The effect of suspect race on police officers' decisions to draw their weapons

• Published in: Justice quarterly Vol. 38; no. 7; pp. 1428 - 1447
• Main Authors: Worrall, John L., Bishopp, Stephen A., Terrill, William
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 10.11.2021; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Bias; Deadly force; Officer-involved shootings; Police; Race; Racism; suspect race; use of force; Weapons; United States > US
• ISSN: 0741-8825; 1745-9109
• DOI: 10.1080/07418825.2020.1760331

Researchers are working to identify appropriate benchmarks for exploring racial bias in the officer-involved shooting (OIS) context. Two recent studies benchmarked OIS against incidents in which officers drew weapons but did not shoot. A problem is that the decision to draw a weapon may itself be subject to bias. Using 2017 use-of-force data from the Dallas Police Department, we modeled officers' decisions to draw their weapons as a function of suspect race and other suspect, officer, and incident characteristics. We benchmarked by limiting analyses to arrest and active aggression cases, thereby excluding interactions in which it was less likely suspects would have had weapons drawn against them. The key finding was that black suspects were no more or less likely to have weapons drawn against them than other suspects.