As Walt told you earlier today, President Obama has asked Americans to search their souls about the terrible treatment given by (mostly white) American cops to "African-Americans". In what he called "a slow-rolling crisis", he referred to "troubling police interactions with black citizens". Here are some specifics, as recorded by the FBI and reported in the current Economist.
No-one knows how many people die in contact with America's roughly 18,000 law enforcement officers. Incomplete FBI figures (police forces are not required to submit data) show that at least 461 people died in "justifiable homicides" in 2013, an increase of 33% since 2005. Other sources suggest the true number could be as high as twice that.
Here are the stats from one of America's most violent cities, Chicago. The Windy City's cops shoot dead about 50 "suspects" each and every year. Over 75% of them are black. The police are mostly white or Hispanic.
Why does this happen? Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago's Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project* did some research -- or maybe it was soul-searching -- and came up with the amazing conclusion that, consciously or otherwise, the mostly white police tend to associate blacks with criminality. Fancy that!
Why do they do that? Well, about 70% of murders in Chicago are committed by "African-Americans", who account for about 33% of the city's population. Is it any wonder that, according to a 2014 survey by the ACLU, black Chicagoans were subjected to 72% of all stop-and-frisk searches. And, as surely as night follows day, a disproportionate share of take-downs and police killings.
Where, then, does the problem lie? With the police or with the so-called black community? As the Prez sez, search your souls, folks.
Worth reading: "Baltimore shows police killings America's real state of emergency" - Neil Macdonald (WM, 58), senior Washington correspondent for CBC News, explains why American police scare him.
* Note from Ed.: It's a good thing the U of Chicago stuck "Police" in the name of that project, otherwise it would have had an awkward acronym.
Why do cops shoot black men? Why do cops shoot ANYBODY?
ReplyDeleteFor the same reason dogs lick their balls. BECAUSE THEY CAN!
There are, in fact, between 900,000 and 1.2 million police officers in the US. (Apparently there is some confusion over what constitutes a sworn officer.) There are roughly 18,000 police departments.
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