Young men are at high risk of death by cop

WASHINGTON — The phrase “leading causes of death” might bring to mind cancer, heart disease, suicide and drug overdose.

But new research published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that young American men are at a high risk of being killed by a police officer.

Among men of all races, ages 25 to 29, police killings are the sixth-leading cause of death, according to a study led by Frank Edwards of Rutgers University, with a total annual mortality risk of 1.8 deaths per 100,000 people.

Accidental death, a category that includes automotive accidents and drug overdoses, was the biggest cause at 76.6 deaths per 100,000, followed by suicide (26.7), other homicides (22.0), heart disease (7.0) and cancer (6.3).

The data used in this study do not differentiate between police killings that were later determined to be justified and those that were not.

FBI data, which are widely acknowledged to be incomplete, shows that 400 to 500 homicides each year are determined to be justified, which is defined as “the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.”

Those deaths represent about half of the roughly 1,000 annual police killings that independent tallies have found.

For a black man, the risk of being killed by a police officer is about 2.5 times higher than that of a white man.

“Our models predict that about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys will be killed by police over the life course,” the authors write.