A common talking point in the press and on the left at the moment is that over 95% of Black Lives Matter protests are peaceful and we should not play up the violent five percent as representative of the movement. Why then should we play up the tiny number of bad police encounters with black citizens as representative of the whole? There’s a real double standard here and I am getting worn out by it.
As you see in the comment below, even your readers don't always read the whole argument. Thank you for consistently pointing to a higher level of discussion. Don't stop.
Are police not supposed to be held to a higher standard? Serve and Protect? This is an apples and oranges comparison. You act as these groups are similar like lemons and limes. When black resist arrest they seem to end up dead more often than whites do when they behave the same way. Blacks are perceived to be more threatening. Stop making excuses for bad behavior on the part of those who swear an oath to protect.
Great article. Agree with all of it. I think I would make a distinction on one thing that you cite.
"Per capita", as a reference to blacks having encounters with officers, should not be, for example:
Unarmed shootings of blacks vs. total black population
It would need to be:
Unarmed shootings of blacks vs. total police encounters with blacks.
I believe that the numbers I've seen recently show that based off of encounters with police, whites end up in a worse situation compared to other groups.
Either way, I have to wonder...can we legitimately declare there is a problem with so few numbers of unarmed people killed of ANY race compared to the overall number of encounters with police?
I'm not justifying all actions by all police, but just wondering. If 1,000 +/- deaths (of any kind, with police) are a part of 50,000,000 +/- (50 million) encounters with police, then "death by police" happens in +/- .00002 of cases. And even then, most of those encounters are justified, so the number decreases even more when we remove those.
Erick, you mention that per capita blacks are more likely to have a bad encounter with law officers. That is true although misleading. The Washington Post printed a graph proclaiming the same thing. Consider this: Violent LEO incidents are usually the result of violent crimes. According to DoJ statistics blacks, 13% of the population, commit 52% of murders and manslaughters, 33% of aggravated assaults, 28% of rapes, and 54% of armed robberies. By the way, most of their victims are other blacks. When considering crime rates it turns out white suspects/perpetrators are as likely if not more likely to be fatally wounded while being apprehended.
You have a hard time condemning the police officers who shot Jacob Blake? You’re OK with police shooting a man in the back seven times for disobeying them? With three kids in the back seat? And, other kids in the area?
Jacob Blake was accused of a vile crime. He should have complied with the officers orders. But, he was not a threat to them when they shot him.
Perhaps we should talk about the ongoing media double standard in all large caps “DOUBLE STANDARD” since a simple "double standard" does not seem to fit the magnitude of its ongoing impact on our country. The majority of our major source media consistently downplay, ignore or cover up all outrageous acts from the left. (See the recent media coverage of FBI phone wipes) At the same time they exaggerate everything from the right… treating even difference of historic moral or religious convictions as outright fascism, racism, sexism or worse. Our media consistently over whelm every news cycle with the theme, all things conservative bad, all things from the left good. This of course encourages ever worse actions from the left. Those on the left, in particular our politicians in the Democrat Party, understand that no matter how far they push their agenda, no matter how violent their supporters may get, no matter what laws they or their supporters may break… they know they have a pretty good chance of being supported by our media. Those on the Republican ticket however, must understand they have absolutely zero room for error if they wish to enjoy even being ignored by our heavily leftist weighted media. #MakeAmericaSafeAgain
Great article Erick. I believe there is certainly some amount of racism and white supremacism in the US that is widespread with a varying degree of amplitude, just like there is reverse-racism that is prevalent in the BLM movement and in Critical Race Theory. But projecting the sins of guilty parties onto people who are innocent is simply wrong. It is right to investigate and prosecute police who act inappropriately regardless of race. But it is wrong to abuse and violently attack unrelated police officers simply because they are police officers. Unfortunately, for political reasons, our country has a large percentage of people who believe that is a justified response, just like many of the same people believe it is acceptable to label all Republicans as racist, Nazi’s and deplorables.
The Ahmaud Arbery case was particularly disturbing to me because the videos seemed to show non police officers kill a black man simply because he stopped jogging to look at a house under construction. The video of this incident seemed to show that Arbery was simply trying to get away from people who were improperly pursuing him in vehicles with loaded weapons. I have seen no details of a trial for this case, and the last piece of information I could find on Google is that no trial date had been set as of July 17 (which is already 5 months after his killing). Part of the problem with our judicial system is that in many cases it is not implementing the sixth amendment right to a “speedy public trial by an impartial jury.” Long trial delays do not provide justice to either the victims of crimes or the accused.
The death of George Floyd should also be troubling to everybody. But for the most part it has been clearly condemned by nearly everybody and a legal case against the police officers is in progress. Videos of the incident showed Floyd wasn’t doing everything the police officers requested him to do, but he also wasn’t armed, he didn’t attack any police officer, and he didn’t seem to be running away. This suggests Floyd didn’t need to be restrained on the ground by 4 police officers, with one kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes, until he died. There are reports that Floyd had some kind of drugs in his system and that medical personnel were on the way. In looking at the videos, I think the police officers were justified in restraining Floyd, but there method of restraint that led to his death was not justified.
Although I entirely support prosecuting police officers who act inappropriately, I also entirely oppose police officers who have to deal with people who resist arrest, some of whom display their own weapons or try to take weapons from police officers. This was the case with the Ferguson incident involving Michael Brown, which triggered similar protests/riots to the George Floyd case, with far less justification. The bottom line is that people of all races commit crimes and that police officers have a duty to arrest them for these crimes. The fact is that a multitude of people of all races are arrested regularly with only a small minority suffering severe consequences that can follow from resisting arrest.
The right answer to these problems is for our society to pursue Biblical justice, as in this passage from Numbers 23: “Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness. Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit. … Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty. … Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”
As you see in the comment below, even your readers don't always read the whole argument. Thank you for consistently pointing to a higher level of discussion. Don't stop.
Are police not supposed to be held to a higher standard? Serve and Protect? This is an apples and oranges comparison. You act as these groups are similar like lemons and limes. When black resist arrest they seem to end up dead more often than whites do when they behave the same way. Blacks are perceived to be more threatening. Stop making excuses for bad behavior on the part of those who swear an oath to protect.
Hi Erick!
Great article. Agree with all of it. I think I would make a distinction on one thing that you cite.
"Per capita", as a reference to blacks having encounters with officers, should not be, for example:
Unarmed shootings of blacks vs. total black population
It would need to be:
Unarmed shootings of blacks vs. total police encounters with blacks.
I believe that the numbers I've seen recently show that based off of encounters with police, whites end up in a worse situation compared to other groups.
Either way, I have to wonder...can we legitimately declare there is a problem with so few numbers of unarmed people killed of ANY race compared to the overall number of encounters with police?
I'm not justifying all actions by all police, but just wondering. If 1,000 +/- deaths (of any kind, with police) are a part of 50,000,000 +/- (50 million) encounters with police, then "death by police" happens in +/- .00002 of cases. And even then, most of those encounters are justified, so the number decreases even more when we remove those.
Erick, you mention that per capita blacks are more likely to have a bad encounter with law officers. That is true although misleading. The Washington Post printed a graph proclaiming the same thing. Consider this: Violent LEO incidents are usually the result of violent crimes. According to DoJ statistics blacks, 13% of the population, commit 52% of murders and manslaughters, 33% of aggravated assaults, 28% of rapes, and 54% of armed robberies. By the way, most of their victims are other blacks. When considering crime rates it turns out white suspects/perpetrators are as likely if not more likely to be fatally wounded while being apprehended.
You have a hard time condemning the police officers who shot Jacob Blake? You’re OK with police shooting a man in the back seven times for disobeying them? With three kids in the back seat? And, other kids in the area?
Jacob Blake was accused of a vile crime. He should have complied with the officers orders. But, he was not a threat to them when they shot him.
Perhaps we should talk about the ongoing media double standard in all large caps “DOUBLE STANDARD” since a simple "double standard" does not seem to fit the magnitude of its ongoing impact on our country. The majority of our major source media consistently downplay, ignore or cover up all outrageous acts from the left. (See the recent media coverage of FBI phone wipes) At the same time they exaggerate everything from the right… treating even difference of historic moral or religious convictions as outright fascism, racism, sexism or worse. Our media consistently over whelm every news cycle with the theme, all things conservative bad, all things from the left good. This of course encourages ever worse actions from the left. Those on the left, in particular our politicians in the Democrat Party, understand that no matter how far they push their agenda, no matter how violent their supporters may get, no matter what laws they or their supporters may break… they know they have a pretty good chance of being supported by our media. Those on the Republican ticket however, must understand they have absolutely zero room for error if they wish to enjoy even being ignored by our heavily leftist weighted media. #MakeAmericaSafeAgain
So happy that someone has succinctly crystallized the current social and political climate. Facts still matter. Thank you, Erick!
Great article Erick. I believe there is certainly some amount of racism and white supremacism in the US that is widespread with a varying degree of amplitude, just like there is reverse-racism that is prevalent in the BLM movement and in Critical Race Theory. But projecting the sins of guilty parties onto people who are innocent is simply wrong. It is right to investigate and prosecute police who act inappropriately regardless of race. But it is wrong to abuse and violently attack unrelated police officers simply because they are police officers. Unfortunately, for political reasons, our country has a large percentage of people who believe that is a justified response, just like many of the same people believe it is acceptable to label all Republicans as racist, Nazi’s and deplorables.
The Ahmaud Arbery case was particularly disturbing to me because the videos seemed to show non police officers kill a black man simply because he stopped jogging to look at a house under construction. The video of this incident seemed to show that Arbery was simply trying to get away from people who were improperly pursuing him in vehicles with loaded weapons. I have seen no details of a trial for this case, and the last piece of information I could find on Google is that no trial date had been set as of July 17 (which is already 5 months after his killing). Part of the problem with our judicial system is that in many cases it is not implementing the sixth amendment right to a “speedy public trial by an impartial jury.” Long trial delays do not provide justice to either the victims of crimes or the accused.
The death of George Floyd should also be troubling to everybody. But for the most part it has been clearly condemned by nearly everybody and a legal case against the police officers is in progress. Videos of the incident showed Floyd wasn’t doing everything the police officers requested him to do, but he also wasn’t armed, he didn’t attack any police officer, and he didn’t seem to be running away. This suggests Floyd didn’t need to be restrained on the ground by 4 police officers, with one kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes, until he died. There are reports that Floyd had some kind of drugs in his system and that medical personnel were on the way. In looking at the videos, I think the police officers were justified in restraining Floyd, but there method of restraint that led to his death was not justified.
Although I entirely support prosecuting police officers who act inappropriately, I also entirely oppose police officers who have to deal with people who resist arrest, some of whom display their own weapons or try to take weapons from police officers. This was the case with the Ferguson incident involving Michael Brown, which triggered similar protests/riots to the George Floyd case, with far less justification. The bottom line is that people of all races commit crimes and that police officers have a duty to arrest them for these crimes. The fact is that a multitude of people of all races are arrested regularly with only a small minority suffering severe consequences that can follow from resisting arrest.
The right answer to these problems is for our society to pursue Biblical justice, as in this passage from Numbers 23: “Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness. Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit. … Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty. … Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”
Thank you for saying the things I am thinking. Can't seem to get them on paper. Appreciate you very much.
Exactly
Look up, and pray that our exodus from this dystrophy be not in winter.