Race, Gender and the Contexts of Unarmed Fatal Interactions with Police

• In Event: 2465 - Exploring the Carceral Continuum

Abstract

Noting the occurrence of high profile deaths of people of color at the hands of police, we sought to fill the void within research about racial/ethnic differences in the likelihood of being killed while unarmed. More specifically, we asked: 1) are the odds that black males will be unarmed when killed by police greater than they are for other race-gender groups, 2) are the odds that an unarmed fatality has occurred related to the characteristics of the location in which it happened or the agency of the officer(s) responsible, and 3) do the odds that a women is unarmed when killed by police vary across racial/ethnic groups after considering contextual and agency characteristics? To answer these questions, we compiled a data set that spans a 20 month time period and merges the 1762 fatal interactions with police that occurred during that time with the ~3700 agencies of the nationally representative Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey (LEMAS) collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and Census characteristics of the place where the fatality occurred. We find evidence in support of the “Hands up, Don’t Shoot” and “Say her Name” slogans of the post-Ferguson movements. Specifically, the odds that African Americans will be killed by police when unarmed are nearly 7 to 1, and are due primarily to the unarmed status of women.

Author

• Odis D. Johnson, Washington University-St. Louis