I'd rather not have police quickly shooting someone who is armed, but I can understand that it is a fine line between sacrificing one own's safety and needlessly killing someone. I agree that black communities have more violence and that is going to drive a lot of the numbers. I am most bothered by the idea that a black, unarmed driver may be more in danger because police will be on edge approaching a black person. The #3 in your article gets to that (a 6:1 ratio of unarmed black men being shot compared to unarmed white men) but discusses some complexities that left me feeling like that question had not been fully answered.

The article in today's paper highlights this study http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf which points out a large difference in non-lethal uses of force after controlling for non-race factors. But it finds no difference in lethal uses of force. The R-G, though, says the study didn't directly address the recent situations, although I'm not sure why.