FACT: You're Not Likely To Be Killed By a Police Officer

Seeing that there’s a burgeoning perception shaped by the left and the neo-libertarian right that cops routinely execute citizens for no reason, I took the liberty of being the best and came up with the following statistical guide that I hope will assuage the collective fear of being killed by a police officer. 

US Population=316.1 million

# cops (state and local law enforcement personnel)=1.1 million

# of cops killed in the line of duty in 2013=76

# of citizens killed by police (justified + unjustified)=1000* (*The numbers are surprisingly hard to get, but this is the high end estimate according to Nate Silver’s 538 blog. FBI puts it at 500. I'll go with the high end estimate.)

Percentage of citizens killed by police (justified and unjustified)=1000/316.1 million=.00032%.

That's .00032%

Percentage of cops killed in the line of duty=76/1.1m=.0069%

That's .0069%

.0069%>.00032%

So in fact, a police officer is 22 times more likely to die in the line of duty than a citizen is at the hands of the police.

Now controlling for race.

US black population=43 million

# of black people killed by police (justified and unjustified) in 2013: according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number is 123. Many critics have pointed to numerous flaws in the CDC’s data, yet are unable to offer a better estimate. So let’s use Nate Silver’s data (i.e. 1000 people killed by police in 2013) and assume that 75% of the victims were black (this is almost certainly higher than the actual number). # of black people killed by police=750 (high end estimate).

Percentage of blacks killed by police=750/43m=.0017%

That’s .0017%

.0069%>.0017% .

So, the odds of a cop dying in the line of duty is still greater than the odds of an African American being killed by the police. And to reiterate, this is based on an unrealistically high estimate of the number of blacks killed by police, and includes both justified and unjustified cases.

None of this is consolation to Eric Garner’s family. But seeing social media inundated with wildly inaccurate assumptions about police brutality compelled me to run these numbers.