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There’s Absolutely No Systemic Racism in Law Enforcement

By Lipton Matthews

May 14, 2021

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The belief that law enforcement is infused with systemic racism is a myth. Yet lies are earnestly peddled by irresponsible commentators seeking to score political points. As the evidence will demonstrate, blacks are not disproportionately killed by the police. Moreover, the perception of white officers as trigger-happy is also baseless.  Here is a rebuttal of popular lies.

 

Myth 1: Blacks are disproportionately killed by the police

Blacks are 13.4% of the population yet they account for 55.9% of murder offenses.

Blacks are 13.4% of the population yet they account for 55.9% of murder offenses. Telling us that they are more likely to be killed by the police  relative to size is irrelevant, Obviously, if blacks are overrepresented in crime then the likelihood of them being killed will be higher. We must not subscribe to the fallacy of proportionality. When we account for their above-average involvement in crime, the statistics are indeed justified. Statistics should reflect participation in crime, not the size of black people in the population. Dan O’Donnell of the MacIver Institute offers a morsel of wisdom: “The unfortunate reality is that just as blacks are statistically far more likely to be the victims of homicide or other violent crimes, they are also statistically more likely to commit violent crimes that would bring them into conflict with a law enforcement officer with his or her gun drawn…This, not racism, is the reason for the disparity in police shootings. How else could one explain this statistical anomaly: Since 2015, law enforcement officers have shot and killed 168 unarmed white people, 135 unarmed black people, and…just 74 unarmed Hispanic people.” Of interest to readers is that more unarmed whites were killed by the police, so if systemic racism is prevalent, then the victims are white people.

 

Myth 2:  White officers are trigger-happy

Black officers are more likely to kill unarmed blacks compared to white officers.

Researchers have known for a long time that black officers relative to white officers show a greater tendency to shoot unarmed suspects. A possible explanation for the aggression of black officers is that they could be stationed in volatile areas requiring greater use of force. Researcher Greg Ridgeway debunks the theory that white officers are more inclined to employ deadly force: “Black officers had more than three times greater odds of shooting than white officers. This finding runs counter to concerns that white officers are overrepresented among officers using lethal force and is consistent with several previous studies of officer race and police use-of-force.” Interestingly, a 2015 study of the Philadelphia Police Department found that black officers were 67% more likely than their white peers to erroneously shoot an unarmed black suspect. Additionally, recent research conducted by John Lott confirms these results by suggesting that black officers are more likely to kill unarmed blacks compared to white officers.

 

Myth 3: Police officers employ unjustified force

Hundreds of times each year police officers show restraint in the face of dangerous assaults.

Some media commentators tend to paint police officers as aggressive. However, the truth is that they have exercised restraint in the context of abuse. There is a higher chance that an officer will be a victim of assault than a perpetrator. Dr. Richard R. Johnson elaborates: “In 2014, the FBI collected data on officer assaults from about 66% of the nation’s 17,000 law enforcement agencies. The data that was collected revealed that 48,315 assaults occurred against law enforcement officers in 2014, resulting in 13,654 officers receiving an injury requiring medical treatment … When compared to the Washington Post estimate of 990 deaths from police use of force in 2015, this number pales in comparison to 9,704 to 14,703 deadly weapon assaults against officers. These numbers reveal that hundreds of times each year police officers show restraint in the face of dangerous assaults and do not kill their assailants even when they may be legally justified in doing so.”

 

Myth 4: De-policing is good for communities

When politically motivated decisions result in eroding the authority of the police force crime is likely to escalate, not decrease as some would argue. Tanaya Devi and Roland Fryer in a 2020 study posit that investigations sparked by sensational perceptions of police brutality produce unintended consequences: “For investigations that are sparked by mostly civilian complaints, allegations, lawsuits, or media reports of excessive force, investigations caused a statistically significant decline in homicide and total crime rates. These investigations saved lives – 61 per investigation, in the 24 months following investigations… For the five investigations that were sparked by nationally visible incidents of deadly use of force—Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Ferguson, and Riverside—investigations caused statistically significant increases in both homicide and total crime. Contrary to other investigations, investigations during this time lost lives – 179 of them, per investigation, in the 24 months following the start of the investigation. That’s 893 in total.”

They offer an interesting explanation: “The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%.”

 

Myth 5: Progressive criminal reform benefits blacks

By de-emphasizing the plight of victims, progressives are doing a disservice to blacks.

Presently, activists fixate on minimizing punishment for offenders either by decriminalizing certain activities or reducing sentencing. But one bold reformer Daniel Fryer admits that by de-emphasizing the plight of victims, progressives are doing a disservice to blacks. Relying on the wisdom of James Forman, he writes: “As Forman points out, African Americans have always viewed the protection of black lives as a civil rights issue, whether the threat comes from police officers or street criminals.” While declaring the simultaneous over- and under-policing of crime the “central paradox of the African American experience,” Forman notes that in 1968 “many blacks believed [that] the police maintain[ed] a much less rigorous standard of law enforcement in the ghetto, tolerating illegal activities like drug addiction, prostitution, and street violence that they would not tolerate elsewhere.”

Fryer’s admission at the end of the paper is quite sobering: “If all of this is right, any decarceration program that does not make a conscious effort to avoid the devaluation of black victims will contain the potential to be abused and applied in a biased manner. We cannot forget that leniency is sometimes regarded as the common way in which a state expresses that black lives don’t matter.”

Systemic racism in law enforcement is unsupported by the evidence. Therefore, instead of promoting senseless claims, liberals should steer blacks ways from crime. Encouraging them to distrust the police in the absence of evidence is a recipe for disaster.

 

 

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