Victimology Paper

Armed and Dangerous? An Examination of Fatal
Shootings of Unarmed Black People by Police

by

Cassandra Chaney, Ph.D.
[email protected]

Associate Professor, College of Human Sciences and Education,
School of Social Work, Department of Child and Family Studies, Louisiana State University

&

Ray V. Robertson, Ph.D.
[email protected]

Associate Professor of , Department of and Criminal Justice,
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

Abstract

Given the increasing number of unarmed Black men murdered by members of law enforcement,
specifically the deaths of 78 Black unarmed males and females between 1999 and 2015, this
study will examine whether the policemen involved in these murders were indicted. Through the
use of Critical Race Theory (CRT), the following three questions were foundational to this study:
(1) How does the murder of unarmed Black people by police support White Supremacy? (2)
What do non-indictments of police suggest about the lives of unarmed Black people? (3) How
does the murder of unarmed Black people escalate individual, familial, and communal mistrust
of police? Content analysis of the data revealed the murder of unarmed Blacks supports White
Supremacy by advancing the racist legacy of citizen slave patrols that were initiated during
slavery, assumes that Blacks are dangerous, sub-human, and inherently criminal, and results in
little personal accountability for Black murder among members of law enforcement. In general,
officers are not indicted for the murder of Blacks, which suggests the lives of Blacks have no
value. Ultimately, the death of unarmed Black people greatly undermines the confidence
members of this group have in police and increases the likelihood they will regard law
enforcement as a threat to their individual, family, and communal safety.

Key Words: African-American; Black; critical race theory; discrimination; excessive force;
men; murder; police; racism; shootings; white supremacy

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“Please don’t let me die” – 16-year old Kimani Gray’s last words on March 9, 2013

The aforementioned five words were the last ones uttered by a young unarmed Black
male that died at the hands of police. Since police officers who come face-to-face with armed
and dangerous suspects are trained to “shoot to kill”(Danyiko, 2014), it is imperative that
scholars critically examine circumstances surrounding the deaths of unarmed African Americans.
This topic is significant for four reasons. First, compared to other developed countries such as
England, Australia, and Germany, the United States has a significantly higher number of
civilians shot and killed by police (The Economist, August 15, 2014). According to a recent
report, American police killed more people in March 2015 than the entire United Kingdom
police have killed since 1900. Specifically, a total of 111 people were killed by police in the
United States in March of 2015. Since 1900, in the entire United Kingdom, 52 people have been
killed by police (King, April 1, 2015).

Second, the number of Blacks killed by police has reached epidemic proportions (Chaney

& Robertson, 2013; Cush, 2013; Fletcher, 2014; Gabiddon, 2010; Gabbidon & Greene, 2013;
Huff Post, 2014; Kane & White, 2009; Karenga, 2010; Mitchell, 2014; Police Brutality ,
2011; Robertson, 2014; Staples, 2011, Tonry, 2011). In a report on the extrajudicial killings of
Black people by police, security guards, or self-appointed law enforcers, the Malcolm X
grassroots organization found that from January 1 – June 30, 2012, one Black person was killed
by law enforcement or someone acting in such a capacity every 36 hours, representing a total of
120 persons. Moreover, while five percent of the Blacks killed were women, the bulk of those
killed have been Black men like Rodney King. Perhaps more alarming is that 46% of those killed
were unarmed (just like King) and 36% were alleged to have weapons by police, including a
cane, a toy gun, and a bb gun (Operation Ghetto Storm, 2012). Sadly, while the murders of Black
men by police are well-known, incidents in which Black women are murdered by members of
law enforcement receive far less attention (Dionne, 2014). Even Black children are not immune
to being victims of police violence. One study found Black boys as young as 10-years old may
be seen as less innocent than their white peers, are much more likely to be mistaken for being
older and to be perceived as guilty, and face police violence if they are accused of committing a
crime (Goff, 2014).

Third, the increasing number of incidents in which police have used excessive force or

killed unarmed Blacks (or other persons of color) has resulted in increased local and national
scrutiny of law enforcement agencies (Aguilar, 2012; Boyer, 2001; Clifford, 2014; Crochett,
2015; Desmond-Harris, 2012; Elicker, 2008; Hassell & Archbold, 2010; Kumeh, 2010; Lozano,
2012; Rafail, Soule, & McCarthy, 2012; Stuart, 2011). The DOJ (Department of Justice) has
investigated over 17 police departments across the country and has monitored no fewer than five
settlements involving four police agencies since 2010 (Gabbidon & Greene, 2013). The recent
findings of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation of the Ferguson Police Department
confirmed the cries of many Black men and women that have made complaints about police.

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In particular, the DOJ found the Ferguson Police Department frequently engaged in “implicit and
explicit racial bias” and “routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents” (The
United States Department of Justice, Wednesday, March 4, 2015). As a result of the DOJ’s
findings on the Ferguson Police Department, greater attention has been given to simultaneously
protecting members of law enforcement whose mission is to protect and serve as well as
protecting members of the citizenry from being harmed by police.

Finally, this paper will critically examine the circumstances around the deaths of 78 unarmed
Black males and females by police in various parts of the United States between 1999 and 2015.
Since the number of police beatings and killings of African Americans and other people of color,
continue almost unabated since the Rodney King incident (African Americans Killed By Police,
2014; Victim Archive of Enforcement Murders, 2014), we will critically examine the
circumstances surrounding the deaths of African Americans. The scholarly and societal
importance of this examination of Black lives has been reinforced by “Black lives matter,” the
rallying cry of the new movement against racist police violence,” which has been embraced by
people of different races across America (Petersen-Smith, 2014). While the media is instrumental
in giving national attention to a relatively few number of murdered Blacks (e.g., Sean Bell,
Amadou Diallo, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, or Eric Garner), our study validates the lives
of Black men and women that received much less public attention.

This paper has three fundamental goals. The first goal is to examine how the fatal

shootings of Blacks by police support the aims of White Supremacy. The second goal is to
examine the outcome of the fatality for the offending officer. The final goal is to discuss how
Black fatalities greatly minimize Blacks’ individual and collective confidence in law
enforcement. Through the use of Critical Race Theory, the following three questions were
foundational to this study: (1) How does the murder of unarmed Black people by police support
White Supremacy? (2) What do non-indictments of police suggest about the lives of unarmed
Black people? (3) How does the murder of unarmed Black people escalate individual, familial,
and communal mistrust of police?

In the section that follows, we present noteworthy scholarship related to the fatality of

Blacks by police. We begin by discussing the historicity of law enforcement in America. After
this, we discuss the relevance of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to our current discussion. Then, we
present the methodology on which this study was built. Finally, we present demographic
information on the Blacks murdered by police between 1999 and 2015, the geographical location
of those murdered, the unique circumstances of those murdered, as well as the aftermath for
police in the wake of these fatalities.

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Review of

Historically, a large segment of the European American population has demonstrated an
extraordinary amount of racial animus toward African Americans (Alexander, 2010; Bonilla &
Rosa, 2015; Bonilla-Silva, 2009; Fields, 1990; Marger, 2012; Tonry, 2011). Since White
policemen are selected from the larger White society, it stands to reason that policemen, who are
a small subset of the population, share the same racial animosity towards African Americans as
members in the larger population (Chaney & Robertson, 2014). Moreover, members of law
enforcement, along with judges, are more likely to believe that African Americans ‘get what they
deserve’ in their interactions with the legal system (Chaney & Robertson, 2014; Smith &
Hattery, 2009; Walker, Spohn, & Delone, 2004). It is especially noteworthy that in some cases,
minority members of law enforcement are more likely to assault a member of their same racial
group. One study revealed African American officers to be more likely to hold negative ideals of
African Americans and to be more inclined to brutalize African American suspects than White
suspects (Dulaney, 1996).

The findings of one study are especially noteworthy. In their study of police officer
attitudes and treatment toward Black men, Plant and Peruche (2005) found widespread
perceptions of African American males as potential perpetrators legitimized the use of brutality.
More seriously, officer’s general caricature of African American men as aggressive and criminal
justified their disproportionate application of deadly force (Dottolo & Stewart, 2008; Goldkamp,
1982). Thus, when considering instances where officers act aggressively toward Black men, it is
logical to acknowledge that these actions may be partially influenced by race (Jefferis, Butcher,
& Hanley, 2011). Additionally, understanding the attitudes that law enforcement typically have
of African American men can also be gleaned from official government investigations of police
malfeasance.

In their analysis of findings from the Office of Civil Rights’ 2010 study of the New

Orleans Police Department, Gabbidon and Greene (2013) found support for Goldkamp’s (1982)
earlier exploration of why people of color, particularly African Americans, are overrepresented
as victims of police use of excessive force. To clarify, Goldkamp (1982) presented two primary
explanations for minority over representation as victims of police use of excessive force: (1)
differential law enforcement; and (2) minorities are involved in crimes that increase their rate of
victimization by police. Essentially, Gabbidon and Greene’s (2013) analysis of the OCR’s report
discovered strong support for the racism that motivates the mistreatment of Black men and
women (Appleby, Colon, & Hamilton, 2011; Bell, 1992, 1991; Bryson, 1998; DuBois, 2004;
Katz-Fishman, Scott, & Gomes, 2014; King, 2011; Martin, Mahalik, & Woodland, 2001;
Pieterse, Todd, Neville, & Carter, 2012).

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An additional lesson regarding police views of African Americans are evident when one
examines the circumstances surrounding the massive drug sting that occurred in Tulia, Texas on
July 23, 1999. On this date, Tom Coleman, a corrupt undercover cop reportedly framed over
12% of the city’s African American population, which involved approximately 350 persons
(Johnson, 2007). During this massive police drug sting, 38 of the 47 individuals arrested were
African-Americans and came from the small section of town in which Blacks lived (Johnson,
2007). Sadly, approximately one of five African American residents of the town was arrested,
and were done so solely on the word of Officer Coleman who worked for the Panhandle
Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force (Balko, 2014). The prosecution accused each
defendant of dealing cocaine to Coleman (Gupta, 2004). Coleman was later honored as “officer
of the year” in the state of Texas and was photographed with then Attorney General, John Coryn.
Even more disturbing was that the cases against the accused lacked virtually no corroborating
evidence of the alleged drug sales. After a thorough investigation of Coleman’s actions was
conducted, he was found guilty of the following ethical missteps: (1) falsifying reports; (2)
perjury; (3) misidentifying defendants; and (4) misrepresentation of the nature of his
investigative work (Gupta, 2004). In 2004, several of the defendants shared in a 5 million dollar
settlement from a Civil Rights lawsuit (Johnson, 2007). In 2005, Coleman was convicted of
perjury, sentenced to 10 years’ probation and fined $7,500.00 (Balko, 2014).

How Perceptions of African Americans Influence how Members of This
Group are Treated by Members of Enforcement

The marginalization of African Americans by police officers begins early, specifically
during pre-pubescent years (Goff, Jackson, Culotta, Di Leone, & DiTomasso, 2014). Goff et al.
(2014) examined whether African American boys are given the protections of childhood as their
White counterparts. Tragically, African American boys are viewed as older than their actual age,
and are also believed to be less innocent than their same age White peers. In fact, the findings
demonstrated that generally perceiving African Americans as “apes” is an accurate predictor of
racial disparities in police violence toward children. The aforementioned is reason for concern
because African American children are 18 times more likely to be sentenced as adults than White
children (Poe-Yamagata & Jones, 2007). Therefore, the assumed guilt of Black children has
deleterious consequences for their life chances.

The experiences of Black men with police has been less than favorable. In their

qualitative study of how 40 young African American men experienced and discussed police
harassment and police misconduct, Brunson and Miller (2006) revealed these men believed
police viewed them as ‘symbolic assailants.’ The experiences of these men have been
corroborated by research that has affirmed police perceptions of African American men as
criminal to be the impetus behind the police brutality and deadly force experienced by these men
(Jacobs & O’Brien, 1998; Smith & Holmes, 2003). Lastly, negative perceptions of African
American men by police motivates law enforcement to be less responsive to crime in minority
communities (Brunson & Miller, 2006).

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In a structural analysis of police brutality complaints, Smith and Holmes (2003)
suggested the following to understand why such incidents occur: (1) authorities and White
citizens may stereotype minorities as dangerous and criminally prone; (2) authorities perceive
racially dissimilar minority groups as threatening to the existing social order; and (3) the police
may recognize poor minority citizens as a direct threat to their well-being. The aforementioned
serve to justify the imposition of stiffer formal and informal sanctions by police upon minorities
in general, and African Americans in particular.

Finally, drawing on in-depth interviews of African American males in regards to their

encounters with police, Brunson (2007) revealed these men strongly believed members of law
enforcement did not like them. While the latter is not particularly shocking, its significance is
supported by other findings in the police-minority relations literature. For instance, Weitzer and
Tuch (2005) revealed African American respondents were more likely to be victims of racially-
biased policing and to be more likely than Whites to have a household member exposed to
similar treatment. Also, African Americans encounter a disproportionate number of deleterious
occurrences with police because of disparaging ideas that police have of them. Such ideas
contribute to the unwarranted application of physical and deadly force, officer misconduct,
slower response time and fewer police services (Anderson, 2000; Jacobs & O’Brien, 1998; Kane,
2002).

Police Brutality as an Extension of White Supremacy

White supremacy is a historically positioned and institutionally embedded system of
exploitation of people of color across the diaspora rooted in the premise that individuals who are
racially-classified as “White” are inherently superior to individuals who are non-White (Blay,
2011; Halley, Esheleman, & Vijaya, 2011; Hoffer, 2012; Kelly, 2010; Thomas, 1996). Gilborn
(2006) stressed White Supremacy is a comprehensive condition whereby interests and
observations of White subjects are continuously placed center stage and assumed to be ‘normal.’
In addition, this social reality results in primacy being placed on ‘Whiteness’ and a racialized
value on politics, policy, education and every other sphere of public life that has become deeply
ingrained in the American social fabric. Therefore, as a political, economic, and cultural system
whereby Whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and
unconscious ideas about White superiority become widespread and are maintained through the
subordination of non-Whites within a broad array of institutions and social settings (Ansley,
1997).

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White supremacy positions Whites as recipients of unearned privileges, normalizes their
values and oppresses non-Whites through various ways (Robertson, Bravo, & Chaney, 2014).
Thus, White Supremacy specifically denies African American men any sense of self-
determination and collective agency as doing so would place the foundation of White supremacy
at risk (Gillborn, 2006; Wilson, 1993). To quell the likelihood for African American men to
collectively advance, White Supremacy perpetually denigrates, controls, and makes these men
appear inherently dangerous and sub-human (Karenga, 2010). Possibly, the institution that most
closely approximates an extension of White supremacy is police/law enforcement (Skolnick &
Fyfe, 1993).

In the American South, the modern police evolved from a system of citizen slave patrols
that were responsible for maintaining the system of enslavement and the established racial order,
preventing rebellions and uprisings, and capturing runaway slaves (Dulaney, 1996; Palmer,
2012; Reichel, 1999). The plantation overseer policeman or “patroller” was allowed to operate
with impunity and dispensed horrific forms of injustice that included, but not was limited to,
castrations, whippings, maimings, and lynchings (Anderson & Anderson, 2006; Dulaney, 1996;
Robertson, 2014). In the South, lynching was such an effective method of policing the activities
of African American men that from 1880-1950 there were at least 3,500 lynchings. Furthermore,
the majority of the victims of these lynchings were African American men who were frivolously
accused of violating a racial norm of some kind (Loewen, 2005). To put this in context, Ward
(2012) noted from 1890-1917 two to three African Americans (particularly those that lived in the
South) were hanged, burned, or quietly murdered each week.

Dulaney (1996) characterized the slave patrol as the first distinctively American police
system that established a pattern of over-policing of peoples of African descent, a system that
still exists today. So popular was policing as a form of racialized social control, in 1837 the one-
hundred member slave patrol in Charleston, South Carolina was arguably the largest police force
in the United States (Gaines & Kappeler, 2005; Shelden, 2001).

Media Images of African Americans

Contemporary insensitivity to police brutalization against African American men is
enhanced and given traction via negative portrayals of these men in the media (Chaney &
Robertson, 2013b). The origins of negative media images of African American men in media can
be traced to the 1830s and the introduction of Blackface minstrelsy, which was founded by
Thomas Rice, Dan Emmett, Stephen Foster, and E. P. Christy (Patton, 2008; Saxton, 1975). For
almost the next two decades, the “jumping Jim Crow” character became the widely-accepted
conceptualization of ‘Blackness’ on stage. Given the racially egregious consequences of the
“jumping Jim Crow” image, the strongest promoter of modern racially-negative media portrayals
occurred in D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation (1915).

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While this film has been characterized as a cinematic masterpiece, it greatly advanced the aims
of White Supremacy. In particular, this film had a deleterious effect on African American males
because they were depicted as brutes whose sole intent in life was to rape White women and
destroy the White man’s way of life (Loewen, 2007).

As an effective Ku Klux Klan recruitment tool, this film galvanized support for the Klan
as the preeminent savior of White southern civilization. So far-reaching was the negative effects
of this movie for African American people, during a private White House screening by-then
President Woodrow Wilson, he reportedly described the film as painting an accurate portrait of
African Americans (Loewen, 2007). In short, this film was a catalyst for most of the early 20th
century media caricatures of African Americans that still exist today (Baker, 1996; Menzel-
Baker, Motley, & Henderson, 2004).

The aforementioned images of African Americans have contributed to what Armour

(1997) calls Negrophobia, or an irrational fear of African Americans. This irrational fear has
contributed to Whites’ general desensitization to African American suffering of all types as well
as decreased support for social safety nets. Thus, African American males are devalued and seen
as expendable (Burrell, 2010).

Unfortunately, Black as a metaphor for criminality is so deeply embedded in the minds of

societal members that Whites have reported seeing an African American criminal suspect at the
scene of a crime when none was actually present (Chaney & Robertson, 2013b; Leverentz, 2012;
Oliver & Fonash, 2002). In a study to determine the effect of network news images on viewer
perceptions, Dixon (2008) found that exposure to network news depressed estimates of African
American income, increased the endorsement of stereotypes of African Americans as poor and
intimidating, and were associated with higher racism scores.

Media characterizations of violent criminals as Black has been deeply etched in the

psyche of many viewers (Dixon & Maddox, 2005; Leverentz, 2012; Oliver & Fonash, 2002;
Oliver, Jackson, Moses, & Dangerfield, 2004). Such negative portrayals of African Americans in
media have resulted in wanton stereotyping, extreme fear of African Americans, and African
Americans with darker complexions and more Afrocentric phenotypic features being perceived
as more worthy of the death penalty in research experiments (Blair, Judd, & Chapleau 2004;
Chaney & Robertson, 2013b; Dixon, 2008; Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson,
2006; Maddox & Gray, 2002; Peffley & Hurwitz, 2013). All of the aforementioned serve to
legitimize White supremacy, legitimize White life, and de-legitimize African American life so
that incidents of police violence against African Americans are not punished nor viewed as a
larger societal problem.

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The De-sensitization to African American Death

Since members of law enforcement play a pivotal role in maintaining White Supremacy,
it should not come as a surprise that Whites are generally desensitized to police use of excessive
force against African Americans in general, and African American men, in particular. In a recent
poll administered by the 2014 General Social Survey conducted by the independent research
center the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, seven of ten
White Americans polled posited they could envision a condition in which they would endorse an
officer striking an adult male citizen. On the contrary, slightly more than four of ten African
Americans (42%) and slightly less than four of ten Latinos (38%) would approve of such an
action (Holland, 2015).

In an analysis of accounts of more than 12,000 police homicides from 1980 to 2012
contained in the FBI’s supplementary homicide report, young African American men (ages 15-
19) were twenty-one times more likely to get killed by police than their White counterparts
(Gabrielson, Jones, & Sagara, 2014). Additionally, the analysis found that African American
police officers account for only 10% of police killings and 78% of their victims are African
American whereas White officers killed 91% of Whites who died at the hands of police and were
responsible for 68% of deaths of people of color at the hands of police (Gabrielson et al., 2014).
Even more disturbing is the fact that the above figures are a gross under-representation as police
departments are not required to submit records of fatal shootings. In fact, several police
departments have not submitted data regarding the number and/or circumstances of fatal
shootings to the FBI in years. For instance, New York City has not submitted fatal shooting data
to the FBI since 2007 (Gabrielson et al., 2014).

Generally speaking, police officers do not serve time for killing African American men.
According to analysis by The Washington Post and Bowling Green State University, which was
based on public records and interviews with law enforcement and legal experts, it was
discovered that officers were only charged 54 times for killing civilians since 2005 (Kindy &
Kelly, 2015). Also, more than three-fourths of the officers charged were White and two-thirds of
the victims were people of color (all but two were African Americans). Forty-three of the
charged involved the following variables/factors: (1) A victim was shot in the back; (2) there was
a video recording of the incident; (3) incriminating testimony from fellow officers; or (4)
allegations of a cover-up (Kindy & Kelly, 2015). Of the 54 instances in which officers were
charged, 35 had their cases resolved (21 were acquitted or cases were dropped) and when
convicted they served an average of four years behind bars, some only a few weeks (Kindy &
Kelly, 2005). Consequently, juries and Whites in general have trouble seeing African Americans
as “true” victims and thus may find it more difficult to acknowledge Blacks’ humanity (Feagin,
2014; Fukurai, Butler, & Krooth, 1993; Fukurai, & Krooth, 2003; Tonry, 2011).

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As of April 15, 2015, unofficially 255 African Americans have been killed by agents of law
enforcement in the United States in 2015 (Doy News, 2015). This statistic almost certainly
represents an under-estimate since there is no standardized database on police killings of African
Americans (Chaney & Robertson, 2013a; Gabrielson et al. 2014). The lack of a large-scale
governmental response to this incessant problem represents a major judicial blemish on the
United States. When examined from a socio-historical context, it appears that the slave patrols
that were a fixture of early policing in America have not ended, have gained greater force, and
that ultimately, the lives of this nation’s African American citizens do not matter.

Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a useful theoretical approach to examine the deaths of
unarmed Blacks in America by police. According to renowned Black Feminist Scholar, Kimberlé
Crenshaw (1995), “Critical Race Theory aims to reexamine the terms by which race and racism
have negotiated in American consciousness, and to recover and revitalize the radical tradition of
race-consciousness among African Americana and other peoples of color” (p. xiv). In addition to
being a multidisciplinary perspective, Critical Race Theory focuses on the primacy of race and
racism and their interconnectedness with other forms of subordination, questions the dominant
belief system/status quo, is committed to social justice, and places a high value on society’s
experiential knowledge (Crenshaw, 2011; 2002; Solorzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000; Yosso, Smith,
Ceja, & Solorzano, 2009; Zuberi, …