, many more white people when the numbers are properly adjusted for the well-documented racial makeup of those involved in violent crime in the U.S.

The apparent, and often misunderstood, disparity is that while only about 50 percent of those killed by American law enforcement are white, the U.S. population is about 63 percent white. So, looking at race only, black men would appear more likely to be killed by police. Once adjusted (racially) to the homicide rate and known violent crime participation rate, it turns out that whites are actually about one and one-half times more likely to be killed by police.

Keep in mind that these are just statistical realities, not justification for all police shootings. The loons who defend all police lethal force are just as wacky as the loons who see evil conspiracies to wipe out black males in every shooting.

Statistical analysis isn’t sexy, and many lay people have little ability to conduct it, or interest in doing so. Understanding what numbers actually mean, though, is critical.

In the most recent full year of data available, men were killed by police at an astronomically higher rate than women, 96 percent and 4 percent, respectively). I ask students why someone shouldn’t be able to hold rallies attended by hundreds or thousands of men, outraged at this obviously disconcerting statistic. If not a conspiracy of genderism, what other possible explanation could there be?

Statistically, it would appear that I am at risk every time I step out of my house. More fuel for this newly discovered conspiracy: Strangely enough, in the U.S., approximately 93 percent of all prisoners under federal and state control are male, a number pretty similar around the civilized world.

Of course, there is no such conspiracy. Numbers alone mean little; research must account for many other factors, including behavior, to be valid. Men, for myriad reasons physiological and psychological, act stupid in public and become violent at a significantly higher rate than the fairer sex.

There goes the Million Male March - but at least I feel safer now.

The author is a former police chief and federal counter-terrorism official and teaches criminal justice and terrorism as an adjunct professor at several universities.

This story was originally published July 14, 2016 at 8:37 AM with the headline "The racist police killing spree - that doesn’t exist."