Blue on Black: An Empirical Assessment of Police Shootings
![handle is hein.journals/amcrimlr54 and id is 194 raw text is:
BLUE ON BLACK: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF POLICE
SHOOTINGS
Nirej Sekhon*
INTRODUCTION
Michael Brown's 2014 death in Ferguson, Missouri, thrust police-officer-
involved homicides into the popular consciousness. A series of subsequent
officer-involved homicides has kept the issue politically and legally salient.
Popular media have consistently covered the issue, and many efforts are under way
to systematically document police killings.' Even though statistically rare in
comparison to officer-civilian encounters, officer-involved homicides' salience is
justified. Absent a state of emergency, police officers are the only public officials
authorized to kill extrajudicially. Their victims inordinately are poor and minority.2
Black persons are dramatically overrepresented among victims in comparison to
their share of the general population.3 This fact serves as an exclamation point for
their greater vulnerability to police coercion generally. Thus, officer-involved
shootings can quickly become symbols of everything that is wrong with policing in
a particular minority community. The sustained protests in Ferguson are but one
recent example of this long-standing dynamic in the United States.4
For all their salience, official data sources regarding officer-involved homicides
and shootings are thin and unreliable. Even in the smartphone age, it is rare that a
third-party witness is able to capture the moment when shots are fired. The data
gap has been a central refrain in scholarly criticism of, and popular furor over,
* Associate Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law. Thanks to Russ Covey, Rachel
Harmon, Andrew Kim, Cynthia Lee, Kate Levine, Eric Miller, Caren Morrison, Lauren Ouziel, Lauren Sudeall
Lucas, Jonathan Todres, Deepa Varadaraj an, and workshop participants in the CrimFest 2015 Annual Meeting for
comments on an earlier draft. Special thanks to Pamela Brannon for meticulous editing and data collection.
© 2016, Nirej Sekhon.
1. See, e.g., Kimberly Kindy et al., Fatal Police Shootings in 2015 Approaching 400 Nationwide, WASH. POST
(May 30, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fatal-police-shootings-in-2015-approaching-400-
nationwide/2015/05/30/d322256a-058e-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e.story.html; D. Brian Burghart, What I've
Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings, GAWKER (Aug. 22, 2014), http://gawker.com/what-
ive-learned-from-two-years-collecting-data-on-poli-1625472836; THE GUARDIAN, THE COUNTED: PEOPLE KILLED
BY POLICE IN THE US, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-
us-database# (last visited June 1, 2015). There are regional efforts as well. See Max Blau, Unanswered: CL's
Metro Atlanta Officer-Involved Shooting Database, CREATIVE LOAFING (June 11, 2015), http://clatl.com/atlanta/
unanswered-cls-metro-atlanta-officer-involved-shooting-database/Content?oid= 14487806.
2. See infra Figures 1-3 and discussion.
3. See infra Figures 1-3 and discussion.
4. Compare NAT'L ADVISORY COMM'N ON CIVIL DISORDERS, THE KERNER REPORT 38, 42, 53, 111 (Pantheon
Books 1988) (1968) [hereinafter KERNER REPORT] (describing how instances of police violence precipitated urban
unrest in the 1960s), with U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, CIVIL RIGHTS Div., INVESTIGATION OF THE FERGUSON POLICE
DEPARTMENT 79-80 (2014) [hereinafter FERGUSON REPORT].
189](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/amcrimlr54&div=8&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Blue on Black: An Empirical Assessment of Police Shootings
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most