IM2/C_Clayton_Jones, your anoucement about California's cops being more violent on blacks than on whites comes a little late. A study was conducted years ago, interviewing police officers in various locations across the nation and the officers readily admitted that they were "harder" on blacks than on whites. But, when it came to deadly force, that ratio between blacks and whites were found to be similar. Their reasoning for being harder on blacks on whites was because of conduct when stopped or pulled over. Blacks tended to resist more when confronted by law enforcement.
That’s not what the data shows though. This is something we actually discussed in one of my machine learning courses—how sample data can be technically accurate while still failing to represent underlying reality.
From a data perspective, Black individuals tend to have more contact with the criminal justice system—not because of higher inherent criminality, but because of cumulative bias at multiple stages: initial stops (racial profiling), arrests, charging decisions, convictions, and sentencing. These disparities compound across the entire pipeline.
Legally, this is reinforced by how use-of-force is evaluated. Under
Graham v. Connor, officers are judged based on “objective reasonableness” from their own perspective in the moment. In practice, that means perceived threat—not actual threat—can justify escalation. Cases like
Whren v. United States and
Illinois v. Wardlow further expand police discretion based on interpretation of behavior, which introduces room for bias to influence outcomes.
The percentages you cited and are relying on don’t account for how officers perceive threat in real-world encounters. Studies show that identical behavior is more likely to be seen as dangerous when the person is Black, while similar or even more aggressive behavior by white individuals is less likely to trigger that same response. That gap in perception is exactly why your cited percentages don’t reflect reality.
We’ve seen how this plays out in real-world cases. In the 2024 killing of Sonya Massey, she called 911 for help and was ultimately shot by a responding officer who later claimed he perceived a threat. He was charged with first-degree murder and ultimately convicted of second-degree murder. The key issue wasn’t just the outcome—it was how quickly perception escalated into lethal force despite the absence of an objective threat.
That’s the core problem: when perception is allowed to drive decision-making, and that perception is shaped by bias, the system produces outcomes that appear consistent in isolation but are structurally unequal.
The Long, Painful History of Police Brutality in the U.S.