I had someone tell me 'more white people are killed by police than black people'. In gross numbers, this is true. Almost twice as many white people are killed by police than are black people. The difference comes when you look at it proportionately. There are many more white people than black people.
Looking at statistics, for every million white people, 16 are killed by police. For every million black people, 40 are killed by police. That is the average over the period 2012 to 2019. That boils down to a black person being 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than a white person.
They also mentioned the number of police officers shot to death in the line of duty. Well in 2021, there were 73 police offices shot to death in the line of duty, including those targeted because they were police. In comparison, there were 1,055 people shot to death by police officers. So there were about 14.4 people killed by police for every police officer shot and killed.
This is not to say that many of those killed by police were not justified. I'm sure many were, but certainly not all, or even nearly all. The problem comes when we ignore all police killings and assume all were justified.
I think the majority of police are decent people trying to do their best. For those who aren't, we need to call them into account. That is too seldom done. Only very rarely are police charged for killing someone, even when the circumstances would justify charging them.
That, in a nutshell if what the BLM movement is about. And until we find and remove those police who abuse their power, we will have turmoil in this country.
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