By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--October 3, 2017
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Who is killing these black victims? Not whites, and not the police, but other blacks. In 2016, the police fatally shot 233 blacks, the vast majority armed and dangerous, according to the Washington Post. The Post categorized only 16 black male victims of police shootings as “unarmed.” That classification masks assaults against officers and violent resistance to arrest. Contrary to the Black Lives Matter narrative, the police have much more to fear from black males than black males have to fear from the police. In 2015, a police officer was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a police officer. Black males have made up 42 percent of all cop-killers over the last decade, though they are only 6 percent of the population. That 18.5 ratio undoubtedly worsened in 2016, in light of the 53 percent increase in gun murders of officers—committed vastly and disproportionately by black males. Among all homicide suspects whose race was known, white killers of blacks numbered only 243. Violent crime has now risen by a significant amount for two consecutive years. The total number of violent crimes rose 4.1 percent in 2016, and estimated homicides rose 8.6 percent. In 2015, violent crime rose by nearly 4 percent and estimated homicides by nearly 11 percent. The last time violence rose two years in a row was 2005–06. The reason for the current increase is what I have called the Ferguson Effect. Cops are backing off of proactive policing in high-crime minority neighborhoods, and criminals are becoming emboldened. Having been told incessantly by politicians, the media, and Black Lives Matter activists that they are bigoted for getting out of their cars and questioning someone loitering on a known drug corner at 2 AM, many officers are instead just driving by. Such stops are discretionary; cops don’t have to make them. And when political elites demonize the police for just such proactive policing, we shouldn’t be surprised when cops get the message and do less of it. Seventy-two percent of the nation’s officers say that they and their colleagues are now less willing to stop and question suspicious persons, according to a Pew Research poll released in January. The reason is the persistent anti-cop climate.
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What is most offensive about the kneeling gesture is not the projection of disrespect for the symbols of nationhood. The brief ceremony in which the anthem is observed at public gatherings is a celebration of American ideals: liberty, equality, and the willingness to fight to defend them. If it were true that American society was still persecuting a racial minority, that America was an imperialist monster, and that police were hunting down young black men, the celebration of those ideals would be a fraud. A contemptuous protest demonstration under such circumstances would be not only defensible; it would be obligatory. Yet, the fact is: It is not true. It is a monstrous lie.
At the start, the protest was explicitly directed at purportedly institutional racism in the nation’s police departments, which had supposedly led to an epidemic of police violence against black men. (More Kaepernick: “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”) It is a specious, defamatory claim. Police killings, as the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley notes, are at historic lows. As I have detailed, far more whites than blacks are killed in confrontations with law-enforcement — twice as many in 2015, for example. Police departments are more integrated than they have ever been — often overseen by African-American commissioners and political officials. Yet, observe the numbers crunched by Heather Mac Donald at City Journal: Though they make up only six percent of the population, black males account for 42 percent of police killings; police officers are 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than are unarmed black males to be killed by a police officer.Now having said all this, I'm still left with a problem. I know there are a lot of black people who are genuninely afraid of encounters with the police because they are convinced this narrative is the truth. They are protesting against what they think is a real injustice. They're sincere and they're after a just outcome - as they see it. Often they will tell you that white people lack empathy on this issue, and that you can't understand until you've experienced life as they have.
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