<story><title>Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings in the United States</title><url>http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0141854</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>akud</author><text>&amp;gt; the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average&lt;p&gt;What they really need to do is factor in the probability of encounters with police gI&amp;#x27;ve race. That is, we want to know, out of all encounters with police, are they more likely to be fatal if the victim is black?&lt;p&gt;Without factoring in the rate of police encounters, the conclusion could just be indicating that black people are more likely to encounter the police, which is a problem in itself but is slightly different. That would point more to socioeconomic factors determining the rate of policing in neighborhoods, rather than police racism.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>selectron</author><text>A study from the NYT addresses this, and finds that if arrest rates is a good proxy for police interactions (a reasonable assumption) the data supports the theory that the reason black people are more likely to be killed by police is because they are more likely to interact with police:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;upshot&amp;#x2F;police-killings-of-blacks-what-the-data-says.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fupshot&amp;amp;action=click&amp;amp;contentCollection=upshot&amp;amp;region=rank&amp;amp;module=package&amp;amp;version=highlights&amp;amp;contentPlacement=5&amp;amp;pgtype=sectionfront&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;upshot&amp;#x2F;police-killings-of-...&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This in turn suggests that removing police racial bias will have little effect on the killing rate. Suppose each arrest creates an equal risk of shooting for both African-Americans and whites. In that case, with the current arrest rate, 28.9 percent of all those killed by police officers would still be African-American. This is only slightly smaller than the 31.8 percent of killings we actually see, and it is much greater than the 13.2 percent level of African-Americans in the overall population.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings in the United States</title><url>http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0141854</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>akud</author><text>&amp;gt; the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average&lt;p&gt;What they really need to do is factor in the probability of encounters with police gI&amp;#x27;ve race. That is, we want to know, out of all encounters with police, are they more likely to be fatal if the victim is black?&lt;p&gt;Without factoring in the rate of police encounters, the conclusion could just be indicating that black people are more likely to encounter the police, which is a problem in itself but is slightly different. That would point more to socioeconomic factors determining the rate of policing in neighborhoods, rather than police racism.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>holdenk</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure I agree with you - having a higher encounters rate need not be limited to simple neighborhood selection for policing (although there is likely bias there too) - rather simply choosing who to interact with may exhibit bias (e.g. is the police officer more likely to have an encounter with a black person even in a predominantly white neighborhood)?</text></comment>