Amanda Feliz 

October 19, 2020

Eng1121

Prof. Penner

DeGue, Sarah, et al. “Deaths Due to Use of Lethal Force by Law Enforcement: Findings From the National Violent Death Reporting System, 17 U.S. States, 2009-2012.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Nov. 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080222/. 

In the article the author states many important points. For example,  the author discusses the statistics of African American deaths due to lethal force. The article also includes incidents and characteristics that happened to each race and adding their own percentage to compare each other race. The author elaborates on races and age, genders percentages, etc. In addition, the author was discussing African American females and the overall incidents that happened with them and the police, and thus comparing these statistics with male incidents to show the reader the differences in percentage. 

 The main overall idea of this article is death due to lethal force by law in the United States. Not only was the author writing about these important points but he also included tables with overall percentages to prove to the readers the accuracy of what he was discussing about in the article. One of the ways in which the author came to the conclusion about all the statistics was that the author was getting information from the national violent death reporting system.

I agree with the majority of the text. In fact, some of the things that I read from the author I had read before in other articles, or had learned from other professors from previous classes. The author states that “Victims were predominantly male (96.1%) with a mean age of 36.7 years” (paragraph 30). A question I had for him was do these statistics differ on a yearly basis? Also, I would ask the author  how long did it take him to gather evidence for his research and to write this article? This document provides information towards my research question because it explains how African American males can be targeted by police. 

The author’s writing style was very informative. He provides  tables with percentages comparing each race, such as  hispanics, African-Americans, white and others, while also comparing ages and genders. The purpose of this article was to provide information about the different races that were killed and injured by the law enforcement. The author is credible because the author can be searched for in other catalogues on the website. 

A quote that I found really important was when the author said “ The use of lethal force by law enforcement (LE), particularly within minority communities, has surged in recent years following multiple high-profile cases involving the killings of unarmed black men and youth by police.” The reason I felt like this was an important point because it shows readers how statistics have increased regarding the killings of unarmed black men by police.