A new analysis suggests having a Black police chief reduces the rate of instances of officers fatally shooting people, Time magazine reported.
"A lot of people will talk about training and the racial makeup of officers," study author Stephen Wu, 47, New York's Hamilton College economics professor, told Time of the study yet to be published. "It's not just about the overall police force. Leadership matters."
The study of the 60 largest U.S. cities in the past five years revealed that having a Black commander reduces the per-capita rate of police officer's fatal shooting by 70% versus those with white leaders, per the report.
The rate is also reduced with Latino-led police forces, according to Wu.
The findings suggest diversity in leadership might help stem the scourge of fatal shootings by police officers, Wu concludes, adding the disparity is "large and significant."
Wu also called it a "a pretty striking finding," among the top 20 cities with the highest rates of fatal shootings by police 16 were led by white leaders, while 14 of the 20 cities with the lowest rates were led by Black leaders, per the report.
For a city of 1 million, it amounts to a disparity of 21 deadly police shootings for a Black-led department versus 35 for a white-led force, according to Wu.
Wu admits his study does not control for tourist visitors, which Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Deputy Chief Andrew Walsh notes might distort the data and suggest the study "may be flawed."
"We recognize the need for this conversation, and our agency is not perfect, but there are citizens and officers who are alive today because a police officer had to make the decision to use deadly force," Walsh said in a statement per Time.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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