Do White Law Enforcement Officers Target Minority Suspects?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12956
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Date: 01 January 2019
• Author: Charles E. Menifield,Geiguen Shin,Logan Strother

56 Public Administration Review • Janua ry | F ebru ary 20 19

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 1, pp. 56–68. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12956.

Charles E. Menifield

Geiguen Shin

Rutgers University–Newark

Logan Strother

Princeton University

Do White Law Enforcement Officers Target

Minority Suspects?

Research Article

Abstract: The debate over possible bias in the use of deadly force has recently been exacerbated by highly

publicized killings of African American males around the country. While much research has been conducted

examining police behavior, little has been done to investigate the impact of race on police behavior. This article

aims to answer this question: are white police officers more likely to use lethal force on minority suspects or

people of a specific race? To answer this question, the authors construct a data set of all confirmed uses of lethal

force by police officers in the United States in 2014 and 2015. They find that although minority suspects are

disproportionately killed by police, white officers appear to be no more likely to use lethal force against minorities

than nonwhite officers.

Evidence for Practice

• The vast majority of people killed by police are armed at the time of their fatal encounter, and more than

two-thirds possess a gun.

• African Americans are disproportionately killed by police officers nationwide.

• The disproportionate killing of African Americans by police officers does not appear to be driven by micro-

level racism. Rather, it is likely driven by a combination of macro-level public policies that target minority

populations and meso-level policies and practices of police forces.

• Fundamental macro-level policy changes, as well as changes to meso-level organizational practices, are

necessary to address the root causes of racial disparities in police killings.

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an

18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by a

white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

The shooting sparked protests and heightened

racial tensions around the country. The events in

Ferguson quickly gave rise to the Black Lives Matter

movement, which sought to draw attention to

persistent racial disparities in policing, especially

the disproportionate use of force against African

Americans. Subsequent killings of black men by

white police officers further inflamed tensions and

increased the pitch of the national conversation. On

October 20, 2014, 17-year-old African American

Laquan McDonald was shot and killed by a white

Chicago police officer. On April 9, 2015, Walter

Scott, an African American man in South Carolina,

was shot in the back eight times while running away

from a white police officer. On February 25, 2016,

Greg Gunn, another African American man, was

killed outside his neighbor’s home by a white police

officer in Montgomery, Alabama. Charleena Lyles

was three months’ pregnant when, in June 2017,

she was killed by police officers responding to an

attempted burglary that Lyles herself had reported.

These and other high-profile police killings have led

many to speculate that white police officers may target

nonwhite suspects when exercising lethal force. However,

rigorous study of the use of lethal force by police is

extremely difficult. There are very little data on police-

citizen interactions, and even police uses of force are not

well accounted for—indeed, the federal government only

recently passed a law, the Death in Custody Reporting

Act of 2013, requiring police departments to report

uses of lethal force (see Hehman, Flake, and Calanchini

2017). Even so, uses of deadly force have garnered

considerable attention from scholars. Much of this work

has found significant differences in the application of

lethal force by police. Numerous studies have suggested

that black suspects are killed by law enforcement officers

at disproportionate rates relative to their representation

in the population (see Ross 2015). The widespread

belief of racialized policing in general—and racialized

police killing in particular—has had a deleterious effect

on levels of trust between minority citizens and law

enforcement officers (Brunson and Gau 2015).

The causes of the disproportionate killing of African

Americans by police are not well understood. The

Logan Strother is CKF Postdoctoral

Research Associate and Visiting Scholar

in the Program in Law and Public Affairs,

Princeton University. Beginning in the fall

of 2018, he will be assistant professor of

political science at Purdue University. His

research focuses on the intersections of law,

politics, and public policy.

E-mail: logans@princeton.edu

Geiguen Shin is a postdoctoral research

associate in the School of Public Affairs and

Administration, Rutgers University–Newark.

His research focuses on public management

and performance, public sector innovation,

regional economic development, and public

finance.

E-mail: geiguen.shin@rutgers.edu

Charles E. Menifield is dean of the

School of Public Affairs and Administration,

Rutgers University–Newark. His research

focuses on budgeting and financial

management, policing, and health care.

E-mail: charles.menifield@rutgers.edu