Understanding Racial Disparities in Police Use of Lethal Force: Lessons from Fatal Police‐on‐Police Shootings

Abstract

During a 29‐year period studied by a government task force, 10 off‐duty police officers were found to have been mistaken for civilians and fatally shot by another police officer. Eight of these officers were Black, one was Hispanic, and one was White. Given that at least 75% of U.S. police officers in this period were White, we estimate that there is a roughly one in one million chance that this disparity reflects a random deviation from a condition in which Black and White officers faced the same risk of being fatally shot by another officer while off duty. Estimates of the magnitude of this racial disparity must be interpreted cautiously, but the increased risk faced by Black officers while off duty compared to their White counterparts appears to be even larger than the racial disparity among civilians killed by police officers. The disparity is much less pronounced in mistaken‐identity fatal shootings of on‐duty officers, of which two were Black, one was Hispanic, and 12 were White. These incidents are rare, but they comprise an important subset of all police interactions because they are known errors that involve a misperception of threat, and because the differential patterns of racial disparities suggest that there are situational factors that vary systematically and contribute to the observed outcomes. We examine fatal, mistaken identity police‐on‐police shootings and explore potential explanations for the dramatic racial disparity among officers killed while off duty.