Faulty Statistics in the Media – The O’Reilly Factor on police killings of Blacks vs. Whites A quantitative reasoning activity developed by Rachel Perlin (Psychology dept, Hunter College)

Ferguson protests - background A series of protests began in Ferguson, Missouri after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year old African American male, by Darren Wilson, 28, a white Ferguson police officer. The shooting of Michael Brown occurred on August 9, 2014 and a series of protests occurred in Ferguson 2 weeks after his murder, as well as a week after a grand jury decided not to indict Wilson.

Black Lives matter movement Similar incidents of police murders of unarmed black males have occurred in the past few years, that have also received national attention and reactions of protests when the officers were not indicted or no charges were brought by a jury. These include (but are not limited to) the murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida in February, 2012 and the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City in July, 2014. The Black Lives Matter activist movement began in July 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Florida shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The movement campaigns against police brutality in the United States against African-Americans.

The O’Reilly Factor VIDEO http://video.foxnews.com/v/3918573913001/what-the-ferguson-protesters-accomplished/?#sp=show-clips The O’Reilly Factor is one of the most popular cable television programs for conservatives and watched by millions. This particular segment has been shared widely on conservative blogs as “proof” that racism in policism isn’t a problem.

Critical evaluation of o’reilly’s statistics Let’s assume that there were no other police killings (of other races) – calculate the percentage of Blacks vs. Whites killed (out of the total # of police killings). Now, also assuming Blacks are 13% of the population in 2012, and Whites are 63% of the population in 2012 – calculate the rate of police killings for Blacks vs. Whites in 2012 (HINT: compare the percentages of Blacks killed by police, to the percentage of Blacks in the population – and do the same for Whites). What makes this data faulty? How could it mislead millions of viewers who watch this show?

Critical evaluation of o’reilly’s statistics CONT’D It turns out that in 2012, the number of Whites killed by police included White Hispanics (which was about 97). That changes the number of non-Hispanic Whites killed by police in 2012 to ~ 227. How does the validity of O’Reilly’s argument change now?

Mapping police violence DATA In 2014 and 2015, Mapping Police Violence counted 297 people killed by police in the U.S. who were unarmed. Of those people, 117 were African-American, 167 were not, and 13 were not identifiable by race. African-Americans were 14% of the U.S. population in 2013. What proportion of unarmed people killed by police (with an identified race) were African-American in 2013? www.mappingpoliceviolence.org

www.mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends Can also show graphs for Asian, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, etc.

Police Killings of black people by month and BY CITY (reports from mappingpoliceviolence.org) http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/reports/ http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/cities/