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Introduction

Male Americans are killed by police at a much higher rate than female Americans. Men comprise less than half of the US population, yet they are killed at 17 times the rate of women (52 per 100,000 versus 3 per 100,000). One look at the above sentence, and one might conclude that there is a bias with police use of deadly force against men.

However, anyone with at least a high school education might expectedly question why such a disparity exists. With a quick search of the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting statistics, one can quickly discover that in the United States, men are arrested for about 80% of violent crimes committed while women only account for 20%. Knowing this, it’s pretty clear that the disparity has little to do with sex and much more with the crimes being committed. In other words, men are not killed by police at a greater rate because of a police bias toward men, but because they commit more violent crime and have more interactions with police as evidenced by arrest statistics. Not to mention the fact that men are typically larger, more aggressive, and likely more imposing and threatening to police officers.

How the Washington Post Misleads its Readers About Police Bias Continue reading “On Supposed Systemic Police Bias”