The Truth about Fatal Police Shootings Might Surprise You (Especially If You’re a Liberal)
One issue that cannot go unmentioned in any honest discussion about violent crime, especially in today’s highly charged climate, is the role of those authorized by the state to use deadly force when necessary: police. What, specifically, does the data tell us about fatal shootings committed by police officers against the very citizens they are sworn to protect and serve? Are police officers actually targeting people for murder based on their skin color, as sometimes claimed? Is this a horrific epidemic, or something else? If you’ve relied only on what major media headlines infer or activist celebrities tell you about the subject, the answers might surprise you.
We have a good idea about how the public at large might have answered such questions in the wake of George Floyd’s death thanks to a survey conducted in 2020 by the Skeptic Research Center. They asked a nationally representative sample of Americans two questions:
1. “If you had to guess, how many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019?”
2. “If you had to guess, in 2019 what percentage of people killed by police were black?”
They also asked respondents to say whether they considered themselves to be “very liberal,” “liberal,” “moderate,” “conservative,” or “very conservative.”
Before reading on, any guesses on these two questions?
For the first question—“how many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019?”—the survey offered a set of possible answers ranging from “about 10” to “more than 10,000.” Roughly 31 percent of survey respondents who identified as very liberal estimated that police had killed about 1,000 or more unarmed black men the previous year, with an additional 22 percent believing the number to be at least 10,000. For those who identified as liberal, just under 27 percent believed the number to be about 1,000, with an additional 12 percent believing at least 10,000 had been killed. For those who identified as moderate, conservative, or very conservative, 16 percent, 9 percent, and 13 percent, respectively, guessed about 1,000 had been killed, with an additional 9 percent, 4 percent, and 7 percent, respectively, believing the figure to be at least 10,000.
In response to the second question—“in 2019 what percentage of people killed by police were black?”—those who identified as very liberal gave an average estimate of 60 percent, and those who identified as liberal, moderate, conservative, and very conservative gave average estimates of 56 percent, 46 percent, 38 percent, and 45 percent, respectively.
Did the wisdom of the crowd correspond in any way to reality here? The short answer is no.
Arguably the best available public data on police shootings, found in the Washington Post ’s comprehensive database of fatal police shootings, reveals the following: police shot and killed 54 unarmed people in 2019, of whom 26 were identified as white, 12 as black, 11 as Hispanic, and 5 as other. Of these 54, 49 were male (23 of whom were identified as white, 11 as black, 10 as Hispanic, and 5 as other). Two caveats here: First, this data doesn’t include those extremely rare cases in which an officer killed an unarmed person without shooting them, such as through a stranglehold or car strike. George Floyd’s death, for example, would not have been included in these numbers. Second, although classified as “unarmed,” many of these police shooting victims were actively trying to hurt or kill an officer or some other party when they were shot. Keep in mind that unarmed never means “not deadly.” In any police action in the United States, there is always a gun involved—the officer’s—and, in many cases, an unarmed suspect is fighting to take hold of it. Perhaps the most well-known and highly publicized case involving this exact scenario occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. At the time, it was claimed that the young victim, Michael Brown, had his hands up when Officer Darren Wilson shot him, in cold blood, in the middle of the street. This account led to a protracted period of unrest marked by waves of protests and riots. Upon investigation, however, the forensic evidence, as well as a half-dozen black witnesses, confirmed Officer Wilson’s account: Brown had tried to gain control of Officer Wilson’s gun and was charging at him when he was shot. The widely adopted and repeated “Hands up, don’t shoot!” slogan was based on a lie.
If we look closely at the twelve fatal police shooting cases in 2019 involving unarmed black individuals, we find the following: in one case, a suspect was killed as he was trying to run over an officer with a car; in a second case, a suspect grabbed an officer’s taser and used it on him; in a third case, a female officer was hit in the head and knocked to the ground by a suspect before she fired; in a fourth case, a suspect led a trooper on a car chase before fighting with the trooper; in a fifth case, police shot a domestic violence suspect who stated, “I’m gonna kill every last one of them mother f——s!” before waving an object at them, which those on scene mistook for a gun; in a sixth case, a teen fought with officers after “flipping out” on his girlfriend, running naked through a neighborhood, breaking into a house, and knocking out an officer who had been unable to subdue him with a taser; in a seventh case, a deputy was hit by the rear door of a moving car as a suspect tried to drive away; in an eighth case, a mentally ill man stealing food was shot after a short foot pursuit and struggle on the ground with a deputy; in a ninth case, an officer shot a suspected drug dealer high on methamphetamine who the officer believed was reaching for a gun in his waistband after a brief struggle.
When you set aside those cases in which the suspect is actively trying to harm or kill an officer, or officers have a legitimate reason to fear that their own or some other person’s life is at risk, you are left with just a few deaths of unarmed black individuals per year in which the police are demonstrably at fault. As of 2024, only two of the twelve cases from 2019 recorded in the Washington Post ’s database had led to an indictment for the officer or officers involved. An indictment is possible in a third case.
Just how misinformed was public perception on this issue?
Let’s allow for a moment that the Washington Post ’s database is incomplete and estimate that the actual number of unarmed black males killed by police was 25, more than double the database figure. Even with this allowance, roughly a third of those who identified as very liberal would be off in their estimates by a factor of 40, and almost a quarter of them would be off by a factor of 400! For those who identified simply as liberal, just under a quarter would be off by a factor of 40, and roughly one in eight would be off by a factor of 400. Those who identified as moderate, conservative, or very conservative would have fared the best, with 74 percent, 87 percent, and 80 percent, respectively, estimating the total at about or under 100. They would be off by roughly a factor of 4.
(Remember, the actual number in the database is 11, not 25.)
Similarly, when it came to estimating the proportion of people killed by police who were black, those who identified as very liberal or liberal fared the worst, though moderate, conservative, and very conservative respondents did not guess accurately either. The average survey respondent guessed 50 percent of those killed were black, but the actual figure was just over 23 percent.
Again, my focus is on self-defense, so I’ll leave it to others to determine the causes of this disconnect between public perception and demonstrable reality when it comes specifically to this subject. But now that we know the actual data, we can adopt a perspective that maps onto reality. And the reality is this: in a nation of roughly 330 million people, where police have more than 60 million contacts with civilians per year and an arrest is made every three seconds, officers shot 12 unarmed black individuals and roughly twice as many white individuals in 2019, almost all of whom were men. When considering that white males make up roughly 33 percent of the population and black males make up roughly 7 percent, we can easily calculate that—holding all else equal—black victims are overrepresented in these figures.
When it comes to crafting a strategy for personal safety and survival, what assessment can we make given these numbers? Should black people necessarily be more fearful of the police than white people? Is this the evidence that proves beyond doubt that police are intentionally targeting black citizens? Indeed, many in the media point to this discrepancy as glaring evidence of racist policing. However, could variables other than racism account for the overrepresentation of black males in police shootings involving unarmed suspects?
Let’s take a closer look at the numbers. In 2019 there were 13,927 homicides recorded in the United States. In that same year, police fatally shot 1,004 suspects, most of whom were violently resisting arrest, armed, or otherwise dangerous. About a quarter of those killed by police that year were black, or roughly double what we might expect if looking only at U.S. population percentages (roughly 13–14 percent of the population is black). Yet, if we consider crime rates rather than share of population across demographics, the fact that roughly one in four of those killed by police in 2019 were black is actually less than what we might have predicted. In 2019, black Americans accounted for more than 55 percent of homicide arrests and, assuming statistics from 2018 remained about the same, committed approximately 36 percent of serious nonfatal violent crimes. Given these numbers, you could argue that black Americans were actually underrepresented in police shootings in 2019, if you make the basic assumption that the number of police shootings corresponds to violent crime rates. The logic is simple: a group or community with a high crime rate will have more police contacts than a group or community with a low crime rate—especially when it comes to violent crime. The greater number of police contacts or arrests a group or community experiences, the greater chance for a violent or even lethal outcome.
I want to stress here again that the questions we ask are of primary importance, because if we’re not asking the right questions, we can’t hope to find the right answers regarding important questions involving public safety and civil rights—and we as a society certainly won’t be able to protect ourselves or help those who deserve our attention the most: the victims. Of the homicide cases in the United States in 2019 in which the victim’s race was known, 54.7 percent were black and 42.2 percent were white. Given this reality, for all those who would still argue that the police are intentionally targeting black males because they are racist, what percentage of police attention do the victims and the communities in which they lived and died deserve? What percentage of police attention should be given to getting violent criminals off the street so that there will be fewer future victims in those communities?
These questions are vital for determining how, when, and where police should operate, given their finite resources. Let’s take New York City as an example, where roughly 24 percent of the population is black. In 2021, 67 percent of homicide victims were black, and 61.7 percent of those arrested for homicide were black. In 2020, 65.0 percent of homicide victims were black, and 60.2 percent of those arrested for homicide were black. In 2019, 56.6 percent of homicide victims were black, and 58.0 percent of those arrested for homicide were black. In 2018, 62.6 percent of homicide victims were black, and 60.1 percent of those arrested for homicide were black. I could go on, but the pattern is clear. Every year in New York City, a demographic that makes up just under a quarter of the city’s population makes up roughly 60 percent of its homicide victims. We also know that roughly 90 percent of all homicides in which the victim is black are intraracial. Again, this is not surprising, as the vast majority of all violent crime is intraracial. So let me ask, if a group that makes up one-quarter of the total population in New York City accounts for roughly 60 percent of the homicide victims, year after year, what percentage of police attention should that group receive? Is giving that 60 percent of victims anything more than 24 percent of police attention racist? No, of course not. And homicide isn’t the only violent crime where this same pattern of violence occurs. If we look at reported rapes in 2021, for example, 37.7 percent of reported victims were black, and 45.4 percent of those arrested for rape were black. Do those rape victims not deserve police attention? Does the community not deserve any meaningful protection from future murders and rapes?
If we apply the logic that every disparity in policing is due only to racism, how do we account for the fact that more than 95 percent of people shot by police in any given year are men, when women account for half the population? Does this imply that police forces everywhere are sexist against men? Or consider this: Asian Americans make up roughly 6 percent of the total U.S. population, but they account for less than 2 percent of people shot by police in the United States. Should we infer from this that police are uniformly racist against whites, given police shoot white Americans at a far higher rate than Asian Americans?
If we use post hoc reasoning, assume that only systemic sexism and anti-white racism are at play, and reason backward from there, we could indeed reach a predetermined conclusion that cops hate men and that cops hate white people. This would be the identical reasoning process used by those who routinely assert that the disproportionate shooting of black suspects is incontrovertible proof of racist policing. The Creationist fallacy of the “God of the gaps,” in which any holes in our current scientific knowledge are seen as evidence of God’s existence, has never reflected a serious attempt at finding the truth. Similarly, assuming any disproportionality in police shootings to be evidence of racism only, without bothering to control for any other factors, is no more than a “racism of the gaps.”
I don’t say any of this to make light of the issue or to detract in any way from the pain and suffering caused when an individual is harmed or killed by a police officer, especially when they are unarmed or an innocent bystander, such as in the case of Breonna Taylor. In an ideal world, there would be no police shooting deaths, and we should take sensible, evidence-based steps to reduce them. But in the real world, there’s no reason to believe police shootings should, or even could, correlate perfectly with U.S. Census Bureau data. Believing so is a failure to reason honestly about the best available evidence. This includes accounting for crime rates, particularly violent crime rates.
Any honest look at most of the police shootings anti-police activists commonly cite, and I strongly suggest readers take the time to read the facts about each event, will find little to no evidence for racially motivated murders. Instead, you’ll see cases like the one involving Michael Brown, in which a half-dozen black witnesses and forensic evidence confirmed that the initial popular narrative about the case was false. Put simply: if Michael Brown had not attacked a police officer that night and had not tried to grab his gun, he’d be alive right now. And I think most Americans, no matter their race, understand that.
Even in those cases that involve a terrible mistake, such as in the death of Daunte Wright, or when there are legitimate questions about whether a suspect’s rights were violated, such as in the case of Freddie Gray, there’s usually very little direct evidence of racism. When Gray died in police custody in Baltimore in 2015, three of the six officers involved were black. This was also at a time when the United States had a black president and a black attorney general; Baltimore had a black mayor, a black police chief, and a black deputy police chief; Maryland had a black state attorney general; and a black Circuit Court judge oversaw the trials of the officers. Can Gray’s death be directly attributed to police racism? Might the case just show that police brutality, misconduct, and negligence sometimes occur, regardless of race, and that’s the challenge in need of a solution? And, as the ensuing trials demonstrated, that due process often reveals facts that clash with the public’s prejudgment? Indeed, for every case involving a black suspect that causes justifiable outrage, you can usually find a comparable case in which a white suspect is treated with the same coldness or malice—those cases just don’t lead to weeks of front-page headlines. If you honestly believe that white suspects are immune to poor or even dehumanizing treatment, or that justice always rewards white victims of police violence, look up the Tony Timpa case or the Daniel Shaver case. The officers involved in those cases usually end up walking free, too.
When mainstream media and anti-police activists tell us that black Americans are targeted or shot by police at higher rates than white Americans without also mentioning relevant violent crime rates, they are saying something that is half-true and wholly dishonest. The same is true when they filter news stories and we adjust our levels of condemnation and credulity according to the race of the victim(s) and perpetrator(s). Telling half-truths, believing falsehoods, and framing every event through the lens of race has pernicious and dangerous consequences.
The constant attacks on law enforcement, whether through ill-advised budget cuts, regressive anti-policing policies, or the climate of hatred fueled by irresponsible media, have effectively halted proactive policing in many American cities. What makes matters worse from a public safety standpoint is that many violent offenders are either not being charged with felonies or are being put back on the streets in various cities thanks in part to far-left district attorneys, activist judges, and reckless government agencies. As a result, more than a dozen U.S. cities saw record-breaking levels of murder in 2021. Thousands more innocent victims will needlessly die in the years to come from such “progressive” policies. The people who will suffer most from these changes won’t be the upper-middle-class urban elites who foolishly push them through. Most of the victims will be poor, many will be children, and the majority will be black. Our most vulnerable populations will also be at elevated risk. Indeed, we have already seen a dramatic uptick in brutal and sadistic assaults on the elderly, especially against the Asian American community. The blood that covers the media personalities, policymakers, activists, and donors who’ve pushed the defund-the-police narrative will never wash off.
But don’t just take my word for it. Listen to what the communities most at risk and in need of protection are saying. When asked to identify the single most important issue facing the community they live in, 17 percent of black Americans answered violence or crime—by far the most common answer (only 3 percent answered racism, diversity, or culture). It’s no wonder that black Americans want increased police spending and a greater police presence in their cities and towns. The good people who live in high-crime neighborhoods know better than anyone that cutting police funding doesn’t solve our violence problem; it only increases it. And that’s exactly what we’ve all watched happen. I would also caution everyone to remember that in many cities and towns, a sizeable percentage of police officers are themselves black, many police chiefs are black, many mayors and city council members are black, and many attorneys general are black.
Once you actually look at the evidence, read past the headlines, and ignore the current moral panic about our legal and judicial systems, you see that George Floyd’s murder isn’t an indication of any kind of trend or bias. George Floyd’s death stands out precisely because it’s an aberration—an incredibly rare, if tragic, event. An officer with his knee on George Floyd’s head no more represents the honest and hard-working men and women of American law enforcement than a single black gang member represents black Americans or a single white school shooter represents white Americans. We shouldn’t let the media or activist groups that fundraise by stoking divisions ever cause us to forget that. As political scientist Wilfred Reilly wrote before the murder of George Floyd, “A remarkable irony of the modern American conversation is that while race relations have empirically never been better, many members of different races are terrified of one another.”
In today’s tense political and cultural environment, you would think some caution as it relates to stirring up racial animus would be appropriate. And yet, our media shows little to no self-awareness about its own culpability in eroding trust in our most vital public institutions. Heather Mac Donald, who has written for years on this topic, has called this the “high-volume delegitimization of American justice.” As long as the mainstream media remains determined to recklessly repeat half-truths and outright lies—regardless of the facts—you can expect these attacks on our poorest and most vulnerable populations to continue.
The core truth is this: the police are a threat to your life—but only if you are engaged in criminal activity and you violently resist arrest, no matter your race. Of the 5,787 known white homicide victims in 2019, before the giant spike in 2020, at least 388 of them were armed white suspects killed by police, accounting for roughly 6.7 percent of all white homicide victims that year. Of the 7,484 known black homicide victims in 2019, at least 238 of them were armed black suspects killed by police, accounting for roughly 3.2 percent of all black homicide victims that year. For those of you who aren’t in an armed gang or involved in illegal activity, you’re much better off taking simple precautions against lightning strikes than worrying about getting shot by the police. (Note: the average American has about a 1 in 500,000 chance of being hit by lightning in any given year.)
Beyond that, when it comes to interactions with police, the best guidance I can offer for avoiding any type of physical harm is to simply comply. This means: (1) obey any and all orders; (2) show your hands; (3) move slowly; and (4) be as respectful as possible. If you’re being stopped for some reason or arrested, definitely don’t try to run or drive away, and definitely don’t resist. Those acts are crimes themselves and will greatly increase the likelihood of a violent response by the police. As any lawyer will tell you, compliance doesn’t mean you have to answer police questions, at least in the United States. You have every right to remain silent. But I’m not giving legal advice here—I’m giving safety advice. Even if you believe that you are being arrested for unlawful reasons, or that the police are abusing their powers, save your fight for the courts.
And remember, police officers aren’t mind readers. In a country like the United States, where there are more guns than people, they have an especially dangerous job and want to get home safely—just like you. In 2019, police died on the job at a rate of 11.1 per 100,000 full-time workers, more than triple the rate for all occupations combined (3.5 per 100,000). That same year, in which police shot and killed 54 unarmed individuals, 86 police officers died while on duty. Also, keep this fact offered by Mac Donald in mind before having a knee-jerk reaction about the next tragic police shooting in which an officer mistakenly kills an unarmed black man due to a poor split-second decision in a moment of chaos: “a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.” I certainly don’t say all of this to excuse every police action in which an innocent person is killed, but these statistics should give us pause. The prudent, sensible, and measured approach is to reserve judgment until all relevant facts are known about any given shooting—and not to reflexively shout racism with every breaking news story involving the police.
Given all the data, are you better off with an active and engaged police force in your community, or without one? The answer couldn’t be clearer, and it’s shameful that so many innocent people have to die simply because people are often too cowardly to state it. This doesn’t mean that policing can’t be improved, training can’t be modified, tactics can’t be adjusted, law enforcement policies can’t change, and tragic mistakes can’t be addressed. After all, any police shooting of an unarmed innocent is one too many, but a strong, well-funded, well-trained, well-supported, accountable, ethical, and responsive police force—one that has the backing of local government, is engaged with the community, and is visible—is vital for the healthy functioning of any society.
Now, what of those very rare instances in which an individual officer assaults or, worse, kills an unarmed suspect on purpose, whether for personal gain or due to rank racism? Can this ever be fully avoided? Sadly, probably not. After all, police officers are human, and some assuredly fit the very profile of a severely character-disordered predator. No amount of initial screening will be able to weed out all bad actors—racists included. In a nation of 330 million people, we will likely always have a few such cases per year. But remember, if you point to those rare cases of police brutality or racist misconduct to generalize against all police officers and enthusiastically march under a banner that reads, “All Cops Are Bastards,” then the bigot with the character disorder might just be you.
This essay is excerpted from The Gift of Violence: Practical Knowledge for Surviving and Thriving in a Dangerous World, which is available for purchase at these paid links: Amazon, Bookshop, and Pitchstone.
Matt Thornton has been teaching functional martial arts for more than thirty years and holds a fifth degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His organization, Straight Blast Gym, has more than seventy locations worldwide and has produced champion MMA fighters as well as world-class self-defense and law enforcement instructors. He lives with his wife Salome and their five children in Portland, Oregon.