Ignorance of Facts Fuels the Anti-Cop 'Movement' - Larry Elder, SOSC

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Ignorance of Facts Fuels the Anti-Cop 'Movement'

Angered by the deaths of Freddie Gray and Michael Brown, black men in Baltimore, Maryland, and Ferguson, Missouri, respectively, who died at the hands of the police, professor Roland Fryer Jr. said, "You know, protesting is not my thing. But data is my thing." So he sought to answer the question. Do the police, in fact, use lethal force against black suspects more than they do against whites?

Fryer examined 1,332 police shootings -- including fatal and non-fatal shootings -- in the police departments of 10 large cities in Texas, California and Florida. He said his findings surprised him. In an article about the study, The New York Times wrote:

"In shootings in these 10 cities involving officers, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both results undercut the idea of racial bias in police use of lethal force."

But the question remained, when the suspect is black, are officers more likely to use deadly force? The Times wrote:

"What about situations in which an officer might be expected to fire, but doesn't? To answer this, Mr. Fryer focused on one city, Houston. The police department there let the researchers look at reports not only for shootings but also for arrests when lethal force might have been justified. Mr. Fryer defined this group to include encounters with suspects the police subsequently charged with serious offenses like attempting to murder an officer, or evading or resisting arrest. He also considered suspects shocked with Tasers.

Read More At: http://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2016/07/14/ignorance-of-facts-fuels-the-anticop-movement-n2192417