Giving Compass' Take:

• Brendan O'Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi explain how fear and lack of discipline contribute to cops' use of deadly force in the United States. 

• How can cities and states use this information to improve their police forces and reduce cops' use of deadly force? 

• Learn how police brutality drives communities apart. 

Police officers in the United States kill more than 1,000 civilians a year, while German and British police together kill about 10. Startling as such international comparisons are, there are also dramatic differences within the United States. Californians are four times more likely to face deadly force than residents of New York State, and residents of Arizona and New Mexico are eight times more likely to be killed by police than their counterparts in Connecticut.

In each of the nation’s largest cities, there are significant racial disparities in the likelihood of being killed by police: black residents of Houston are four times more likely to face deadly force than whites; black residents of New York and Los Angeles are six to seven times more likely to die in police shootings, and black residents of Chicago are 18 times more likely to be killed by police. Yet regional differences in the overall incidence of lethal force are so great that whites in Houston have a higher likelihood of being killed by police than black residents of New York City do.

Such extreme geographic variations suggest that selection, training, leadership and organizational culture have considerable impact on the way officers respond to perceived threats and defuse situations before they become threatening. Some powerful historical evidence supports this view.

During the summer of 1967, police and military resources were deployed on a large scale to quell civil disturbances in scores of American cities. In Newark and Detroit alone, more than 50 civilians were killed in less than a week. Many of the officers and guardsmen involved were young, inexperienced and unfamiliar with local conditions. They especially were afraid of sniper attacks, and this fear led to indiscriminate firing and multiple fatalities. According to the Kerner Commission report on the protests, “most reported sniping incidents were demonstrated to be gunfire by either police or National Guardsmen… The climate of fear and expectation of violence created by such exaggerated, sometimes totally erroneous, reports demonstrates the serious risks of overreaction and excessive use of force.”

In contrast with the jittery police and guardsmen, one section of Detroit was policed by professional soldiers, one-fifth of them black, under the command of General John L. Throckmorton. Recognizing that the city was “saturated with fear,” Throckmorton “felt that the major task of the troops was to… restore an air of normalcy.” Within hours of their arrival, “the area occupied by them was the quietest in the city,” the Kerner Commission found. The troops “had strict orders not to fire unless they could see the specific person at whom they were aiming,” and mass fire was forbidden. Over five days, Throckmorton’s troops expended about 200 rounds of ammunition, almost none of it after the first few hours. Meanwhile, in Newark, guardsmen and state police expended more than 3,000 rounds in three days.

These examples from the ‘60s provide a stark illustration of the fact that the objective threats officers face are not the only reasons for variations in their use of lethal force.

Read the full article about cops' use of deadly force by Brendan O'Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi at The Marshall Project.