Florida Police Shoot Twice as Many Blacks as Whites: Report

Black people are twice as likely to get shot by police than white people in Florida regardless of the crime, according to a new report from local newspaper Tampa Bay Times.

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The report, which analyzed publicly available data on police reports, news articles, lawsuits and autopsies, said most of the shootings against Black people were for minor offenses.

The newspaper’s report found that out of the 827 people who were shot over this time span, 673 were either Black or white. Of those, 343 were Black.

In a similar vein, 97 of the 147 people shot by police when the number of people who were shot for offenses such as threatening police safety is removed, were also Black.

The findings also suggest that African-Americans are twice as likely to get shot after being pulled over by police. When examining incidents in which an alleged perpetrator attempted to escape police on foot, Black people were three times as likely than whites to get shot by police and "four times as likely to be shot in the back," the report said.

A study in Criminology & Public Policy published in February found that among the 990 fatal shootings that occurred in 2016, police were twice as likely to kill unarmed Black civilians compared to unarmed white civilians.

In recent years the U.S. has seen major unrest and a national debate over police brutality and shootings of Black men and women after several high-profile police killings in cities including Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore.