‘Shot by police’ is a leading cause of death for black men in U.S.

By

National News

August 16, 2019 - 2:23 PM

People walk past the site where Freddie Gray was arrested, on Wednesday, July 27, 2016. (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun/TNS)

About 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police, according to a new analysis of deaths involving law enforcement officers. That makes them 2.5 times more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with cops.

The analysis also showed that Latino men and boys, black women and girls and Native American men, women and children are also killed by police at higher rates than their white peers. But the vulnerability of black males was particularly striking.

“That 1-in-1,000 number struck us as quite high,” said study leader Frank Edwards, a sociologist at Rutgers University. “That’s better odds of being killed by police than you have of winning a lot of scratch-off lottery games.”

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