Economist Roland Fryer: ‘We Didn’t Find Any Racial Bias in Police Shootings’

FRYER: “I collected a lot of data. We collected millions of observations on everyday use of force that wasn’t lethal. We collected thousands of observations on lethal force. And it was in this moment, 2016, that I realized, people lose their minds when they don’t like the result. So what my paper showed, you’ll see tomorrow, some of you, was that, yes, we saw some bias in the low-level uses of force, everyday pushing up against cars and things like that. People seemed to like that result. But we didn’t find any racial bias in police shootings. Now, that was really surprising to me because I expected to see it. The little known fact is, I had eight full-time RAs that it took to do this over nearly a year. When I found this surprising result, I hired eight fresh ones and re-did it to make sure. They came up with the same exact answer, and I thought it was robust. And then I went to go give it, and my God, all hell broke loose. It was a 104-page dense academic economics paper with a 150-page appendix, okay? It was posted for four minutes when I got my first email, ‘This is full of sh*t. It doesn’t make any sense.’ And I wrote back, ‘How’d you read it that fast? That’s amazing. You are a genius.’ And I had colleagues take me in to the side and say, ‘Don’t publish this. You’ll ruin your career.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘What’s wrong with it? Do you believe the first part?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you believe in the second part?’ ‘Well, it’s — the issue is they just don’t fit together. We like the first one, but you should publish the second one another time.’ I said, ‘Let me ask this. If the second part about the police shootings...’ — this is the literal conversation. I said to them, ‘If the second part showed bias, do you think I should publish it then?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, then it would make sense.’ And I said, ‘I guarantee, I’ll publish it. We’ll see what happens.’ So, it was — it was — you know, I lived under — under police protection for about 30 or 40 days. I had a seven-day-old daughter at the time. I remember going shopping for it because, you know, when you have a newborn, you think you have enough diapres, but you don’t. So I I was going to the grocery store to get diapers with armed guard. It was crazy. It was really, truly crazy.”