Black people are three times more likely to be seriously injured or killed in an incident with police in California, according to a recently released report by the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute of California.
The report analyzed data taken from over a four-year period, from 2016 to 2019, of police encounters with the public from 15 state law enforcement agencies, and found that on average, around 195 people die every year as a result of contact with California law enforcement, and shootings are the most common cause of death.
Of these incidents, Black people are overrepresented compared to other ethnic groups. According to the data, nearly 20 percent of serious injuries and fatalities involve Black people, even though less than 6 percent of California’s population is Black.
The disparity doesn’t end there. Black residents are also much more likely to be stopped by the police at 16%, compared to their share of the population. And because they are more likely to be stopped, they are more likely to be involved in a fatal or serious incident.
In contrast, the percentage of other groups involved in incidents was closer to their share of the population, like white people, at 37% of the population, made up around one-third of fatalities. Latinos, at 39% of the population, accounted for 45% of those killed. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders at 15% of the population, accounted for only around 4-5% of deaths.
However, out of the total number of stops assessed, some 4 million, the number in which an officer aims or fires a gun is rare, according to the report. Of the 15 agencies surveyed in 2019, there were over 15,000 incidents in which an officer aimed a firearm at a civilian, 0.4%, and of those, only about 150 incidents in which an officer fired the gun, about 0.004% of all stops.
But it is more likely that an officer will aim or fire their gun depending on the race of the individual involved. Based on the report’s analysis, a white person faces a 0.23% chance of having a firearm aimed or discharged at them, compared to a Black person, where the chance increased to 0.75%.
Essentially, Black people who are stopped by police are over 3.2 times as likely to have an officer aim or discharge a firearm at them than white people, according to the report.
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