“An Empirical Analysis of Racial Difference…” by Fryer

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Study Summary
Study Assessment
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The issue of racial discrimination remains acute especially when it comes to interactions with police. The article provides insight into the impact racial differences make on a police officer’s decision to use force on a civilian. In the abstract, the author claims that the possibility of encountering forceful actions from police is more than fifty percent more likely for Blacks and Hispanics than for Whites. The main purpose of the study was to estimate the extent of racial discrimination that affects the police’s use of force. Moreover, the author tried to understand and explain how racial bias might emerge in different interactions and when viewed from different perspectives.

Study Summary

The study used four datasets to account for various police-citizen interactions during which some kind of force was used. The first dataset comes from the Stop, Question, and Frisk program employed in the New York City, in which police officers stop suspicious people, question them, and frisk for weapons or contraband if necessary. The program contains valuable data on the wide range of force actions the police used, and has around five million observations, as the author stated. Another dataset was provided by the Police-Public Contact Survey, which is a nationwide sample of civilians who encountered police use of force collected once in three years. This survey provides the research with the civilians’ perspective on their interactions with police and their reasons to use force.

The last two datasets were created by the author specifically for this research. Three Texas cities – Austin, Houston, and Dallas – six large Florida counties, as well as Los Angeles county, was chosen to assemble a sample from for the third dataset. The author collected summaries of all events of police-civilian interactions during which the officer discharged their weapon. Finally, the fourth dataset is a random sample of police-civilian interactions provided by the Houston Police department, with the specification that only summaries of events where the use of lethal force can be justified were used.

After presenting the sources of the data for the study, the author concludes quantitative and qualitative analysis was employed for evaluating the collected information. While the results differ in different datasets, there are some consistencies the author points out. For example, information from the Stop, Question, and Frisk program reveals that racial differences are much more likely to occur when the use of force is involved. Moreover, the more intense force is used, the more persistent is the racial discrimination, although the rate of people who encounter such force is small. The author states that the police officers are 21 percent more likely to at least draw their weapons when dealing with Blacks than with Whites, pointing out that this difference is quite significant for the statistics.

Moreover, data from the Police-Public Contact Survey gives results of similar quality on both the use of force and the intensity of it. However, the racial differences here are more prominent – perhaps, due to the fact that the survey is nationwide and contains three years of data. The author states that Blacks and Hispanics have around 1.3 percentage points more chance to report the use of any form of force from a police officer. In addition, the odds ratio is bigger for Blacks than for Hispanics – 2.769 against 1.818. Overall, the results from all datasets show that there is racial discrimination among police officers who use force in their interactions with civilians. However, the author states that these results cannot be used as a proof of said discrimination, as the study has significant flaws in its methodology.

Study Assessment

The author used several different analysis tools to evaluate the data obtained from the sources, which proves the research to be fairly objective in its findings. Moreover, the use of various samples to collect the information also supports the objectivity of the study and the author. The Stop, Question, and Frisk program offers the police officers’ perspective on the incidents where force was used, while the Police-Public Contact Survey provides the opinion of civilians. Anecdotal evidence from the events summaries collected in the last two datasets also supply valuable context for the incidents where force was used. It can be concluded that the study was conducted in adherence to the academic standards, and the analysis it offers could be used to support the issue of police racial discrimination towards civilians.

However, the author states himself that his research has significant caveats and limitations, which should be considered when using it as evidence of discrimination. The first flaw the author pinpoints is that all datasets except one came from police departments that willingly allowed the access to their data. Fryer contemplates that such willingness might come from the departments’ assurance that the results will pose no threat of being accused of discrimination for them. The Police-Public Contact Survey is more objective in this matter, but it does not include cases of officer-involved shootings. Moreover, the officers of the departments which provided the data might also be biased, and the summaries of events they provide might lack or distort important details. Finally, as there was no possibility of assigning the race randomly in the research, the author was not confident in the direct regression approach that would reveal racial disparities. Fryer states, however, that he and his research team were able to partially address this issue by building a specific police-civilian interaction model and assessing the returns to compliant behavior in civilians.

The study clearly evidences the racial discrimination that affects the interactions between police officers and civilians and, in some cases, causes the use of force. Currently, the issue of racial discrimination is quite popular in the field of academic literature, and many studies are conducted on it. The case of George Floyd is a direct consequence of racial discrimination, and Fryer’s research could be used as supportive evidence. Thus, it can be concluded that this article does not contradict most of the existing literature on the matter of racial injustice, but specializes in the controversial topic of police outrage.

Conclusion

Overall, the study is quite useful for understanding racial discrimination among police officers and how it relates to the use of force. The article helps outline the significant disparities in the police’s attitude towards civilians. However, it does not elaborate much on the overall concept of racial discrimination among police officers, instead of operating on the fact that the reader knows and understands it already. The study could be used as a secondary source to enhance the existing knowledge and support the concept of racial discrimination explained in the course content with specific facts and numbers.

References

Fryer, R. G. (2019). An empirical analysis of racial differences in police use of force. Journal of political economy, 127(3).

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