A team of Harvard University researchers found in 2020 that police were 53 percent more likely to use nonlethal physical force on an African American than on a white American. They analyzed 5 million police encounters with civilians in New York City and a database of 1,316 police shootings of civilians between 2000 and 2015 in localities in California, Texas, Florida, and Colorado.12 But since that number was based on police reports alone, the actual number could be higher.
