Study Finds Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings Vary Widely State to State
ALBANY, N.Y. (March 11, 2026) — A new analysis co-written by University at Albany Professor Shawn Bushway finds that racial and ethnic disparities in fatal police shootings vary widely by state. The study, published today in PLOS One, examines the impact of gun ownership rates on these state-by-state disparities.
In the United States, police officers fatally shoot about 1,000 people every year. Overall, Black U.S. residents are about twice as likely to die by police shooting than Hispanic U.S. residents, and about three times as likely to die by police shooting than white U.S. residents. But these racial/ethnic disparities vary widely — up to tenfold — state to state.
A key finding was that New York has the lowest rate of police shooting per 100,000 residents across all racial and ethnic groups, with rates that were between 50% and 80% lower than the national averages. One possible reason for this is the low rates of firearm ownership among New York residents, Bushway said. This study joins a growing body of work showing that fatal police shootings are lowest in states with the lowest rates of gun ownership.
The study was based on data from The Washington Post on fatal shootings of U.S. residents by police that occurred between 2015 and 2020. Overall results show that while a larger proportion of Black people than white people were fatally shot by police in every state, Black-white disparities varied significantly between states. For instance, in Mississippi, the difference between the number of fatal shootings by police of Black residents versus white residents was 0.5 per 100,000 residents, while that difference was 6.72 in Utah.
Nationally, Hispanic people were more likely to die by police shooting than white people, but that disparity is primarily driven by Southwestern states — including New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and California — that have high overall fatal shootings by police and large Hispanic populations. For most states, including New York, rates of fatal police shootings of Hispanic people were lower than for white people.
In New York, Black residents had a 4.5 times higher chance of being fatally shot by police than white residents during the period studied. At least by this measure, Bushway said, low rates of firearm ownership seem to be related to low rates of police shooting, but not lower rates of racial disparity.
Bushway said the findings reveal an important insight about commonly used measures of racial disparity. As rates for whites approach zero, rate ratios — the most commonly used measure of racial disparity — tend to balloon. While New York has the fifth highest rate ratio in the country on this measure, Black residents had a lower rate of fatal police shootings than Black residents of every other state.
“While it is true that Black residents of New York face a risk that is 4.5 times higher than white residents, it is also true that both Black and white residents face very low risks relative to other states,” Bushway said.
Bushway, a professor of public administration and policy at UAlbany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, is also an economist and criminologist at RAND. The study was conducted with RAND colleagues Roland Neil, Terry L. Schell, Andrew Morral and Rosanna Smart, and written by Bushway and Neil for PLOS One, a peer-reviewed, open access journal.
“The general takeaway from the study is that studies of racial differences in the experience of rare events like police shootings must consider both absolute levels and relative differences,” Bushway said. “The law enforcement community in New York should be proud that their rate of fatal police shootings is the lowest in the country across all groups. Continued efforts to lower this rate even further are to be applauded.”