Is police violence a cause of death for black men?

Study: Police Violence a Leading Cause of Death for Young Men

A new analysis also shows black males in the U.S. face the greatest risk of dying at the hands of police.

By  Joseph P. Williams , Senior Editor Aug. 5, 2019, at 5:28 p.m.

Police a Leading Cause of Death for Young Men

Demonstrators protest the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. A new analysis estimates roughly 52 out of every 100,000 men and boys in the U.S. will die due to an encounter with police. JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

IN AN ERA OF BODY cameras and Black Lives Matter protests, a  study  released Monday indicates African American men are more than twice as likely as their white peers to die from police use of force.

The issue of police-related fatalities overall is so acute, however, that the study labels such encounters a "leading cause of death" among all young men ages 25 to 29, not too far behind the diseases of  cancer  and  heart disease . And it urges community leaders and elected officials to treat police violence as a public health concern.

"Racially unequal exposure to the risk of state violence has profound consequences for public health, democracy, and racial stratification," says the study from researchers at  Rutgers University ,  Washington University in St. Louis  and the  University of Michigan .

Young men of color face an "exceptionally high risk of being killed by police," and that risk continues to be greater for black men as they age compared with whites, according to the report. While he anticipated he'd find gaps between black and white men, "I was surprised that lifetime risks are so high" for African American men, says Frank Edwards, an assistant professor in Rutgers' School of Criminal Justice and the study's lead author.

Overall, researchers estimated a mortality rate of about 1.8 per 100,000 for young men between the ages of 25 and 29 regardless of color, making police violence a top killer far behind causes of death like accidents and suicides, but just several ticks down from fellow age-group leaders heart disease (7.0 per 100,000), and cancer (6.3 per 100,000).

"I want to be clear: When we talk about the leading causes, police violence trails behind some causes that are killing many, many people," Edwards says. "Relative to all causes of death, it's not that frequent. But police are paid government employees" who are, presumably, trained to use deadly force as a last resort.

Yet "police are responsible for at least 1% of all those deaths" of young men, Edwards says. "To say this subset of people is among those leading causes is still pretty striking."

And, as the report points out, social scientists and public health experts have determined "that police contact is a key vector of health inequality, and is an important cause of early mortality for people of color."

Since there is no official, comprehensive database on homicides involving police, Edwards and his researchers used data from the  National Vital Statistics System 's mortality files as well as from Fatal Encounters,  a journalist-led database  that documents deadly force incidents through public records and news coverage.

"While a substantial body of evidence shows that people of color, especially African Americans, are at greater risk for experiencing criminal justice contact and police-involved harm than are whites, we lack basic estimates of the prevalence of police-involved deaths, largely due to the absence of definitive official data," according to the study. Journalists, it states, "have stepped into this void."

The researchers analyzed data for 2013 to 2018, focusing exclusively on law enforcement use-of-force deaths. It excluded cases described as suicides, motor vehicle crashes, overdoses or accidental falls.

The data includes "mostly gunshot (deaths) but also includes Taser (deaths) and a couple of other pepper spray-related deaths, and hand-to-hand force," Edwards says.

"We tracked what risk (of death) would look like if people went from birth to death," Edwards says. To calculate the current rate of risk, analysts took the data and ran it through a hypothesis: "If 100,000 people were born today, and the risk (of dying from police violence) stayed the same, how many people would die?" he says.

The results showed that roughly 52 out of every 100,000 men and boys in the U.S. would die due to an encounter with police, compared with about 3 of every 100,000 women and girls.

Black men face the greatest danger: They are "about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police over (a lifetime) than are white men," according to the report. "Our models predict that about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys will be killed by police over the life course," the report says, followed in risk by American Indian/Alaska Native men and boys (up to 81 per 100,000) and Latino men and boys (about 53 per 100,000). About 39 in 100,000 white men and boys will be killed by police, the report estimates.

Among women overall, their risk of dying at the hands of police is about 20 times lower than among men, but Native American and black females face the greatest risk, according to the study.

The models project that for every group of 100,000 black females in the U.S., up to 5.4 will die due to a police encounter, compared with about 4.2 American Indian or Alaska Native women and girls. White and Latina females had similar mortality rates of roughly 2 per 100,000, according to the report.

Across all groups, the risk of dying due to police use of force peaks between the ages of 20 and 35.

Within that early time frame, the difference between the risk of a police-involved death for blacks and whites is particularly stark. "Police use-of-force is responsible for 1.6 percent of all deaths involving black men between the ages of 20 and 24," more than triple the percentage for white men, according to the study.

Moreover, while the risk of dying due to police use of force declines for all men as they age – perhaps because they become less likely to engage in disruptive behavior or be seen by police as a threat – a disparity between black men and white men persists.

The differential is so pronounced that the lower level of risk for a black man in middle age can be "as high as a (younger) white man at peak level of risk," Edwards says.

"Inequalities in risk are pronounced throughout the life course," according to the study. Joseph P. Williams , Senior Editor