Tulsa police use non-lethal force on Black people far more than anyone else in the city, but TPD officials argue there is legitimacy to when officers choose to use force.
The department's 2023 annual report shows 371 verified uses of force during arrests. 176 of these — 48.2% — were on Black people. This rate is more than triple Tulsa's Black population of roughly 15%, though the numbers mirror national statistics.
When asked about the disparity, police Capt. Richard Meulenberg said social factors outside of officers' control are at play.
“You can’t just say, ‘Oh look, it’s some sort of systemic racism where people are getting picked on.’ You have to look at every individual officer and every individual person that we’re dealing with and the totality of the circumstances," Meulenberg said.
State Rep. Regina Goodwin, who represents predominately Black north Tulsa, said there could still be a pattern underneath the numbers.
"What’s not recorded is the over-policing of the community — that’s nowhere in their data. How much time do they spend in a particular community, who are they most suspecting and why are they doing that?” said Goodwin.
Goodwin said she appreciates officers who do their jobs “fairly and in a courageous way.”
Christopher Hill, a University of Oklahoma criminology professor, said increased citizen-police contacts could be due to more calls for service in Black neighborhoods. But Hill also said studies in other cities have yielded explanations like racial profiling and police bias. He said "race out of place" — the likelihood of a driver getting pulled over in a neighborhood that's predominately of a different race than they are — can be a factor.
“Whether (the numbers) do involve something like police bias and racial profiling or they are due to more race-neutral factors like (increased calls for service), there’s likely a perception of a lack of fairness. Those statistics would reasonably cause someone to say, ‘There’s a lack of fairness in police practices.’ So whether or not those patterns and practices involve bias or are more race-neutral, that perception of unfairness still exists, and that needs to be addressed," Hill said.
When asked if TPD can do anything to lower the disparity, Capt. Meulenberg says police can use the data to examine how often individual officers use force.
“We can start seeing, ‘Hey, officer so-and-so is using more force than other people’ — well, why is that?" he said.
“If one of our officers is off-center, it makes everybody's jobs harder."
Meulenberg said each use of force is reviewed by a board that includes civilians. He encouraged anyone with an issue with a Tulsa police officer to request their body camera footage through the department.
