In a recent Neuron NeuroView article, Dr. Carl Hart raises concerns that drug research exaggerates detrimental effects on the brain, which contributes towards harmful stereotypes or toxicology reports being used to justify and legitimize police brutality and killing of black people. In Part 1, I review the cases that Hart mentions to support his central claim. I find they do not provide sufficient evidence that drugs play a systematic role in motivating, justifying or legitimizing police brutality or deadly force. Future studies of police-civilian interactions are required to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Hart uses the term ‘massacre’ to refer to police killings of black people, but offers little to no evidence that police are massacring black people. In Part 2, I review two large national officer-involved fatality databases and summarize studies of racial bias and policing. To date, there is very little to no systematic evidence for anti-black bias in police shootings or killings. In Part 3, I delineate a causal pathway and cite evidence to describe how widespread, distorted perceptions of police may paradoxically contribute towards hundreds of excess homicides and thousands of felonious crimes per year in the US. These violent crimes are committed against mostly black victims, thus exacerbating the cycles of violence and structural disadvantages of socioeconomically distressed minority communities. Hart also states recreational drugs have overwhelmingly positive effects and pose less danger than police, yet black people are ~400x more likely to die by drug overdose than by an unarmed encounter with police, which is comparable to the odds of being struck by lightning. Mass protests sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police have raised awareness about police brutality and the need for police reform, but distorted perceptions of police, amplified by media bias and misinformation, have also led to mass rioting, looting, and the destruction of thousands of small businesses (many of which were black-owned). They have also fueled ambush revenge killings of more than 20 officers since 2014 and have increased officers’ concerns over their safety. I propose a systems level, causal network as an approach to model the public and mental health outcomes of high profile police brutality videos that includes complex interactions among psychosocial factors and the influences of misinformation and racial, media and political bias. The model may inform evidence-based strategies to ameliorate health inequities attributed to structural racism and suggests new avenues for research in these areas.
Exaggerated Misperceptions of Police, not Exaggerated Claims of Harmful Drug Effects on the Brain, is Killing Black People and Police: Reply to “Exaggerating Harmful Drug Effects on the Brain Is Killing Black People”
