The Facts on Police Brutality
A social issue that I feel is important to society is the subject of police brutality. It has become a very prevalent issue in recent years, and many focus on the police being corrupt or shooting a suspect or even civilian without reason or suspicion. On the other side, people view this as fallout from the police just doing their dangerous job that involves making high pressure decisions. Many people that believe that the police are corrupt and evil may be experiencing the worldview backfire effect. Something that plays a large role in this subject is the idea that minorities are the subject of this brutality. That idea is what plays into the worldview backfire effect because many people who are just associated with a minority could make these affirmations due to the news that is consumed. Now, while this may or may not be a myth, it is important to provide statistics that are backed by police shooting data before making an assumption. Below is a table that displays a dataset provided by the Washington Post showing data of fatal police shootings from 2015–2018.
As it can be seen, this dataset offers over 4,000 cases of police shootings that range from different states, ages, genders, races, mental illness, and whether or not there was evidence on a body camera. The first claim that is to be examined is that minorities are the target of most of this brutality. Below is a count of the different races that were involved in these incidents.
Based on this dataset, it can be seen that this is a myth, and the most common race that was fatally shot in 2018 was White. One could point to the reasoning behind this logic being that what we mostly see on the news and social media are minorities being affected by this social issue. We also can see the bandwagon effect on this part of the issue because when it does happen, there is an entire community that comes together for support. This also creates a form of bias because people could experience thoughts that their race is more susceptible to this issue than others. After this examination, it is clear that this is an issue that effects people of all races.
Another common assumption about this issue is that there are many young kids that are effected by police brutality. This assumption is created from the news focusing much more on stories of younger people being shot, and peoples own attentional bias. This creates an idea that there are more teens being shot than there actually are. Below is a plot graph that shows a persons id number, along with their age on the y axis, and their race in color.
As shown above, while there are some people under the age of 20 killed in these shootings, a majority of these fatalities are among people between the ages of 20 and 50. This again is discounting a popular belief in the idea that there are a vast amount of young citizens being shot and killed by police. Although, this is not to say that there are still not young people being affected, and this remains a vital issue to people of all ages.
Another subject of discussion that is a part of this social issue is the question of if the person who is killed is armed, and if there was a body cam involved at the scene. Many claim that unarmed people are commonly killed by police. This claim is also accompanied by the claim that these unarmed people are killed without a body cam present. Below is a value count that shows what victims were armed with, including unarmed victims.
After this examination, we can see that while there is some truth to the idea that unarmed people are commonly victims of police brutality as it is the third most common person shot, however, the most common people fatally shot according to this dataset are people armed with a gun or knife. This again shows that there is a misconception on the people that are the subject of these shootings. This data would be used in a defense of police officers, because suspects with a gun or knife are obviously seen as a threat.
However, in regards to the questioning of these shootings due to the lack of a body cam is still in question. Below a value count along with a bar graph can be seen to showcase the cases that involved a body cam with a true or false count.
It is clear that this claim is actually true, and that a majority of these fatal shooting cases did not involve the use of a body cam. This is a very concerning factor that people who make claims against the police would use to support their argument. After conducting this analysis, I think that it is clear that people of all backgrounds are affected by this issue, and should work together if claims are to be made that a shooting was unjust. On the other side, people who support the police should focus on facts surrounding the subject carrying a weapon and the threat that they posed. Many biases are involved in this social issue, and I myself even found some of these results surprising, feeding into the idea of attentional bias. This social issue should continue to be tracked and monitored in order to see trends develop that could lead to areas of concern.
