New study suggests Black cops are no less likely to fatally shoot Black people than white ones

Calls for racial and cultural diversity in police departments have been on the rise in recent years, but the findings of a new study suggest that diversity alone may not be enough to reduce the likelihood of a Black person being gunned down by police.

A nationwide report published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences this month, did a deep dive into almost 1,000 fatal police shootings in 2015 and discovered that white officers were no more likely to shoot African-Americans than Black officers were.

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According to The Economist, researchers working with both the University of Maryland and Michigan State University painstakingly went over lists of those killed by law enforcement that were compiled by The Guardian and The Washington Post, then reached out to each of those individual departments to confirm the races of the officers involved.

Researchers surmised that not only were Black officers just as likely as whites to pull the trigger on Black civilians, but that Black officers were, in fact, more likely to kill Black civilians. Joseph Cesario, co-author and professor of psychology at MSU, says he believes the driving force behind the fatal shootings isn’t race, but rather violent crime.

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“We found that the race of the officer doesn’t matter when it comes to predicting whether Black or white citizens are shot,” Cesario told MSU Today.

“Our data show that the rate of crime by each racial group predicts the likelihood of citizens from that racial group being shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of white people committing crimes, white people are more likely to be shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of black people committing crimes, Black people are more likely to be shot.”

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“It is the best predictor we have of fatal police shootings,” he added.

While the findings of the study are provocative at first blush, critics believe that Cesario’s hypothesis is painfully over simplified and lacking cultural competence, given it doesn’t seem to take into account that Black communities are disproportionately targeted by authorities, while even violent white suspects somehow still end up making it to court… alive.