Police Use of Force as an Extension of Arrests: Examining Disparities across Civilian and Officer Race

The United States is embroiled in an important debate about police use of force tactics. I find that black civilians are disproportionately likely to be involved in a use of force incident during an arrest, examining data from Dallas, Texas. However, this race disparity stems from differences in the initial likelihood of arrest. Further, I fail to find evidence of taste-based racial bias in use of force conditional on arrest, leveraging variation across officer and civilian race. The results suggest that reforms that narrowly focus on force-related protocols may be unlikely to reduce racial disparities in use of force.