Cops and the Black Man

From Robert VerBruggen in The National Review:

Let’s start with a fact everyone should be able to agree on: There is a disparity. Blacks are about 13 percent of the American population, yet according to data collected by the Washington Post in 2015 and 2016 thus far, they are about 27 percent of those killed by police. (For all the numbers in this article, I exclude any cases for which the race is “unknown.”)

But this isn’t the end of the discussion. Police are allowed, indeed often expected, to kill in certain circumstances — namely, when they reasonably think it is necessary to stop a threat to life or limb. People who pose such a threat are not necessarily representative of the entire population. So the question is, if not 13 percent, what baseline should we be comparing that 27 percent against?

One possible comparison group is murderers: According to the FBI, about half are black. Another is cop-killers, i.e., those who demonstrably presented a lethal threat to police: Again according to the FBI, about 43 percent are black. Still another is violent criminals in general: Most of these commit relatively minor offenses (such as simple assault, where there is no weapon or serious injury), but according to victimization surveys, about 24 percent are black. In other words, violent-crime rates roughly explain the gap — indeed, they over-explain it in the case of murderers and cop-killers, who are far more likely to be black than police-shooting victims are.
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Assuming that police are aware of these numbers and percentages, there would have to be a built-in prejudice against blacks solely based upon (a politically incorrect) reality.  But that prejudice does not appear to be reflected in the police shooting data.

The peaceful black man's biggest problem is the violent black man's effect upon society's fears,apprehensions, and prejudices... Just as the peaceful Muslim's biggest problem is the Muslim extremist.

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