A More Rational View of the Police and Racism Allegations

by Jack

Every year police interact with the public about 350 million times.  In 2017 there were 721 officer involved shootings.   The majority were with an armed and violent suspect, but the use of justified lethal force does not always have to involve a firearm.

In 2018 there were 1175 fatal shootings by police and on average, statistics provided by the FBI show there are about 1000 fatal shootings each year.  About 250 involve a black male on average.

About 50 police officers are killed each year.   The evidence shows a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than a black male is to be killed by an officer.

In 2017 black males accounted for 53% of all murders,  54.3% of all robberies, 29.8% of all burglaries, 28.7% of all rapes, and 37.5% of all violent crimes… where there is an identified offender.

For homicides committed under the age of 18, black offenders accounted for 60.1%, 66.6% of all robberies and 31.1% of all rapes.  Source (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/table-43)

The black population in the US is about 13% of the total population.   If we have a systemic violence problem it overwhelmingly coming from within the black community against blacks.

In 2017, Walter Williams wrote, “Here are the Chicago numbers for the ignored deaths.

So far in 2017, there have been 533 murders and 2,880 shootings. On average, a person is shot every two hours and 17 minutes and murdered every 12 and a half hours. In 2016, when Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee, Chicago witnessed 806 murders and 4,379 shootings.

It turns out that most of the murder victims are black. Adding to the tragedy is the fact that Chicago has a 12.7 percent murder clearance rate. That means that when a black person is murdered, his perpetrator is found and charged with his murder less than 13 percent of the time.

Similar statistics regarding police killing blacks versus blacks killing blacks apply to many of our predominantly black urban centers, such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Oakland.”

Mr. Williams concludes, “Black support tends to go toward the criminals in the community rather than to the overwhelming number of people in the community who are law-abiding. That needs to end.

What also needs to end is the lack of respect for and cooperation with police officers. Some police are crooked, but black people are likelier to be victims of violent confrontations with police officers than whites simply because blacks commit more violent crimes than whites per capita.

For a race of people, these crime statistics are by no means flattering, but if something good is to be done about it, we cannot fall prey to the blame games that black politicians, black NFL players, civil rights leaders, and white liberals want to play.”

Post Scripts can’t guarantee every single statistical fact posted here is 100% accurate, because there is often a slight disagreement even within government reporting agencies.  However, the statistics noted are generally consistent with the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports and they appear accurate within a plus or minus a 2% error rate.