By Stephen Wu

Objective.This study analyzes the relationship between the race of a city’s police chief and the incidence of fatal shootings by police officers.Methods.The Washington Post’s “Fatal ForceDatabase” is used to calculate per-capita rates of fatal shootings by police officers occurring between January 1, 2015 and June 1, 2020 for the 100 largest cities in the United States. I compare fatal shooting rates for cities with police chiefs of different races, both unadjusted and adjusted for differences in city characteristics.Results.Rates of fatal shootings by officers are almost 50 percenthigher in cities with police forces led by white police chiefs than in cities with black police chiefs.Of the 30 cities with the highest rates of fatal shootings, 23 have police departments led by whites and only four have departments led by blacks, while of the 30 cities with the lowest rates, 16 have police departments led by blacks and only 11 are led by whites. Differences in fatal shooting rates persist after controlling for city characteristics.Conclusion.Leaders in the highest position of au-thority may have a powerful effect on the culture of a police department and its resulting behavior.Each year, there are approximately 1,000 fatal shootings by police officers across theUnited States, a statistic that has been fairly steady over the course of the last several years.With recent efforts to track and compile more comprehensive data, researchers have been increasingly studying the factors that contribute to these deaths. Prior research has looked at many factors surrounding fatal officer-involved shootings, including racial and demo-graphic information of both officers and victims, situational and location characteristics,and structural and organizational factors. This study contributes to the literature by look-ing at one as of yet unstudied factor: the race of a city’s police chief.Much of the prior work on police shootings has focused on the demographics of vic-tims. Edwards, Lee, and Esposito (2019) show that age and race are significant factors in determining the risk of being killed by police. Specifically, individuals between the ages of20 and 35 have the highest risk of all different age groups. They also find that blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans are significantly more likely to be killed by police than whites. An important distinction between sheriffs and police chiefs (or commanders, commissioners, captains,and superintendents) is that sheriffs are directly elected, while other top leaders are appointed by the mayor or city council. Sheriff’s departments also may have additional duties for their jurisdictions including supervision of correctional facilities and providing court security. There are only two cities in the data with elected sheriffs,and the analysis is not affected by eliminating these two departments.

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 102, Number 1, January 2021