Abstract
Late in the summer of 2014, Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old White police officer in the city of Ferguson, MO, responded to a dispatch call about a theft at a local convenience store. The seemingly typical call ended with Wilson shooting and subsequently killing Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man. The events that occurred between the call and the shooting have been widely debated ever since, and the fatal shooting sparked civil unrest almost immediately—captivating the attention of the media, government agencies, and the nation at large. While not the first high-profile incident involving the use of lethal force by a police officer, something about this event triggered a nationwide conversation about the relationship between law enforcement and civilians, specifically African American men.
In When Police Kill, criminologist Franklin E. Zimring considers this social movement in the United States and the relatively high rate of civilian deaths at the hands of police officers compared to similar developed nations. Zimring essentially asks, “What’s going on?” and turns to the aggregated data collected by various sources across the world.
When Police Kill begins with the argument that police killings of civilians are in fact of noteworthy concern. While the data on police violence are limited—Zimring estimates that 1,000 Americans are killed each year by police officers. Given this knowledge, he seeks to understand what provokes police to kill, who is killed, and what can be done to reduce civilian deaths without sacrificing officer safety. This is a daunting task given the government’s flawed reporting systems for officer-involved shootings. Because of the voluntary reporting nature of the Federal Bureau of Investigation supplemental homicide and while the National Vital Statistics System is required, it does not always contain information on law enforcement involved deaths, Zimring supplements the major reporting gaps by analyzing two national databases created by news organizations: The Washington Post and The Guardian.
To answer his questions, Zimring breaks the book down into two parts. Part I focuses on the characteristics and causes of police killings. He finds that the official estimates of police killings in the FBI and BJS reporting programs fail to account for about half of all shootings (these reporting systems include about 500 incidents annually, while the crowdsourced databases from The Washington Post and The Guardian estimate about 1,000). Zimring finds that many of these events gained significantly more news coverage in the aftermath of the Ferguson incident. This is partly due to the Black Lives Matter movement—which the author finds support for. His analysis on the proportions of race shows that African Americans make up 26.1% of all fatal police encounters, while only representing 12.2% of the total population. Also strikingly, Zimring uses The Guardian sample to show that only 55% of all police killings involved targets with firearms, and over 10% involved a target that was not armed with any type of weapon. Noting the growing mistrust toward police and their departments, Zimring also finds a stark statistic on police accountability: Only 1 in 1,000 police killings results in a criminal conviction.
In Part II, Zimring takes a broader look at police killings and examines ways these fatal incidents can be controlled and ultimately reduced. He begins by echoing the need for more complete, accurate data on all police killings. Zimring argues that federal agencies should manage a mandatory reporting system that captures all deaths by and of police and incidents that result in the critical injury of civilians and police. He then goes on to urge police departments to adopt a principle belief that the preservation of civilian life should be a priority. By examining the frequency of shootings, number of times a target is shot in a single incident, and the response by police departments to these shooting, Zimring argues that departments are not recognizing the events as major concerns. Further, administrations should develop policies that restrict the use of deadly force without risking officer safety, such as not killing persons who do not possess a weapon, reassessing the situation after one shot is fired, and so on.
When Police Kill is a well-researched and compelling book that serves as the first of its kind. Zimring’s work is unique in that he compiles a comprehensive collection of the known national data sets on police use of lethal force and uses these data to answer long overdue questions regarding deaths at the hands of law enforcement. Additionally, Zimring includes analyses on both civilian deaths by police and police deaths by civilians—not just for political reasons—but to show the link between police use of lethal force and their perception of the risk of assault against them. He argues that while the correlation between the two is growing weaker, these factors should be talked about in conjunction with each other in order to reduce civilian deaths without risking officer safety.
Zimring maintains that, while it will take work, significantly reducing deaths at the hands of police officers is possible. While geared toward practitioners, policy makers, and academic researchers, When Police Kill is a must read for all those interested in police reform, public policy, and research on law enforcement practices. The findings presented here will no doubt serve as a launching pad into a world of lethal force research and policy that will make great strides toward improving policing practices and officer safety.
