WASHINGTON (AP) – Dramatic videos of deadly law enforcement encounters and the absence of reliable data about how often police use force contribute to a regrettable narrative that “biased police are killing black men at epidemic rates,” FBI Director James Comey says.
That story line has formed amid a lack of comprehensive, national data about how many citizens are killed or injured at the hands of police officers.
Videos of fatal police encounters that capture the public’s attention and are shared broadly across the internet can fuel the perception that “something terrible is being done by the police,” even if the data aren’t there to back it up, Comey said Sunday, speaking in San Diego during a gathering of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
“It is a narrative driven by video images of real and gut-wrenching misconduct, by images of possible misconduct, by images of perceived misconduct,” Comey said. “It’s a narrative given force by the awesome power of human empathy.”
Americans “actually have no idea if the number of black people or brown people or white people being shot by police is up, down or sideways over the last three years, five years, 10 years,” or if black people are more likely than white people to be shot during police encounters, Comey said.