Black people encountering police at a much higher rate than white people could be taken itself as evidence of systemic bias in policing.
A study found that white police are no more likely to shoot minorities than non-white police, but that is dismissed as flawed reasoning. [1]
Another study examining lethal and non-lethal interactions with police;
> In the raw data, blacks are 21.3 percent more likely to be involved in an interaction with police in which at least a weapon is drawn than whites and the difference is statistically significant. Adding our full set of controls reduces the racial difference to 19.4 percent.
> In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, we find no racial differences in officer-involved shootings on either the extensive or intensive margins. Using data from Houston, Texas – where
we have both officer-involved shootings and a randomly chosen set of potential interactions with police where lethal force may have been justified – we find, in the raw data, that blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites. [2]
I think at this point the statistics can be used to argue both ways.
I think what’s left behind is the undeniable fact that certain inner cities are more like war zones than civilian population centers with the number of daily shooting and killings. Chicago just saw 18 murders in 24 hours, or nearly ~4,500 shootings per year. [3]
According to the Washington Post last year there were 9 fatal shootings of unarmed black people by police (19 of white people). Fatal police shootings in total were about 1,000 and ~25% were black, a number that under-represents black people relative to the rate of violent crime.
Compare to what the Atlantic describes as the “homicide plague afflicting black America“ of black on black civilian violence, which claims nearly 100,000 lives per decade. This is not whataboutism, this is flip sides of the same coin, because while “defunding” police can reduce the total number of armed and unarmed black people killed by police a maximum of ~2,500 per decade, what will it do to the 100,000 killed per decade in inner city gang wars?
In my estimation, the vilification of police as racist, declarations of “ACAB” and “Fuck 12”, and calling to abolish or defund the police is more likely to result in significantly more dangerous environments where the majority of black homicides are occurring.
[1] - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/study-claims-white-p...
[2] - https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/workshop/leo/l...
[3] - https://www.chicagotribune.com/data/ct-shooting-victims-map-...