We’ve been reminded again by the savage beating to death of Tyre Nichols that there are a lot of bad police out there.
But it’s also true that black deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers are tiny compared to the roughly 10,000 blacks that are murdered each year.
Another 800,000 blacks every year – a horrifically high number – are victims of non-fatal violent crimes – assault, rape, armed robbery, etc. Blacks are statistically more likely than whites to be victimized.
We also know that police shot and killed roughly 200 blacks last year – and the vast majority of these shootings were justifiable to stop a violent crime. Our friend Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute notes that less than 20 unarmed blacks are killed each year by police.
The chart below shows these proportions and we admit these numbers are not exact but rough estimates:
Black Victims of Crime
We would say these numbers are prima facie evidence that to save lives, we need more (but better), not fewer, police patrolling black neighborhoods.
https://thespectator.com/
