https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-by-police-yes-but-no/?utm_term=.ae4ac7d5d984The last three years (3 yrs is all I checked, according to Washington Post), more whites are killed by cops than any other race. So, can anybody explained to me why the media continue to focus on the "black .v. blue" narrative, when white a bigger victim to cop killing than blacks?
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As for Nike/Colin, to me it isn't about the message, it's about the messengers. Colin should NOT be the face of that ad. If you were going to use a football player to be the spokesman, why not Alejandro Villanueva, OL of the Pittsburgh Steeler?
Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no.
Doesn’t the available data show more white Americans are being killed by police officers? Where is the outrage for them?
“If we have a shooting, we end up assuming that it had to be racial,” former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) said Saturday during an interview with Fox News, in which he argued that national concerns about police killings of black men are overblown.
“When in fact, as we know … more white people have been shot by police officers this year than minorities,” he said.
Huckabee is not, factually, incorrect.
In 2015, The Washington Post launched a real-time database to track fatal police shootings, and the project continues this year. As of Sunday, 1,502 people have been shot and killed by on-duty police officers since Jan. 1, 2015. Of them, 732 were white, and 381 were black (and 382 were of another or unknown race).
But as data scientists and policing experts often note, comparing how many or how often white people are killed by police to how many or how often black people are killed by the police is statistically dubious unless you first adjust for population.
We do have a problem with police violence against the general population and against blacks in particular.According to the most recent census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.
U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people: 50 each. But because the white population is approximately five times larger than the black population, that means unarmed black Americans were five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer.
Closing our eyes will not make this problem go away.
I want police officers to be safe and to go home, but I also want my family and others to make it home safely.
A family friend's brother was killed in the line of duty and I see the a glimpse into the pain that family goes through. I'm not against cops. I work with the police on a regular basis and depend on them to keep me safe when I do - not to mention the job they do to keep me safe on a daily basis.
But there are too many that are just downright dirty, a number of which are also racist. (see cops planting evidence and the like). Too often those evil-doers are protected by other cops instead of being ostracized.
Then there are some that are afraid seemingly of their shadow. Take the case of an autistic man escorted by a black man. The black man got shot. The officer's excuse? He missed the autistic man, who was holding a toy truck. Both men were a non-threat.
Sometimes there is no video evidence. Other times it is inconclusive. And there are times where it shows improper conduct.
I grew up with the chief of police of my home town. Great guy and good cop. Also grew up with his predecessor - not a good man or cop.
Bottom line: Their motto is to protect and serve. Too often the object of those verbs is "cops" instead of "the people". They deserve our respect but their position of trust requires we treat them not with deference or indifference but with careful scrutiny using the highest standards.
Criminal justice reform should include deescalation training and be geared toward reduced adverse interactions with the public at large and blacks in particular given that there has been a concerted effort to increase adverse interactions - particularly in minority neighborhoods. We give police military gear and tactics - what results do we expect from them?! To a degree those things are necessary, but there is not an equal emphasis on discerning non or limited threats so that everyone lives through the interaction.
And there have been multiple overt efforts and laws in my lifetime that focused attention from police on minority areas. They were often called high crime or low income or inner city or high drug traffic areas or other euphemisms, but everyone knew what was being discussed. Those increased adverse interactions naturally lead to more adverse events and outcomes.
We can nitpick Kaepernick like people did Martin Luther King, Jr during his life in order to discredit him or we can listen to the message from many black people that they live in fear and their communities and families are being devastated by policies and policy enforcers that intentionally and/or inadvertently target them. We can change our country for the better or we can turn our backs on them. Either way, we live with the consequences.
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