Sept. 30 (UPI) -- More than half of deaths from police violence during a nearly 40-year period went unreported or misclassified, according to a new study, with data revealing that Black people are 3.5 times more likely to die as a result of police violence than White people.
Of the roughly 31,000 deaths from police violence between 1980 and 2018, more than 9,500 involved Black people, while just over 8,500 involved White people, according to the new analysis, published Thursday by The Lancet.
White people constitute 62% of the national population, while Black people account for 12%, according to the U.S. census.
In addition, nearly 5,200 of the deaths from police violence between 1980 and 2018, the last year for which statistics are available, occurred in Hispanic people, who represent about 8% of the national population.
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"Recent high-profile police killings of Black people have drawn worldwide attention to this urgent public health crisis, but the magnitude of this problem can't be fully understood without reliable data," co-author Fablina Sharara said in a press release.
"Inaccurately reporting or misclassifying these deaths further obscures the larger issue of systemic racism that is embedded in many U.S. institutions, including law enforcement," said Sharara, a researcher with the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
The Fraternal Order of Police, a national advocacy organization for law enforcement, did not respond to UPI requests for comment on the findings.
Earlier research covering shorter time periods has found similar rates of racial disparities in deaths from police violence, as well as the underreporting of police killings in official statistics.
In 2019, the United States accounted for 13% of the nearly 9,000 global deaths due to police violence, despite making up 4% of the world population, according to an analysis published in October.
For this study, the researchers compared data from the National Vital Statistics System, a database of birth and death records managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to three non-governmental, open-source databases on fatal police violence.
The databases -- Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence and The Counted -- collect information from news reports and public records requests, the researchers said.
The National Vital Statistics System failed to record 17,100 deaths from police violence out of 30,800 from 1980 to 2018, or 56%, of all deaths from police violence during the period, the data showed.
With an estimated 9,540 deaths from police violence, Black people experienced fatal police violence at a rate 3.5 times higher than White people, with nearly 60% of these deaths misclassified in the National Vital Statistics System, the researchers said.
The National Vital Statistics System also missed 8,540 out of the 15,200 deaths of White people, or 56%, and 2,580 out of the 5,170 deaths of Hispanic people, or 50%, caused by police violence, they said.
Deaths caused by police violence were significantly higher for men of any race or ethnicity than women, with 30,600 deaths in men and 1,420 deaths in women between 1980 and 2019, when an estimated 1,200 total deaths occurred, the data showed.
However, from the 1980s to the 2010s, rates of police violence increased by 38% for all races, according to the researchers.
"Efforts to prevent police violence and address systemic racism in the USA, including body cameras ... along with de-escalation training and implicit bias training for police officers, for example, have largely been ineffective," study co-author Eve Wool said in a press release.
"As our data show, fatal police violence rates and the large racial disparities in police killings have either remained the same or increased over the years," said Wool, who is also a researcher with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
