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What the data say about police shootings

How do racial biases play into deadly encounters with the police? Researchers wrestle with incomplete data to reach answers.
  1. Lynne Peeples

    1. Lynne Peeples is a science journalist in Seattle, Washington.

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Demonstrators protest gun violence in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2016.

Protesters march after a fatal shooting by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2016. Credit: William Widmer/New York Times/eyevine

On Tuesday 6 August, the police shot and killed a schoolteacher outside his home in Shaler Township, Pennsylvania. He had reportedly pointed a gun at the officers. In Grants Pass, Oregon, that same day, a 39-year-old man was shot and killed after an altercation with police in the state police office. And in Henderson, Nevada, that evening, an officer shot and injured a 15-year-old suspected of robbing a convenience store. The boy reportedly had an object in his hand that the police later confirmed was not a deadly weapon.

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Nature 573, 24-26 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02601-9

References

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