The first step in fixing a problem is understanding it.  That includes having a solid grasp of how big the problem is, relevant context, and whether the problem is getting better or worse. So I’ve been doing some research on the problem of police brutality against blacks. Here is a bit of what I’ve found:

  1. Best database I’ve seen on police shootings (Updated: to current month): Killed By Police https://killedbypolice.net/

  2. According to the Washington Post, between 14-19 unarmed black men have been killed by the police each year during the period of 2016-2019. The Post notes, however, that some data is missing (e.g., killings that did not involve shootings) - Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-people-have-significantly-declined-experts-say/2018/05/03/d5eab374-4349-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html and   https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/03/police-black-killings-homicide-rates-race-injustice-column/3235072001/  

  3. In cases of police officers “feloniously killed” during period of 2010-2019, 37% of the known offenders were black, or 3x percent of population - Law Enforcement Officers Feloniously Killed - by Race, Ethnicity, and Sex of Known Offender, 2010–2019. FBI https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/tables/table-42.xls 

  4. Race of Firearm Offenders in US (2019): Black: 53.0%; White: 25.5%: Hispanic: 18.7%; Other: 2.8% - 2019 Annual Report and Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/annual-reports-and-sourcebooks/2019/2019-Annual-Report-and-Sourcebook.pdf: 

  5. “It is important to note that approximately 97 percent of convictions are a result of plea bargain agreements in which both the prosecutor and defense agree to the terms prior to judicial action.” [i.e. not the result of biased juries].- Disposition of Criminal Cases According to the Race and Ethnicity of the Defendant: 2019 https://www.courts.ca.gov/7466.htm   

  6. “…the overall sentence length gap between whites and blacks in federal courts decreased by more than 80 percent between 1996 and 2016.  In 2016, the gap was only eight months—an 80 percent reduction from 20 years earlier. - Phys Org (referring to findings in King et al (2019) Have Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Sentencing Declined? Crime and Justice) https://phys.org/news/2019-08-analysis-large-decline-criminal-sentencing.html 

  7. [Racial] gaps narrowed between 2000 and 2016 across local jail and state prison, probation, and parole populations …Both the black and white imprisonment rates for property crimes declined, but the decrease for blacks was more than 10 times that for whites—3.2% per year, on average, for blacks compared to an average of 0.2% per year for whites. For men, the black-white imprisonment gap fell from about 9-to-1 to just under 6-to-1, a drop driven by a 30% decrease in the black male imprisonment rate. - Council on Criminal Justice https://counciloncj.org/news/480024/PRESS-RELEASE-Racial-Disparities-Declined-Across-Corrections-Populations.htm

  8. Average length of stay in California prisons in 2018: 3.2 years - California Department of Corrections Offender Data Points as of December 31, 2018 https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2020/01/201812_DataPoints.pdf