In the last five years, there has been an average of 13,336 murders in the U.S.* During that same period, an average of 400 felons were killed by law enforcement officers in the line of duty.**
I have to wonder if ANY of the protesters in the streets of Ferguson, MO or New York City have read the grand jury transcripts. Because if the protests are just based on a “general feeling” it might be better to read facts.
In NYC, a 23-person Grand Jury panel decided (after two months of testimony) that the police officer used an authorized takedown move – not a banned chokehold – and that Eric Garner’s poor health was the main cause of his death. Based on physical evidence and eyewitness accounts, the conclusion of the St. Louis County grand jury (made up of both white and black members), was that the Michael Brown robbed a store, attacked a police officer, and was killed while resisting arrest.
Nevertheless, no amount of evidence stopped the protesters in NYC from blocking traffic in highways, bridges, and tunnels, or the hooligans in Ferguson, MO. from using Brown’s death as a reason for more bad behavior. Nor has it stopped people from making excuses for black criminality and blaming the body count on police shootings.
According to the FBI, homicide is the leading cause of death among young black men, who are 10 times more likely that their white counterparts to be murdered. Blacks are just 13% of the population (whites are 77%), but make up over half of all U.S. murders (with more than 90% murdered by other blacks) and half of all murderers. Simply put, blacks commit violent crimes at 7-10 times the rate that whites do, and their victims are of the same race.
Protesters are spotlighting white racism as an all-purpose explanation for bad black outcomes. And yet, if black criminal behavior is a response to white racism, how it is that black crime rates were lower in the 1940’s and 1950’s, when black poverty was higher, racial discrimination was rampant and legal, and the country was more than a half-century away from electing a black president?
Racial profiling and tensions between the police and poor black communities are real problems, but these are effects rather than causes. Unfortunately, the discussions that could lead to solutions of the high rates of black criminal behavior remain taboo. As long as young black men are responsible for the outsize portion of violent crime, law enforcement and fellow citizens of all races will view them suspiciously.
Making the police targets only serves to make low-income communities less safe. Romanticizing thug behavior, instead of condemning it, only makes matters worse.
* http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_12_murder_circumstances_2008-2012.xls
** http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_14_justifiable_homicide_by_weapon_law_enforcement_2008-2012.xls