Since the Ferguson, Missouri protests of 2014, the issue of how race and police violence interact has consistently been a front-page news item in the United States. Recent weeks have seen the criminal conviction of three Minneapolis police officers who failed to stop the murder of George Floyd in May 2020; the acquittal of an ex-police officer connected to the Louisville, KY drug raid that ended with Breonna Taylor’s death two months earlier; and the decision to not file charges in the case of Amir Locke, a black man who was fatally shot by a Minneapolis SWAT team officer in February. The former decision has been applauded by those who see it as a step toward rolling back racist police abuses, while the latter two have been condemned as a perpetuation of the status quo. Meanwhile, two economists have just published the latest in a series of academic analyses of the issue, this one appearing in the American Economic Review under the title, ‘Does Race Matter for Police Use of Force? Evidence from 911 Calls.’
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Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here. Based on a recent MI report.
This piece originally appeared in Quillette