This week the nation mourns. She mourns for young men, African-Americans who while in an open-carry state like Louisiana, or when in possession of a legal license to carry, were shot down by police even though they never brandished the weapon or even attempted to.
It only took a second or two after they heard or discovered these men, under the rights protected by the Second Amendment as ratified by the SCOTUS in Heller, were armed. To some it would appear that this right, the right of self protection and to protect those around you, isn’t a civil right that has been granted to black men.
We also mourn for police, shot down in the line of duty by an ex-Army veteran of Afghanistan who was pushed to the edge and far beyond by the literally daily horror of lives so easily wasted and his own unfathomable demons. There is no moral equivalence, no balanced scales here. Those five officers were doing their job, they were protecting the people and their right to peaceably assemble and to redress grievances with their government under the First Amendment.
And yet there are those who would deny them that constitutional right as well.
The President after the deaths of Alton and Phillando spoke quite powerfully about why it is that we seem trapped in this endless cycle of police vs the public and in particular, against African-American men.
Statement by the President
As I said in the statement that I posted on Facebook, we have seen tragedies like this too many times. The Justice Department, I know, has opened a civil rights investigation in Baton Rouge. The governor of Minnesota, I understand, is calling for an investigation there, as well. As is my practice, given my institutional role, I can't comment on the specific facts of these cases, and I have full confidence in the Justice Department’s ability to conduct a thorough and fair inquiry.
But what I can say is that all of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings, because these are not isolated incidents. They’re symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system. And I just want to give people a few statistics to try to put in context why emotions are so raw around these issues.
According to various studies -- not just one, but a wide range of studies that have been carried out over a number of years -- African Americans are 30 percent more likely than whites to be pulled over. After being pulled over, African Americans and Hispanics are three times more likely to be searched. Last year, African Americans were shot by police at more than twice the rate of whites. African Americans are arrested at twice the rate of whites. African American defendants are 75 percent more likely to be charged with offenses carrying mandatory minimums. They receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than comparable whites arrested for the same crime.
So that if you add it all up, the African American and Hispanic population, who make up only 30 percent of the general
I may myself quibble with some of his figures here because what I’ve found from the Bureau of Justice Statistics is that Black people are stopped by police twice as often and searched three times as often even though drugs and guns are found on them less frequently, that they are arrested twice as often, face non-fatal use of force three times as often, according to Sentencing Project receive 20% more jail time for the same offense and ultimate according to the Guardian’s The Counted project are killed about three to four times more frequently, but underlying point remains the some, something has gone seriously wrong with or police and justice system.
Black Drivers found with 30% less drugs and guns
This chart from the Times analysis shows how often black people were searched at traffic stops compared with whites. As you can see, the Connecticut State Police searched blacks 2.6 times as often as whites; the Rhode Island State Police searched blacks 2.5 times as often; the Illinois State Police searched twice as often; and the North Carolina State Police searched 1.5 times as often. In Chicago, blacks were searched more than five times as often as whites.
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But all that extra scrutiny doesn't seem to be turning up any more illegal stuff. In Connecticut, Illinois and North Carolina, police found contraband less often when they searched black people than white people. In Chicago, for example, blacks were 30 percent less likely to be found with any illegal goods. State police officers from Rhode Island were the exception; they were more likely to search black drivers, but they also more likely to find contraband.
This alone should put a Buffy stake through the heart of the “Blacks are more criminal, more dangerous and more violent” argument, but that vampire lie just isn’t going to die so easily.
Would it shock you to know that since the deaths of Alton Sterling and Phillando Castile that police in America have killed seven more people even excluding Micah X Johnson the Dallas shooter, bringing their total count for the year as of today to 571?
Clearly something is wrong here.
People may want argue this is “normal”, but exactly how can it be normal for police to kill an average of nearly three people per day?
How afraid are these police officers that they function with such a literal hair trigger?
We’ve been told that because of the Black Lives Matter movement police are so afraid, they’ve chosen to disengage with the public, that they don’t want to be seen on a viral video and that crime has been increasing because of it. Well, they’re still on those videos, and frankly the rate of killings by police hasn’t changed one iota. Last year police terminated 1146 citizens and it looks like their going to hit right about 1,100 this year too.
That’s a problem. Again the President spoke powerfully on this.
I'll have the opportunity to convey our condolences and show our solidarity when I visit Dallas in a few days. But before I do, let me just make some very brief points. First of all, as painful as this week has been, I firmly believe that America is not as divided as some have suggested. Americans of all races and all backgrounds are rightly outraged by the inexcusable attacks on police, whether it's in Dallas or anyplace else.
That includes protestors. It includes family members who have grave concerns about police conduct, and they have said that this is unacceptable. There's no division there. And Americans of all races and all backgrounds are also rightly saddened and angered about the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and about the larger, persistent problem of African Americans and Latinos being treated differently in our criminal justice system.
So there is sorrow, there is anger, there is confusion about next steps. But there's unity in recognizing that this is not how we want our communities to operate. This is not who we want to be as Americans. And that serves as the basis for us being able to move forward in a constructive and positive way.
So we cannot let the actions of a few define all of us. The demented individual who carried out those attacks in Dallas, he's no more representative of African Americans than the shooter in Charleston was representative of white Americans, or the shooter in Orlando or San Bernardino were representative of Muslim Americans. They don't speak for us. That's not who we are.
On this the Pƒpresident is exactly correct and gets right to the heart of the matter. If we honestly want to believe that each and every officer is an individual and not a violent caricature, then we should expect the same as citizens. If they demand the benefit of the doubt for all police as the Justice Department moves forward to investigate these officers who ended the lives of Alton and Phillando and so many others, then we have every right to demand the benefit of the doubt that the errant gang banger or mass murdering asshole does not represent all of us.
Mass murdering terrorist Micah Xavier Johnson does not represent us. He does not speak for black people, he does not speak for Black Lives Matter.
Johnson was a person who fits more with the profile of many mass shooters, a loner who had been amassing and arsenal of guns and bombs for quite some time. Although his rage seemed to have exploded just this week, it had been building for months and he had been practicing combat tactics in preparation for this attack for quite some time. He was ex-Army and had been removed from duty due to allegation of sexual harassment. In fact his accuser even took out a protective order against him after he was discharged.
The police investigation remains in its early stages. But officials said Friday that a search of his home in Mesquite had turned up "bomb-making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics." They said he was described as a loner.
Johnson told police he had been training for the deadly ambush; one neighboring family said Friday that he had been performing what looked like military training exercises in his yard.
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Pentagon records do not reveal the reason for Johnson's Army discharge in April 2015. But a military lawyer who represented him said Johnson had been accused of sexually harassing a female soldier and had to leave the service. Bradford Glendening, a military attorney who practices near Fort Hood, said that the Army sent Johnson home from Afghanistan, which was unusual. Discipline for sexual harassment is typically counseling, he said.
"He was very much disliked by his command, that was clear," Glendening said.
The woman asked that Johnson receive "mental help" and asked for a protective order for herself and her family, Glendening said, adding that he wasn't sure which type of discharge Johnson ultimately received.
As I wrote just last week if this were in California or Connecticut that protective order could have also included a firearms restraining order which would have removed all guns from Johnson’s possession until a judge determined he had received sufficient help for his mental issues. Unfortunately, that is not the law in Texas.
Just because you happen to be black, even if your happen to black and armed, doesn’t mean that you’re automatically a threat as we saw during the Dallas shootout with how both the police and media handled the situation of open-carry demonstrator Mark Hughes whose picture was blasted out by CNN and on social media as a “Suspect”, but that simply wasn’t the case.
Mark had handed his gun, which wasn’t loaded, over to police as soon as the shooting began. Police ultimately interviewed Mr. Hughes and then proceeded to lie to him about what they’d seen and heard about him.
Speaking to a US television news crew after emerging from a police interrogation room, Mr Hughes said: “I can’t believe it. The crazy thing about it is with hindsight, I could easily have been shot.”
Mr Hughes claimed he was interrogated by police “With police officers lying, saying they have video of me shooting, which is a lie, saying that they have witnesses saying that I shot a gun, which is a lie.
“The system was trying to get me.”
And he didn’t get an apology from Police, or at least a public acknowledgment that he wasn’t he suspect and consequently he’s receiving, even now, death threats through social media and fears for his life.
There’s a difference here, a very obvious difference.
When police arrested Dylan Storm Roof after he had murdered nine people using a gun, their immediate response wasn’t to reflexively shoot and kill him in a split second. No, they arrested him peacefully, holstering their weapons as soon as they were close enough to see him and then took him to Burger King for a snack.
And this is far from an aberration as shown by this comparison video of how police handle a white person vs a black person who they suspect are armed and openly carrying.
With white guys the officer calmly walks up and begins to ask questions while they have AR-15’s slung to on their backs, but with the black guy the officers immediately pulls out his gun and begins loudly ordering the carrier, and also the video team which includes his 7-month pregnant wife, to lie on he ground while the officer waits — gun still out and pointed at them — for backup. Five to seven units eventually arrive, while he is handcuffed and his weapon taken. Ultimately he wasn’t arrested but he could have very easily lost his life due to a single inadvertent “furtive gesture.”
And here I have video here of a elderly white man having a 10 minute conversation with police — screaming and cursing and waving his rifle around — yet not being shot while open carrying.
Or this woman, who happens to be white who went on a shooting spree even aiming at police and yet somehow was. not. instantly. killed.
A Tennessee woman is facing multiple charges including attempted first-degree murder for driving around shooting at people, leading a police chase, and pointing her gun at an officer.
Julia Shields, 45, drove around a Chattanooga neighborhood Friday just before 4pm dressed in body armor, randomly shooting into vehicles, WRCB reports.
Officers responded to a call from two victims who said Shields pulled up to their vehicle at a stop sign in a dark colored sedan and began firing into the car. No one was reportedly hurt.
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Shields was taken into custody without incident or injury and charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder, seven counts of aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, felony evading arrest, and felony reckless endangerment, according to WRCB.
That’s not what happened with Tamir Rice. That’s not what happened with John Crawford. That’s not what happened with Darrien Hunt. All shot while technically unarmed, and without presenting a threat to officers — Darrien was shot in the back while running away — and yet no charges were filed in any of these cases. All were ruled “justified.”
This right here is the difference. This right here is how black men get treated by police. This is why, depending on your source, you see the disparity in results in police stops, searches, use of force and ultimately shootings. The difference isn’t that black men don’t “follow the law”, it’s pretty clear that following the law can still get you killed when an police officer is in a midst of a terrified panic.
And why are they so afraid and panicked? Is it “more crime” from blacks?
No, It’s not that Black people are more “criminal” the true crime stats simply don’t bear that out.
Corrected Crime Statistics
Although there does seem to be correlation between violence and poverty regardless of race it’s not that black men are plagued with “missing fathers” because as the CDC notes black fathers actually spend much more quality time with and raising their children than white fathers do, even when they aren’t married to or live with the mother.
In fact the out-of-wedlock rate does not track exactly with the poverty or crime rate as so many would suggest. Out of wedlock births break down as follows across racial lines.
Ou of wedlock birth rates
The rate of births without marriage have been rising for all groups since the 70’s and as you can see they have always been much higher for black people than others. But poverty rates are a different matter.
Poverty Rates by Race
Again, as you can see poverty rates for black people have come down dramatically since the 60’s, only to begin creeping back up from 23% to 28% starting in the year 2000 following the first Bush economic crash. During that same period their out of wedlock rate declined from 72.8% to 70.9%.
Asians, who are missing from the above wedlock chart, have a overall unwed birth rate of only 19%, yet their poverty rate (12%) is higher than that of whites (10%), who have an much high unwed rate of 29%. Latinos have an unwed rate at 52.9%, 17 points lower than black people but their poverty rate is 25%, only 3 points lower than poverty for blacks. There is no direct correlation between unwed births and poverty rates, it’s clearly all over the map but what I will say is that a family with a mother only tends to have a poverty rate of about 45% while children with a father only have a poverty rate of just 21%, less than half.
So maybe if women were paid the same as men instead of 76 cents on the dollar, that poverty gap might evaporate. Ya think?
People like to look at numbers like the unwed rate, or the murder rate — even though a lot of that disparity has to do with active gang wars — and say that it’s because of these numbers that you see a higher concentration of police attention on black people. They claim these numbers justify being stopped more often, searched more often, arrested more often, brutalized more often, and killed more often as the President described.
Those people, like Rudy Giuliani, are full of shit.
Giuliani: A black will die 1% of less at the hands of police and 99% at the hands of a civilian most often another black. If you want to protect black lives, you have to protect them not just against police, which happens rarely although with tremendous attention, which happens every 14 hours in Chicago. Every. fourteen. hours. And we never hear from Black Lives Matter. If you want to deal with this you’ve got to teach your kids to respect police, and that you’ve got to teach them that the real danger to them, 99 times out of 100, 999 out for 1000 times are other black kids who are going to kill them.
Yeah, ah, no — all of that is crap. There has been a dramatic rise in shootings in Chicago this year which seems to be related to an ongoing gang turf war, but last year there were 468 murders in the city. That’s not one “every fourteen hours”, however police in 2015 killed 1,146 people. That’s 3.1 per day or 1 every 7 hours.
So it’s not really “rare” at all.
306 of those killed by police in 2015 were black, slightly less than 1 per day, and shows that the rate of black people being killed by cops isn’t in a 99 to 1 ratio with the murder rate in Chicago the way that Giuliani suggests, it’s closer to 3 to 2. Black peoples overall rate per 1 million citizens of being killed by cops was 7.27 contrasted with just 2.93 whites killed by police per million.
Of those killed by police in 2015 who were unarmed 76 were black, 103 were white. Again considering the smaller population of black people in the nation their chances of being killed by police when unarmed are 2.5 per million vs 0.52 per million for whites.
Yet again, that is not even close to equal odds. In fact, it’s five times greater.
There is frankly no excuse for the actions of Micah Xavier Johnson in Dallas this week. None. it was a crime against humanity, a crime against justice, it was terrorism.
There’s also no excuse for Rudy Giuliani and any one in law enforcement who thinks like him.