In New Orleans, every girl who was involved in police use of force incidents from 2015-2020 was Black; two-thirds of the girls who live in the city are Black. The story is similar in Chicago, Minneapolis, Indianapolis Columbus, Ohio and Portland, Oregon. https://t.co/eckd9rEKpN
— The Marshall Project (@MarshallProj) November 14, 2021
Eye-opening tweet of the morning. Every single female teen targeted for police use of force in New Orleans over a five-year period was a Black woman. Every single one. Yes, the city is majority African-American. And it even has many African-American political leaders.
There is something wrong with this picture. Particularly since it does not appear to be isolated.
From the report:
There is no comprehensive national database of violent interactions between police and civilians. But when we looked at data for six large police departments that provided detailed demographic information on use-of-force incidents, we found nearly 4,000 youngsters 17 and under experienced police violence from 2015 through 2020.
Almost 800 of the children and teens — roughly a fifth of the total — were Black girls. White girls were involved in about 120 cases, representing only 3% of use-of-force incidents involving minors.
As Black communities are painfully aware, and researchers have detailed, Black boys bear the brunt of police violence against minors. That was true in our data, too. More than 2,200 Black boys were involved in use-of-force incidents in the six cities we examined.
But Black girls also accounted for a significant share of the cases. In New Orleans, every girl in use-of-force data was Black; two-thirds of the girls who live in the city are Black. A spokesman for the police department emphasized that all but one of the incidents “involved lower levels of force (Hands, Takedown, Firearm Pointing, etc.).”
The story was similar in Chicago, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon, where girls who experienced force by police were disproportionately and often overwhelmingly Black. Several of these departments declined to comment.