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Black teen in the US? You're 21 times more likely to be shot by police

Black teen in the US? You're 21 times more likely to be shot by police

A male black teenager is 21 times more likely to be fatally shot by police than a white teen, according to new analysis.

The ProPublica website analysed 1,217 fatal police shootings reported to the FBI between 2010 and 2012, finding that black youths aged between 15 to 19 were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, compared to 1.47 per million for white teenagers of the same age.

The data is incomplete as reporting to the FBI is not compulsory, but University of Missouri-St Louis professor David Klinger told ProPublic he did not think "measurement error would account for" the difference.

To put the figures into context, 185 more black teenagers were shot by police than white teenagers over the period being looked at.

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