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CNN published this article on June 8th, 2020:
American police shoot, kill and imprison more people than other developed countries. Here's the data I wanted to look more into the facts surrounding the article, so I pulled data from the Washington Post, a known liberal publication, in case my readers think me too conservative. The WP initially had different numbers, but their last-minute adjustments still carried the same implications. I also went to the Officer Down Memorial Page for the number of officer deaths while on duty. Then I gathered the number of annual arrests from The Intercept, another liberal publication. ============================ In 2019, there were approximately 10,000,000 arrests in the U.S. by police officers. Of those, according to the Washington Post, 1004 resulted in a suspect's death. Of those 1004 deaths, 55 were unarmed. Of those unarmed, 14 were black and 25 were white. That same year, 76 officers were killed in the line of duty. Non-assailant deaths were subtracted from the total of 147 on-duty deaths listed. Looking at the numbers, one can reasonably make a few observations: Each time a police officer arrests someone, be it for something minor like two people in a shoving match, or something major like an active armed threat, the officer has deadly force at his or her disposal every time in the form of a firearm. Since the rate of death per arrest is approximately .0001, or 1 in 10,000, I'd say the narrative that the police as a whole are unduly brutal is quite a stretch of the imagination. Next, it stands to reason that since 55 of the cases resulting in death in 2019 were unarmed suspects, then the other 949 were armed, which means they were carrying and possibly using a weapon capable of killing or injuring the officer, therefore the naked statistic of 1004 tends to leave out the context of why there was a death in the first place. The numbers of 14 unarmed blacks killed and 25 unarmed whites killed don't debunk the police brutality narrative, but they do debunk the idea that unarmed blacks are more targeted by police than unarmed whites. If one counters that the number 14 is out of proportion due to the smaller percentage of blacks compared to total population, it should then be pointed out that they are over-represented in the same statistical dataset, in terms of their population percentage versus their crimes committed percentage. Lastly, 76 police officers killed in the line of duty in the space of one year is not a small number. The sad and ironic significance of those 76 police deaths is the 1004 suspects killed were engaged in some sort of criminal activity, but the 76 police officers were hired to protect the public, and that public includes the people who killed them. To murder a police officer who is there to protect us is a tragedy that apparently the media finds unworthy to feature. My point in writing this essay is to demonstrate that one's conclusions can only be as good as the information provided in conjunction with a logical conclusion, not an emotional one. The statistical facts are what they are, and until I see different numbers, I'm not going to buy the narrative that police brutality is anything more than an unfortunate anomaly that will always happen to some degree because human beings are flawed. Some bad apples do become police officers, just like any other profession, and I will never deny this. But that unfortunate fact does not mean the police are all brutal racists intent on killing black people. No one can stop you if you want to believe that all cops are racist and overly brutal, but that belief will not change the statistics one iota, and the statistics don't support your belief. |