"You know, protesting is not my thing. But data is my thing."
--Roland G. Fryer Jr.
The shootings seem unbelievable. And getting more frequent. Which is why Roland G. Fryer Jr., a professor of economics at Harvard, got a team together and started running the numbers.
Why are white cops hunting down and killing black folks in the street? Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling . . . the list keeps growing. Professor Fryer wanted to get the numbers right, maybe put together some charts and graphs (which is what econ profs do). And what did he find?
"It is the most surprising result of my career," he told the New York Times.
The professor is the youngest African American to receive tenure at Harvard and the first to win a John Bates Clark medal (given to the most promising economist under 40 in the United States). He and his team spent about 3,000 hours collecting the numbers from police departments in several big cities. They examined more than 1,300 shootings since 2000, and found . . .
No racial bias in police shootings.
To be sure, they found other racial bias. Black folks, the study found, are more likely to be roughed up--pepper sprayed, handcuffed, pushed to the ground. Which police departments had better do something about, in our considered editorial opinion. In New York City, for common example, cops are 17 percent more likely to put their hands on a black person than on a white one. As the man once said, this aggression shall not stand. (As Professor Fryer put it: "Who the hell wants to have a police officer put their hand on them or yell and scream at them? It's an awful experience. Every black man I know has had this experience. Every one of them. It's hard to believe that the world is your oyster if the police can rough you up without punishment.")
But police shootings? The professor and his team found not much in the way of racial bias. In fact, the study had more surprises:
• Officers were more likely to fire their weapons--without having first been attacked--when the suspects were white.
• Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to be armed themselves, or not.
• In one big city, Houston, police were less likely to fire at black suspects when "lethal force might have been justified."
Which isn't something you'll not see on the cable news networks these days. Not the liberal ones, not the conservative one.
Professor Fryer's study won't do much to calm the protests in this country this month, and certainly won't ease the pain of those shot by police while reaching for a driver's license. But at some point, the facts should matter.
Editorial on 07/16/2016