Authors Of Paper On Police Killings And Race Cite ‘Misuse’ By Media, Ask It Be Retracted. Say ‘Political Considerations’ Weren’t Involved.

Earlier this week, researchers who wrote a paper published in 2019 that found “no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers,” asked for it to be retracted, and their statement caused a number of conservatives to opine that the authors seemingly wanted it taken down because it didn’t fit the left-wing narrative about police.

In their initial retraction statement, crime researchers David Johnson, of the University of Maryland and Joe Cesario of Michigan State University referred to Heather Mac Donald, the author of The New York Times bestseller The War on Cops (2016), which the Manhattan Institute said had warned that “raced-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk.”