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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Crime & justice fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about crime & justice. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

6,857 published reviews in this topic

TheJournal.ieCrime & justice

Black people in the US are impacted less by fatal police shootings than white people

Publisher’s rating: Misleading

The review examined a social-media post that used a Fox News table to argue that concerns about the treatment of Black people by US police were invalid. The table showed more white than Black people fatally shot by police through April 12, 2021. The review found those raw totals broadly correct, but explained that comparing totals alone leaves out the groups’ different shares of the US population. Its conclusion addresses the claim in the context of fatal police shootings, not every form of police impact. To assess the comparison, the review used the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings, which it said had tracked cases since 2015, and US Census Bureau population estimates. For 2021, the review reported 292 people shot and killed by police at the time of its analysis: 114 white and 62 Black. It compared those figures with population shares of 60.1% for white people excluding Hispanic or Latino people, and 13.4% for Black people. On that basis, it said white people made up 39% of those killed and Black people 21%, meaning Black people were disproportionately represented among those killed relative to their population share. The review also described a longer-term comparison in the Washington Post data: Black people were fatally shot at a rate of 36 per million, compared with 15 per million for white people. It therefore distinguished the accurate observation that more white people had been killed in absolute numbers that year from the misleading conclusion that Black people were less affected. The review’s verdict was that Black people faced a higher rate of fatal shootings relative to their share of the population.