DENVER (KDVR) — The people shot by Denver Police Department officers are disproportionately Black or Hispanic, but the trend is consistent among officers of all races.
The Denver Police Department released a dashboard containing all the details of the city’s police shooting incidents going back to 2015. The dashboard contains statistical breakdowns of incident cause, location, races and ages of officers and shooting subjects and reasons police contacted the subject in the first place.
The rates of shootings for Black or Latino subjects are higher than their share of the Denver population, while they are lower for white and Asian subjects and roughly equal for American Indian or Alaska Native subjects.
These roughly reflect crime demographics in Denver. In the same stretch of time, the arrestees of violent crimes in Denver were one-third Hispanic, one-third Black or African-American and one-quarter non-Hispanic white.
From 2015 through 2022, there were 35 Hispanic and Latino police shooting subjects, the most of any racial or ethnic group. There were 19 white subjects, 17 Black or African-American subjects, two Asian subjects and two American Indian or Alaska Native subjects.
White and Hispanic/Latino officers shot subjects of different races in roughly equal shares, while Black or African-American officers were more likely to have shot Hispanic/Latino or Black subjects.
For both white and Hispanic officers, about 43% of the subjects were Hispanic/Latino. Black or African-Americans were 24% of white officers’ subjects and 20% of Hispanic officers’ subjects.
Meanwhile, Black officers were more likely to have shot Hispanic or Black subjects. Thirty percent of Black officers’ subjects were Black, while 60% were Hispanic.
There was only one shooting involving an Asian officer of which the subject was white.