I found a really comprehensive research paper on the precise issue which this thread seeks to discuss. It is currently a working paper with the National Bureau of Economic Research by Roland Friar titled : "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force" . ( http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399 )

The approach of this paper has been to gather as much data on the circumstances of actual instances of police use of force (from police reports, public records, police-contact surveys, arrest records, etc...) in order to actually control for varying circumstances that may have contributed to the use of police force (such as the interaction taking place in a high crime area, the behaviors of the civilian, whether or not there was an arrest warrant, etc...), with up to 300 or so identifiable variables that they attempt to control for. The purpose of this is to compare like with like by isolating interactions between police and civilians where the only difference was the race of the civilian, in order to better assess if race alone increases the chances of police using force.

The two main takeaways are as follows: When it comes to the use of non-lethal force (i.e, pushing, punching, batons) the study could not identify any factor beyond race in order to explain the 50% greater occurrence of police use of force on hispanic and black civilians. However, when it comes to the use of lethal force (i.e, using tasers and discharging firearms), after environmental, circumstantial, and behavioral factors are taken into account, the study found that race does not actually factor in to the decision of police officers to use lethal force.

To reiterate, the study found that if you're black or hispanic you're 50% more likely than whites to have non-lethal force used against you in any interaction with the police. However, blacks and hispanics are no more likely than whites to be subjected to the use of lethal force, or to die as the result of having been subjected to the use of lethal force by police.

To state it again in another way: Race does not factor in to the police deciding whether or not to use lethal force, other factors do, but race may very well factor in when it comes to the use of non-lethal force.

The findings of this study do demonstrate that when you control for individual circumstances blacks and hispanics are no more likely to be killed by police than whites, however they also indicate that race may be a factor which determines whether or not a police officer is going to use some form of non-lethal physical force. It could be that the study, which is still looking to gather more data to reinforce it's findings, is simply not able to detect the necessary variables to explain the remaining 50% increased use of non-lethal force disparity, or it could very well be that the 50% increased chance of having non-lethal force used against you while black or hispanic is the direct result of a prejudiced police force.

There are many other findings in this study, some of them are quite shocking in fact, but it does seem to dispel the contemporary notion that American police are more likely to use lethal-force on someone because of their race.