In the wake of George Floyd’s unnecessary death and the protests that followed, it is important to keep in mind a larger picture. 

My purpose here is not to diminish the tragic death of George Floyd. It is, instead, to place it in a larger context that informs resultant protest and reform. 

According to datausa.io, the number of white and black police officers is approximately proportional to the population. According to mappingpoliceviolence.org, 1,099 people were killed by police in the U.S. in 2019. 

Of these numbers killed, 263 were of blacks, about 190 Hispanic, and about 585 were white. In Minneapolis, from 2013 through 2019, eight people have been killed by the police, three of them black. 

If the police alleged that you were armed, the chances were about two and a half times more likely of being killed than if unarmed, with whites being slightly more likely than blacks. 

About 92% of deaths were by gunshot, with only 14 occurring between 2013 and 2019 due to asphyxiation, four were black, and six were white. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2015 there were over 7 million contacts of police with blacks. In 2015, the number of contacts with police for possible crime was 16,395,300 for whites and 2,273,800 for blacks, indicating that contacts were disproportionately higher for whites than blacks.

Before drawing any conclusions from these statistics we ought to keep in mind an important statistical principle: rare events are notoriously difficult to characterize statistically. 

In police shootings, as for mass shootings, we are dealing with rare events, events that when they occur capture the headlines and our attention. However, the statistics do appear to consistently indicate that blacks, especially black men, are more likely to be killed by the police than what we would expect were the killings unrelated to race. Police deaths by asphyxiation, which is how George Floyd died, is an extraordinarily rare event. 

The overwhelming majority of police contacts, whether with blacks or whites, do not result in deaths. A high proportion of police deaths occur in situations where the police judge the person armed and dangerous. This is the case whether the person is white or black. And the overwhelming fraction of deaths is due to gunshots. Nonetheless, there is a significant statistical difference between black and white police deaths, much more than that between Hispanic and white deaths. The underlying cause of this discrepancy is statistically unclear. It seems apparent that the context of black and police interaction is different than that between the police and others. That discrepancy is not found in the number of police contacts.

The national protests in response to George Floyd’s death appear to presume that his death reflects the racism of the nation’s police force. There are several reasons to resist this overwhelming presumption. First, the data indicates a difference, and a difference need not indicate racism. 

What is more likely is that the difference is far more nuanced. By attending to only one possible aspect, we entirely miss what may be the more important part. Second, the seemingly outrageous and unnecessary means by which George Floyd died is a statistical anomaly, from which practically no general conclusion can be drawn. Thirdly, and most importantly, in framing the event in terms of racism, and racism alone, it focuses the discussion in one and only one direction, and that direction one that is highly inflammatory, perhaps even making a bad situation worse. 

The protests appear to argue that if only there were more white deaths, there would be no problem, thereby completely ignoring, for example, such issues as the disproportionate number of deaths due to gunshot, which ought to be regarded as at least of equivalent importance, regardless of who is killed. In trying to improve policing I think it is ill-advised to concentrate on only one aspect of a complex social interaction. Where only one part is attended to, it is likely to cripple the whole.