An extensive national study from the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University reveals some surprising answers.
Analysis of every use of deadly force by police officers across the United States indicates that the killing of black suspects is not a white police problem and the killing of unarmed suspects of any race is extremely rare.
"There might be some bad apples in the police department, but white officers are no more likely to use lethal force against minorities than nonwhite officers," says Charles Menifield, lead author of the study and SPAA's dean.
High-profile killings of unarmed black men - like that of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, which gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement - have led many to speculate that white police officers may target nonwhite suspects with lethal force, Menifield says.
The Rutgers research found, however, that white police officers actually kill black and other minority suspects at lower rates than would be expected if killings were randomly distributed among officers of all races.
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