We all love evidence-based practice right? Well the evidence the Wall Street Journal provides shows there is not a systemic targeting of black Americans. In fact, the evidence provided (links below) show that the number of shootings are less than expected given crime rates.
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"The share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population."
This isn't opinion, this is hard data. They also found that, "the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer."
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"Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police."
This is the statement from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists, "We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers."
There were 9 unarmed black people shot by the police in 2019. In one case the suspect was driving at officers and they fired into the vehicle. In two other cases the officers were charged and are awaiting trial. In the others there were various forms of assault on the police who had to take defensive action. There were also 25 unarmed white people shot by officers in the same time period. When you layer in the crime statistics (that African Americans commit 53% of the homicides) from above you see that the number of black people being shot is statistically low.
That doesn't mean there are no racists cops. It's doesn't mean there are no bad cops. It just means that the media narrative that black men are being systematically killed by the police is a myth. The data doesn't support that assertion. But the media doesn't care. They need to sow racial, class, political divides among the people so they can keep feeding us media-tainment.
