Black children six times more likely to be fatally shot by police: study

By Tiffany Stewart

·December 21, 2020

The latest study published in the journal Pediatrics gives us the harsh reality that Black children face worse odds in their everyday lives.

According to the report, Black children were six times more likely to be shot to death by the police than their white peers. The study also found that it was three times more likely for Hispanic children to be shot to death than their white counterparts.

Children pose for a photo during a Black Lives Matter protest at Parliament Square on June 06, 2020 in London, United Kingdom. The death of an African-American man, George Floyd, while in the custody of Minneapolis police has sparked protests across the United States, as well as demonstrations of solidarity in many countries around the world. (Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

“The results are not surprising, but that doesn’t take away from the tragedy of these results,” lead researcher Dr. Monika K. Goyal told CNN. “When we see that this extends to children, it makes this issue even more tragic.”

With her team’s help, Dr. Goyal discovered that between the years 2003 and 2018, 140 adolescents died from police intervention and 131 involved firearms. Of those victims, roughly 93% were male and averaged 16 years old.

It’s important to mention that during that 15 year period, we witnessed the police-involved fatal shooting of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, and too many more.

“These findings are likely an underestimate of the true toll,” Goyal shared with CNN. “This (rate) did not include children who were shot but didn’t die.”

(Courtesy of Rice Family)

Sadly, this isn’t the only area of life where Black children face racial disparities compared to other children. TheGrio recently reported that the coronavirus is killing far more Black and Hispanic children than their white peers. The CDC reported that 75% of youth-related COVID-19 deaths were minorities, despite making up only 41% of the U.S. population.

Black children are also more likely to go missing than White children, although they’re reported the least. The FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database listed 424,066 missing children under 18 in 2018. Roughly 40% of those cases are Black, even though Black children only make up 14% of all children in the country.

According to a news release from Children’s National, where Goyal is associate division chief of Emergency Medicine and Trauma Services and director of Academic Affairs and Research, 6,512 adults were fatally shot by police during this same period. Black and Hispanic adults had the highest mortality rates.

“Our country is truly reckoning with the differential use of police force in communities of color,” Goyal said. “These disparities extend to youth, and my hope is that this data is a call to action to start engaging in that hard work to truly understand the policies that exacerbate these disparities.”

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