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In the past three years, one unarmed Black woman has been killed by police

I ignored this when I first saw it this morning:

I ignored it because I hadn't paid attention to the name and figured it was just some rando on Twitter. It's not. It's Kimberlé Crenshaw, a longtime law professor at UCLA and Columbia who's influential and extremely well known as a pioneer of intersectionality.

And yet she wrote a post that isn't within light years of being right. She must know that by now, but she hasn't deleted the post or corrected it. According to the Washington Post's database, here are police killings over the past decade:

Black women make up 0.85% of all police killings since 2015. Not one-third. Here's the armed/unarmed breakdown (not counting six undetermined cases):

Sonya Massey is the only unarmed Black woman killed by police in the past three years. Overall, unarmed Black women made up about 11% of the total among Black women, not a majority. Not even close.

Kimberlé Crenshaw is way too famous and influential (188,000 followers on Twitter) to post recklessly incorrect stuff like this. Where does it come from?

36 thoughts on “In the past three years, one unarmed Black woman has been killed by police

  1. D_Ohrk_E1

    Kimberlé Crenshaw is way too famous and influential (188,000 followers on Twitter) to post recklessly incorrect stuff like this. Where does it come from?

    Are you asking a rhetorical question or a genuine one? If genuine, why didn't you just DM her? At worst, you get blocked.

  2. iamr4man

    This web site seems to indicate more black women killed by the police than the WP does:
    https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

    They indicate 15. What may be the problem is comparing the number of black women killed to the total number of people killed rather than the number of women killed. Very few women are killed by the police.

    I’m not sure what “armed” means. Is a pot of hot water “armed”?

    1. Crissa

      Exactly.

      Armed is what the police say it is. When my friend the computer repairwoman came out on her stoop with a screwdriver in hand, a computer in pieces behind her... she was 'armed'.

      Woman sitting in a car? Armed.

      Etc, etc.

  3. Dave_MB32

    This can't be true. I remember more Black women being killed in their own apartments by cops wrongly entering being in the news than is on your list.

  4. Justin

    I'll assume Mr. Drum has done his homework and the key qualifier is "armed". The woman killed recently was unarmed, but she allegedly said, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” Maybe the officer thought those were threatening words. If someone said that to me, I'd feel threatened. Still, the police ought not to have to deal with the mentally ill. No one wants to. The police need to learn to turn and walk away.

    Was she killed because she was black... or because she was crazy?

    1. LactatingAlgore

      if someone said that to me, i'd think they were quoting wesley willis about ond if hid demon helllrides, not threatening me.

    2. Crissa

      Either way, it would be wrong.

      Why was the officer in her kitchen?

      Remember that Justin also supported the killing of pedestrians who complain about being threatened with cars.

  5. tango

    And the number of unarmed Black men killed by police in a year is far lower than is generally supposed as well. While data is hard to come by, this article indicates that there was a grand total of 13 in 2019.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fact-check-how-many-unarmed-black-men-did-police-kill-2019/5322455002/

    And we do not know the circumstances of these 13 cases; some may have been reasonably justified. And the presumption that they were killed because they were black remains unproven. I have seen some stories that use the shoddy logic that since x percent of the population in Black any police actions that affect a higher percentage of blacks is inherently proof of discrimination, like that is the only possible explanation.

    While from what I can tell, police do treat African Americans worse than Whites, I don't think that the stuff people cite as the biggest problems are in fact the biggest problems.

  6. Austin

    The correct number of “unarmed people of all races and genders killed by police” should be zero in a decent country. Our peers manage to achieve this standard in most years/decades. And when they don’t, they do serious investigations of the officers involved, and even charge them with murder/manslaughter if their actions aren’t warranted. This almost never happens in the US.

    1. Atticus

      So if some 6'4" criminal is assaulting a 5' female police officer to the point her life is in danger, she shouldn't be able to shoot him?

      Also, other countries do not have a constitutional right to own guns so the % of citizens that own guns is much lower. In America, even if a person ends up not being armed, police to to consider they may very well have a weapon.

      1. Solar

        As reported by law enforcement itself, the No1 reason for police use of a firearm(the no 1 use of force employed by police), is a person disobeying a verbal command or other types of passive resistance, with the no 2 being a person fleeing from them.

        When police shoot people nearly always they do it because they are trained to shoot first and ask questions later, or because they are flat out psychos ot unstable individuals who wear a badge for the chance to bully and abuse people.

        So spare us the mythical raging big man beating up on the poor tiny female officer as a reason for why so many police officers are trigger happy

        1. Atticus

          The comment to which I was responding asserted there should never be a situation in which a cop shoots an unarmed person. The example I gave is just one of any number of situations that could arise where the shooting would be justified.

          Regarding your second paragraph, can you please share your data source that police shoot people they "nearly always do it because they are trained to shoot first and ask questions later".

          1. Crissa

            Atticus, finding a reason to support more death once again.

            No, unless that larger person is laying hands on that cop, no, they shouldn't be shot. And even then, that's what tasers are for.

            Atticus, supported a murderer threatening people in a crosswalk with his car and then killing one;
            Atticus, who supports reproductive healthcare policies that lead to the death of more children and women.

            1. Atticus

              Carissa, finding a reason to denigrate police officers once again.

              The scenario I described was the large man laying his hands on the small female police officer. Obviously she can shoot him in this direction. Which disproves the original comment that there should never be a situation where a cop shoots an unarmed person.

              Good one.

      2. Narsham

        We're assuming an unarmed criminal? Because an armed criminal can just shoot the officer regardless of how big she is.

        And the unarmed, 6'4" criminal is already physically attacking the officer, in control of the situation sufficiently that he could well kill her?

        And she has a gun with big stopping power?

        Why doesn't our 6'4" unarmed criminal just take the 5'0" officer's gun away from her and kill her with that? Then he has a gun himself.

        The officer would have to shoot to kill before the criminal gets too close; that means she is, by definition, killing someone or attempting to kill someone before her life is in danger. (And I guess we're assuming there's no police backup, the 5' officer had to engage with the suspect for some reason, and we already know this suspect is actually guilty... prison break, perhaps? Why are the police dispatching a single 5' officer to go after a 6'4" violent criminal?

        The underlying issue here is one about the purpose of the police. Is it to protect the public from crime? Surely the purpose of the police isn't to defend THE POLICE from criminals (by shooting or killing them). That would be weird. Like becoming a fire-fighter, not to protect the public against fires, but to protect yourself and other fire-fighters from fires. A child's trapped in a burning building, and the fire-fighters refuse to go in because fire is dangerous and they have to protect themselves from it even if it means members of the public die. And at least they haven't actively killed someone when deciding that.

        But the whole thing is a distraction anyway. Pew research says that only 27% of police officers have EVER fired a gun while on duty (aside from training/practice). At all. Only 11% of women and 30% of men had, so I guess your hypothetical isn't too common. The larger question is this: of the small percentage of police officers who have ever fired their sidearms or other weapons in the line of duty, how many of those shots were reasonable and justified, how many showed bad trigger discipline or other signs of poor judgment or handling that might endanger the public, and how robust are the systems in place to ensure that weapons are only being used in the appropriate circumstances? Because it turns out a lot of the officers involved in shooting incidents/killings have past records, either of bad discipline or of early recourse to violence, and yet they're still being armed and deployed into situations where they might not be the best people to trust with the power of life and death?

        Atticus, pick a big city near where you live. Can you point me to the page on that city's police website which provides statistics about how many people the police shot last year? Killed? Shouldn't those numbers be publicly available if the police are to be accountable to the public? Especially if they're really low?

        I live in the South, where's there's a long history of police violence directed at Black Americans. These statistics aren't available. In fact, my local site's "About" section proudly mentions the police started providing a yearly report on crime statistics and department accomplishments... in 2017. They've been doing that for seven years. Founded in 1896. First report made to the citizens, 2017.

        Surely it's in the best interests of the police themselves to (ahem) police use of violence in their departments and disarm or get rid of officers who shouldn't be trusted with firearms, as well as providing transparent information to reassure people how infrequently police on citizen violence happens (and the reverse, for that matter)? "A few bad apples spoil the barrel," after all.

      3. lawnorder

        The hypothetical police officer has a Taser, Mace or pepper spray, and a baton, any of which can be used to subdue the hypothetical assailant without killing him.

  7. Scott_F

    This armed vs unarmed discussion is a distraction.

    THIS WEEK in Ft Lee, NJ:
    "The woman was shot in the chest after she reportedly charged at them with a knife in the hallway of her Fort Lee apartment early Sunday just before 1:30 a.m.

    "Officers were responding to a 911 call about the woman having a MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS holding a knife."

    Just as in the Sonya Massey case, there is mental illness involved. What do we do - send unprepared cops to deal with them. Of course they are shot and killed. My brother was briefly a police officer in a small town and said that he remembers a number of calls where he could have used someone there with him who had a specialization in mental illness or family disputes.

  8. Scott_F

    What about Breonna Taylor in 2020? While her boyfriend was armed, she was not.
    These statistics are fraught, to say the least.

    1. tango

      If I am not mistaken, Ms. Taylor was shot by officers who did not see or know she was African American. If one is presumably talking about the degree of police violence against Blacks, I don't think that really fits here.

      I think that shooting was a cluster F for other reasons other than race, more specifically no-knock warrants.

      1. lawnorder

        The Taylor shooting was a fuckup for the simple reason that the police didn't practice target identification. Taylor was not merely unarmed, she was a classic innocent bystander. The police should not have fired without an identified legitimate target and should have shot only the legitimate target and no one else.

        There are NO circumstances in which cops are justified in simply spraying bullets in the general direction of an unseen target.

  9. cephalopod

    This may be one of the stats that just feels like it must be true. It certainly could feel that way based on media coverage. The media doesn't cover everything equally - for example, police killings of Native men get very little coverage by the media, even though it's a very high rate compared to population. But those often happen in rural areas, where there are few news outlets.

    The WaPo database is based on news reports, which often do not specify race, especially in the initial reporting. You have to dig to get relevant details. A lot of the women sho are killed by police have knives or try to hit officers with their cars. It would be interesting to learn how UK's unarmed police deal with those types of situations. especially when the person with a knife is trying to harm a family member.

    It's fascinating to read the news reports of police shootings. Unarmed women really aren't shot all that often - one other recent one I found was a passenger in a car that had pinned an officer between two vehicles, but race wasn't mentioned. And the written details often sound implausible...until you watch the bodycam footage, and it really did happen that way.

    1. lawnorder

      Canadian police are just as heavily armed as their American counterparts, but somehow manage to shoot proportionally many fewer people, especially unarmed people.

      1. tango

        Maybe because there are not anywhere near as many guns in the hands of citizens in Canada as there are in the US. I mean, honestly, if I was a cop, my calculus on using my gun would be rather different in dealing with a population that probably was unarmed vs one with a decent chance of being armed, wouldn't you?

  10. skeptonomist

    Do you have to take a math course to get a law degree? Most people, including probably most reporters and law professors, do not have enough knowledge of math or science to be able to handle even fairly simple problems in statistics. If an erroneous interpretation is consistent with their prejudices, it must be right.

    1. akapneogy

      I imagine her numbers refer to the female black population as a percentage of the total female population.

  11. SC-Dem

    As others have indicated, I have no faith in police statistics concerning whether someone they killed was armed or unarmed. This is actually a near meaningless question anyway. The question ought to be did they really pose a lethal threat to the police at the time they were shot to death,
    A few videos I've watched before I couldn't take it anymore included the white guy killed for illegal camping in a desert park outside of Albuquerque by four cops. In addition to the regular cop stuff they had a dog, a shotgun armed with "non-lethal" rounds, and a flash-bang grenade. When the guy agreed to go with the cops and said he wanted to get his bag, they set off the grenade. He was stunned, pulled out a couple of what looked like paring knives, then turned and slowly walked away. So they shot him about 6 times in the back. Then as he lay on the ground twitching they shot him with the shotgun and sent in the dog. This would be an armed suspect.
    Cops broke into an apartment in the wee hours looking for a fellow who used to rent a room but moved out 3 months earlier. The footage was black and white with poor lighting so I couldn't discern the race of the bleary-eyed man who stopped in his bedroom door with a golf club by his leg. The cops said nothing to him and gunned him down. It was justified. He had a golf club.
    Then there's the black man shot in his bed. The cop mistook the cell phone in his hand for a gun. Still, you can throw a cell phone at someone. Was this an armed or unarmed shooting.
    I always carry a pocket knife. If for some reason a cop shoots me, will I be and armed or unarmed victim?

  12. Anthony

    The point isn't how many people are shot and killed by police, and how you slice the numbers up. Cases like this get famous because they are irrefutable examples of larger problems in law enforcement, and while most times a citizen isn't gunned down, there are enough people who think "there but for the grace of god..." that this story gains and retains attention.

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