Police Shootings & Race, in an Age of Lies | FrontPage Magazine
By John Perazzo On December 10, 2014 In Daily Mailer,FrontPage
In an era where public debate is replete with Big Lies, we are routinely treated to examples of shallow, insipid journalism dedicated to propping up the most nonsensical fictions imaginable. A case in point is a piece that appeared in the far-left periodical Mother Jones, titled “Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?” Purporting to explain the root causes of the racial unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, the article’s author, Mother Jones editorial coordinator Jaeah Lee, presents a smattering of statistics—utterly devoid of context or analysis—as evidence that “the killing of Michael Brown by police … was no anomaly.”
For instance, Lee cites a 2007 study which found that in ten major cities “there were a disproportionately high number of African Americans among police shooting victims,” and another which concluded that “black people are more likely than whites or Hispanics to experience a police officer’s threat or use of force.” To buttress these allegations, the author quotes Missouri ACLU official Jeffrey Mittman’s lamentation that “unarmed African-American men are shot and killed by police at an alarming rate,” and NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks’ claim that a destructive “culture of policing” is “rubbing salt into longstanding racial wounds” by targeting black people with “overwhelmingly major, often lethal … force.”
Apparently it never occurred to Ms. Lee, or to these other voices in her echo chamber, that there might be some significance in the fact that blacks, who are 13% of the U.S. population, themselves commit many more homicides than white and Hispanic perpetrators—combined. Young black males in particular commit homicide at nearly ten times the combined rate of their white and Hispanic counterparts. As Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald explains, “That astronomically higher homicide-commission rate means that police officers are going to be disproportionately in black neighborhoods to fight crime, where they will more likely encounter armed shooting suspects.” Blacks nationwide are also dramatically overrepresented in the commission of other serious crimes such as rape, robbery, and assault—precisely the types of offenses most likely to trigger a confrontation with police that could result in a fatality.
In her Mother Jones piece, Ms. Lee devotes considerable attention to New York City, where “more black people have been shot by NYPD officers … than have Hispanics or whites.” But this begs an obvious question: “So what?” The same principle that applies to the United States as a whole, applies also to New York: While blacks constitute 23% of the city’s population, they commit two-thirds of all its violent crimes, including nearly 70% of all robberies and 80% of all shootings. And whites, who are 35% of the city’s population, commit just 5% of its violent crimes and a mere 1.8% of its shootings. Thus, blacks are statistically far more likely to be involved in volatile situations demanding police intervention. It’s really not very complicated.
For instance, Lee cites a 2007 study which found that in ten major cities “there were a disproportionately high number of African Americans among police shooting victims,” and another which concluded that “black people are more likely than whites or Hispanics to experience a police officer’s threat or use of force.” To buttress these allegations, the author quotes Missouri ACLU official Jeffrey Mittman’s lamentation that “unarmed African-American men are shot and killed by police at an alarming rate,” and NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks’ claim that a destructive “culture of policing” is “rubbing salt into longstanding racial wounds” by targeting black people with “overwhelmingly major, often lethal … force.”
Apparently it never occurred to Ms. Lee, or to these other voices in her echo chamber, that there might be some significance in the fact that blacks, who are 13% of the U.S. population, themselves commit many more homicides than white and Hispanic perpetrators—combined. Young black males in particular commit homicide at nearly ten times the combined rate of their white and Hispanic counterparts. As Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald explains, “That astronomically higher homicide-commission rate means that police officers are going to be disproportionately in black neighborhoods to fight crime, where they will more likely encounter armed shooting suspects.” Blacks nationwide are also dramatically overrepresented in the commission of other serious crimes such as rape, robbery, and assault—precisely the types of offenses most likely to trigger a confrontation with police that could result in a fatality.
In her Mother Jones piece, Ms. Lee devotes considerable attention to New York City, where “more black people have been shot by NYPD officers … than have Hispanics or whites.” But this begs an obvious question: “So what?” The same principle that applies to the United States as a whole, applies also to New York: While blacks constitute 23% of the city’s population, they commit two-thirds of all its violent crimes, including nearly 70% of all robberies and 80% of all shootings. And whites, who are 35% of the city’s population, commit just 5% of its violent crimes and a mere 1.8% of its shootings. Thus, blacks are statistically far more likely to be involved in volatile situations demanding police intervention. It’s really not very complicated.
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