Abstract

Researchers are working to identify appropriate benchmarks for exploring racial bias in the officer-involved shooting (OIS) context. Two recent studies benchmarked OIS against incidents in which officers drew weapons but did not shoot. A problem is that the decision to draw a weapon may itself be subject to bias. Using 2017 use-of-force data from the Dallas Police Department, we modeled officers’ decisions to draw their weapons as a function of suspect race and other suspect, officer, and incident characteristics. We benchmarked by limiting analyses to arrest and active aggression cases, thereby excluding interactions in which it was less likely suspects would have had weapons drawn against them. The key finding was that black suspects were no more or less likely to have weapons drawn against them than other suspects.

摘要

研究人员正在努力确定适当的基准，以探索涉警枪击 (OIS) 环境中的种族偏见。最近的两项研究将 OIS 与军官拔出武器但没有开枪的事件进行了对比。一个问题是，拔出武器的决定本身可能会受到偏见的影响。使用达拉斯警察局 2017 年的武力使用数据，我们模拟了警官根据嫌疑人种族和其他嫌疑人、警官和事件特征抽取武器的决定。我们通过将分析限制在逮捕和主动攻击案件中来进行基准测试，从而排除了嫌疑人不太可能使用武器对付他们的互动。关键的发现是，与其他嫌疑人相比，黑人嫌疑人携带武器的可能性并不高。