Isn't this just a reiteration of the thing where more black people interact with the police and so there are disproportionately many shootings and people assume racism?

It's not that surprising that the same would apply to police officers, e.g. off-duty black officers live in black neighborhoods and black neighborhoods have a larger police presence or higher crime rates, so there are disproportionately many police shootings and black officers are no less affected than anyone else there.

The article seems to imply this:

> Of the 26 fatal shootings, 5, including Officer Ridley’s case, involved an off-duty officer who came across a crime in progress and moved to help other officers or a civilian, the report found. In five other cases, including the Edwards shooting, an off-duty officer was a crime victim and then tried to make an arrest or to take police action, the report found.

> In all but 2 of the 26 fatal shootings of officers that were examined, the victim was holding a gun and had it “displayed” when he or she was shot, the report found.

Sounds a lot like off-duty white officers may just be less likely to encounter situations in which they draw their weapons.

I think it is very probable that there is some amount of racial bias when it comes to police shootings, but police-on-police shootings is not very good evidence in favor of that. Not enough data (26 cases in 30 years), the data is from 40 years ago up until today, and it is a completely different situation that police on civilian.