Harvard Prof: Defunding the Police Could Cost Thousands of Black Lives

Harvard University Professor Roland Fryer argued this week that defunding the police “could cost thousands of Black lives.” Leftist activists around the nation have called on their local governments to divert funding away from their police forces.

According to a report by the College Fix, Harvard Professor Roland Fryer, himself black, recently published research that suggests that defunding America’s police forces could cost “thousands of black lives.”

Fryer argued this week that the recent calls to “defund” police forces could lead to disastrous consequences. “Defunding the police is not a solution and could cost thousands of black lives,” Roland Fryer wrote in an email to the College Fix.

Fryer’s new paper, which is titled “Policing the Police: The Impact of “Pattern-or-Practice Investigations on Crime,” provides some insights on the relationship between police and their local communities in the United States. The report revealed that homicides skyrocketed in the aftermath of viral police incidents. In other words, police were less likely to be an active presence in certain neighborhoods during periods in which they were facing scrutiny over viral incidents.

“Our estimates suggest that investigating police departments after viral incidents of police violence is responsible for approximately 450 excess homicides per year” a draft of the paper reads. “This is 2x the loss of life in the line of duty for the US Military in a year, 12.6x the annual loss of life due to school shootings, and 3x the loss of life due to lynchings between 1882 and 1901 – the most gruesome years.”

Breitbart News reported in 2016 on Fryer’s research on racial disparities in police shootings. The paper concluded that officers were more likely to shoot at white suspects than they were with black suspects.

“In officer-involved shootings in these cities, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white,” Fryer’s 2016 paper read. “Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both of these results undercut the idea that the police wield lethal force with racial bias.”

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