People Killed By Police [Interactive Graphic]

When I talk to students about police brutality, I usually get several students who express anger that the media talk about police who harm black people more than they talk about police who harm whites.  These students will are upset that these white victims are not getting justice.  As someone who has studied race and justice, I know that the victims are disproportionately black, but the students don't always understand this. But that's why they are in our classes, right?

So I thought it would be helpful for them to see actual data on the issue. I found this interactive database compiled by the guardian. According to the website, "The database will combine Guardian reporting with verified crowdsourced information to build a more comprehensive record of such fatalities"

I displayed it in class and clicked around on the site to show students a little about the data.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database#

Please keep in mind that these victims represent a variety of types of death (motor vehicle fatalities, deaths in custody, shooting, etc). You can use the filters to sort by a number of variables. You can also view the data as a list or on  map.


Here are some interesting things that I found and shared with the students.  Use the database to create your own list of points to share.[ As of today's writing, there were 1000 people killed, so I'll be working with that number. It also makes the math super easy!]

• I started by confirming students' view that the majority of people that were killed by police were in fact white. However, I then toggled back and forth between "total" and "per million".Since whites make up more of the total population, they also make up more of the victims (502 Victims).  But blacks are more likely to be killed respective to the numbers of blacks in the population. There were 250 black victims but that means 5.94 blacks were killed for every million blacks in the population.  The respective numbers for white victims is 2.54.
• 198 of the victims were unarmed, or 19.8%  That is important because it shows 4 out of 5 times, the victims represent threats to police and to others. So here, I like to point out to students that police are doing their jobs well in most situations.
• Furthermore, only 88 of those unarmed victims were killed by gunshot.(For example, many of the unarmed victims died in motor vehicle accidents)  That's only 8.8%.of all deaths.
• So what happens when we look at these 88 deaths?   35 of those victims were white and 31 were black. That means that 6.9% of all white deaths were unarmed victims shot by police and 12.4% of all black deaths were unarmed victims shot by the police. I think this comparison indicates a clear racial disparity that you can talk about with your class.

It may be helpful to go through these same steps above, but using the current numbers. Your class can all calculate the numbers together, which helps students see that you didn't just "make up the numbers to distort the issue"