U.S. Police Kills, African-Americans v. Others

originally posted: 7 June 2020 on my personal website; Excel-only. Useful as a reference to visualizations & message-conveying improvement throughout time.

The U.S. police kills far greater¹ number² of people than police forces in other democracies. I decided to take a closer look at the statistics given the recent egregious³ killing of George Floyd (African-American, age 46), and the subsequent riots during the ongoing CORVID19 pandemic.

Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, a city with an official and horrible record⁴ of police violence against Black people. In the past five years, about 57% of all police violence was against them although African-Americans composed only around 19% of the city’s entire population. For comparison, consider the fact White people composed 60% of Minneapolis’s population and their share of police violence was only 24%.

However, the riots are nationwide, so I explored the broader story of the fatalities by U.S. law enforcement. I retrieved data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,⁵ U.S. Census Bureau⁶ and Fatal Encounters.⁷

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First step to gain perspective: Focusing on the three largest race/ethnicity groups based on the 2010 U.S. census (which compose 92% of the U.S. population together) and their respective amounts resulting in deaths due to encounters with U.S. law enforcement personnel.

First step to gain perspective: Focusing on the three largest race/ethnicity groups based on the 2010 U.S. census (which compose 92% of the U.S. population together) and their respective amounts resulting in deaths due to encounters with U.S. law enforcement personnel.

Figure 1:

Figure 1

Moreover, age is a key factor which reflects the odds of being killed by the police.

Paying attention to the differences between the fatalities trend of African Americans and the European Americans given the overall image/understanding we have. Notice the not-so-subtle differences.

African Americans have it most dangerous in their 10s and 20s. The trend rapidly declines afterwards. However, for European-American, the peak arrives during their 30s and declines much more gradually in comparison to the two other groups.

I suppose this might well be the result of socio-economic gaps between the groups.

Figure 2:

Figure 2

Furthermore, as shown in Table 3, gender is another key indicator of the likelihood that a person be killed. This is regardless of the age group or race/ethnicity. Males are far more likely to be killed in comparison to females.

Figure 3:

Figure 3

The only good news seems to be that African American females do not seem to be killed more than European American females (though bearing in mind it is still disproportionate to the general population).

Figure 4:

Figure 4

Examination of the causes of death for males between the ages of 10-49 exposes no clear difference based on race/ethnicity, although it raises the suspicion that U.S. police uses disproportional force against African-Americans compared to European-Americans. It results with more fatalities by tasering, asphyxiation, beatings, and pepper spraying. Table 5 displays this data (containing 6 out of 17 most ‘interesting’, cataloged causes of death).

Figure 5:

Figure 5

Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to how police violence hurts African-Americans. For instance, the primary finding of a 2018 research⁸ about the “spill over effects [of police killing] on the mental health of black Americans” shows it harms their mental health. This, in turn, effects suicide rates, and so on.

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NOTE: 24 AUGUST 2023:

I’ve chosen to re-post this brief old data analysis project I’ve done when I polished my Excel skills back in August of 2020 (power pivot, using the data model, visualizations with Excel, etc.) because it nicely reflects the improvement that can be achieved later on, particularly with regards to visualizations and conveying a strong message alongside them. Anyone with a sharp eye can spot the problematic titles, missing legends, etc.

A wonderful resource for improving your visualization skills, particularly with Excel, is this website: https://www.storytellingwithdata.com/

1. https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/8/13/17938170/us-police-shootings-gun-violence-homicides

2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries

3. https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007159353/george-floyd-arrest-death-video.html

4. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/03/us/minneapolis-police-use-of-force.html

5. https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html

6. https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf

7. https://fatalencounters.org/

8. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31130-9/fulltext