As an economist, Mr. Fryer wonders if the difference between lethal force — where he did not find racial disparities — and nonlethal force — where he did — might be related to costs. Officers face great costs, legal and psychological, when they unnecessarily fire their weapons. But excessive use of lesser force is rarely tracked or punished. “No officer has ever told me that putting their hands on inner-city youth is a life-changing event,” he said, contrasting the consequences of shootings and lesser uses of force.
This is only surprising if you don't understand selection bias, I think. We hear about a lot of uses of force, mostly in racial situations, and our priors get fucked up. In reality, if an officer is a bigot, consciously or otherwise, they are likely still pragmatic. Hands and pepper spray, you can get away with. You can make a career out of "getting away with" that.
About that claim that police are less likely to shoot blacks than whitesI just wanted to comment on “the most surprising result of my career” thing. We should all have the capacity for being surprised. Science would go nowhere if we did nothing but confirm our pre-existing beliefs. Buuuuut . . . I feel like I see this reasoning a lot in media presentations of social science: “I came into this study expecting X, and then I found not-X, and the fact that I was surprised is an additional reason to trust my result.” The argument isn’t quite stated that way, but I think it’s implicit, that the surprise factor represents some sort of additional evidence. In general I’m with Miller that when a finding is surprising, we should look at it carefully as this could be an indication that something is missing in the analysis.