“Population benchmarks provide only a crude method for estimating disproportionality. They allow for an inference that force is being used in a manner that is disproportionate to presence in the general population, but do not allow for a clear inference as to whether the force is disproportionate to presence in any particular area or to legitimately provocative behavior. A more direct, albeit still limited, proxy for level of provocative behavior would be actual offending.”
- Goff et al. in Policing Equity (2016)
Link to the full paper by Goff et al.