Black people were arrested five times more than white people in 2018, according to an analysis of arrest data from across the country.
That arrest rate was found in 800 jurisdictions, after accounting for demographics within those municipalities, according to an ABC News review of data voluntarily reported to the FBI by city and county police departments.
In 250 jurisdictions, blacks were 10 times more likely to be arrested than whites, the outlet found.
The review examined arrest data over a three-year period ending in 2018, the most recent year from which statistics are available, according to the report.
The analysis does not include arrest data from police departments in Florida, Illinois or the NYPD, none of which report demographic data on arrests to the FBI. Cities with fewer than five black residents are also excluded, ABC News reports.
The findings show a “pervasive problem,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
“We have to deal with the over-policing of low-income African American communities in our country,” Clarke told ABC News. “When we see data that shows that African Americans are singled out, unfairly targeted, disproportionately subject to arrest and prosecution — that should sound an alarm.”
Akil Carter, 18, said he believes his experience with police in Wisconsin would’ve been completely different if he were white. The black teen was stopped on his way home from church with his white grandmother when cops in Wauwatosa pulled them over, he said.
“I was so terrified for my life because I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Carter told ABC News. “When he put me down on my knees, I was even more scared.”
Carter was handcuffed, but later released after police said the incident was a misunderstanding. Cops told him he was stopped based on a tip of a black man who had stolen a white woman’s car, according to the report.
“I just wanted to live,” Carter said. “I feel like if I was white, it would have been completely different.”
An attorney for Carter, who is suing the department, believes he was stopped solely because he was black, which police deny, according to the report.
“I feel like being a black, 6-foot man in America, I’m a threat,” Carter said.
Attorney General William Barr has denied that systemic racism is a pervasive issue in law enforcement.
“I think there’s racism in the United States still but I don’t think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist,” Barr told CBS on Sunday. “I understand the distrust, however, of the African American community given the history in this country.”