Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders continues to decry the victimization of blacks and Hispanics at the hands of the police on his website, saying:
“It is an outrage that in these early years of the 21st century we are seeing intolerable acts of violence being perpetrated by police and racist acts of terrorism by white supremacists.”
The Vermont senator’s comments are characteristic of a sentiment first made popular by the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement which continues to claim we live “in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise” by the police. Both parties believe the criminal justice system is deeply biased against racial minorities, which explains the high amount of incarceration and police-related deaths of these groups.
However, these popular sentiments stem from a false cultural mythology and nothing more. There is no clear evidence that any systemic bias exists in the criminal justice system against minorities, and to continue to assert there is a bias harmfully perpetuates racial conflict.
It is regrettable that anyone is shot and killed by the police every year, but it is not as if most police officers are closeted white supremacists who use their position as an excuse to murder racial minorities. In fact, more whites are killed by the police than blacks and Hispanics combined. In 2015, the police shot and killed 494 whites compared to 258 blacks and 172 Hispanics.
But we further confuse the issues if we assume all of these police killings were committed unjustly; the police are actually justified in the vast majority of these cases. Out of the 990 police-related deaths in 2015, 783 of the victims threatened the police with deadly weapons, including guns, knives and box cutters. Fifty-four more cases involved police shooting suspects who had led them on high-speed car chases, where many even attempted to run over police officers with their vehicles. This should immediately lead us to conclude that a whopping 837 police-related deaths out of the 990 total are more than likely to be justified, while the other 153 cases ought to be investigated on a case-by-case basis.
It is awful that the police kill people at all, but in many cases they have no other recourse. In a nation of more than 320 million people, it is perfectly understandable that the police end up shooting a few hundred criminals a year, especially since that majority of these criminals threatened the police with a deadly weapon.
Still, one may object that the number of blacks and Hispanics killed or imprisoned by the police is significantly higher than whites. After all, in 2014, blacks and Hispanics alone composed about 60 percent of inmates at state and federal prisons even though they are about a quarter of the population.
Attributing the high rate of black and Hispanic incarceration, along with police-related deaths, to systemic biases ignores the fact that both groups commit significantly more violent crime than any other race or ethnicity.
There are far more black homicides perpetrated by blacks themselves than the police or Sanders’ “white supremacists” combined. According to FBI statistics – which unfortunately does not include Hispanics – there have been more than 2,400 black homicides every year from 2010-2015 and more than 2,200 of these homicides each year were perpetrated by black offenders. While blacks compose around 13 percent of the nation, they are consistently responsible for upward of 43 percent of all homicides nationally.
As for Hispanics, an organization called New Century Foundation published a study called The Color of Crime by Edwin S. Rubenstein, a researcher with an M.A. in public financing. Though New Century Foundation is described as a “white separatist” organization by Wikipedia, Rubenstein competently analyzes data from a range of governmental sources. In a table organizing data from a California Department of Justice report in 2013, it states Hispanics are more likely to be arrested for most categories of violent crime than whites. Most notably, Hispanics between the ages of ten to seventeen are 8.178 times more likely than whites to be arrested for homicide, and 2.98 times more likely to be arrested for robbery.
I make no claims about why blacks and Hispanics commit more crime, only that in a majority of cases, minority criminals are to blame and not the police. If someone objects to all this, saying historical factors have lead minorities to be more impoverished and therefore to have a greater propensity to commit crime, that is fine, but this claim has nothing to do with the claim that police purposely target minorities.
What all this information ought to lead us to conclude is that there is no clear systemic bias against blacks or Hispanics evident in either incarceration rates or police-related deaths. Police brutality in the case of Walter Scott or Laquan McDonald is the exception, not the rule.
Sanders, Black Lives Matter and their supporters have a tendency to automatically conclude hidden injustices must be the cause of racial crime disparities when this is usually not the case. We must use reliable data when discussing supposed police brutality and not sensationalist anecdotes that tickle people’s sensibilities.
“Hispanics”
yikes
What’s wrong with the term Hispanic? I’m Mexican-American and I consider myself Hispanic, I don’t see anything problematic about it. People just want something to be overly pedantic about.
Oh Blake.
Where do I start with you. Black people are killed disproportionately to whites — meaning, when you consider the population of black people in the US compared to the population of white people, black people are killed more frequently. There is this type of math called statistics. It includes things like ratios and proportions. You should check it out sometime.
Also, related to those ratios and proportions, did you know that it is actually more common for white people to possess illegal drugs, and yet more common for black people to be arrested for drug possession?
Did you know that police officers surveil non-white neighborhoods more frequently than they do white neighborhoods?
And also, do you read things?
One need only take a look at basic statistics to know that 90% or more blacks are killed by other blacks usually in the inner cities due to criminal and drug related gun violence. That is just a fact.
And 90% of whites are killed by other whites, usually for similar reasons. What was the point you were trying to make here or did you just feel like you needed to talk trash about colored people?
Well if you wanted to be honest about statistics then you wouldn’t bring up the total population of the country. Your sample size is the people that the police directly interact with.
I’m sure we’ll agree that police stop black people more than white people. According to the FBI of all the people killed by police officers last year 494 were white and 258 were black.
Taking into account that whites are stopped less than blacks, yet are killed at two times the rate that blacks are, you come to a very interesting conclusion.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say that whites and blacks are stopped at equal rates, 50/50. That would make it twice as likely for a white person to be shot and killed than a black person.
As for cops patrolling black neighborhoods and blacks going to jail more often than whites, that’s because they commit more crimes than whites. Despite comprising only 12% of the population they commit half of all violent crimes. Violent crimes being rape, homicide, theft, armed robbery, Etc.
The only serious crime that whites commit more of is drug possession, and the fact that blacks are arrested more for it can easily be explained.
When you have an increased police presence in predominantly black neighborhoods, you are going to catch them with drugs more often. Many of them are also repeat offenders, which would explain harsher jail sentences too, if you think that is an issue.
When you are honest with statistics and start looking into all the factors any notion of racism will vanish. But that’s just it. It’s up to you to be objective when interpreting the facts, not give into confirmation bias. Because when you look for racism everywhere you’re going to find it everywhere.
he doesn’t care because he has already aligned himself with the Alt-Right and his Facebook friend Matt Heimbach.
I am really thankful that your name is Blake though. It’s the funniest thing that happened to me all day
When you consider the history of police forces in this country, the systemic biases against people of color, especially black people, becomes obvious. The first police forces were all established to capture and reenslave runaway slaves, and the KKK has used its connections in police forces across the country to intimidate, endanger, and lynch black people across the country (not just the South!). The KKK still has a presence in the police: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2015/09/01/police-chief-demands-resignation-kkk-cop. This is just one example from last year.
The SPLC is a hate group that defends copkillers.
So, let me get this straight. Because Whites are arrested, charged, and prosecuted for crimes less than Blacks and Hispanics, then that means less “crimes” are committed by Whites. Hmm…
So the notion of targeted over-policing of minorities, and the possibility that White offenders might have better access to means of avoiding arrests and convictions (e.g. understanding officers, private attorneys, lenient juries and judges, etc.), has no bearing on the crime rate. At all. Whatsoever. Not even a little bit. Hmm…
And, mass-media depictions of young black and brown males in no way contributes to negatively criminalizing minorities and subliminally reinforcing racial stereotypes; thus influencing various aspects of our justice system (e.g. Police patrolling and arrests, District Attorney prosecutions and unfair plea bargains, Jury convictions, or Grand Jury acquittals of officers involved in shootings). This plays no part in the rock-solid statistical evidence presented in this op-ed. Hmm..
Okay, I think I got it. Thanks for the info, Blake, I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that racism and the overuse of power no longer exist in America.
The very logic and rationale for this piece must exist inside a vacuum, without variables. If only the real world was perfectly fair and all things could be considered equal in this comparative analysis.
Finals are very soon and no one needs this negativity
on campus….
This may be only Blake Deal’s opinion but it speaks volumes! There are other people on campus just as misinformed.
As a History major this part troubles me most:
“However, these popular sentiments stem from a false cultural mythology and nothing more. There is no clear evidence that any systemic bias exists in the criminal justice system against minorities, and to continue to assert there is a bias harmfully perpetuates racial conflict.”
I guess American history is mythology these days!
Professor Lytle Hernandez has a great class on mass incarceration where she breaks down the data he tried to use and analyzes it.
YRL or Powell have many books with data without all the biased opinion. Slavery By Another Name is a personal favorite.
Hopefully Blake Deal can get informed and shape his opinion around actual facts and academic knowledge since that is what we are at UCLA to do.
Yo, so is anyone going to mention that Blake Deal works for UCPD? Isn’t that sort of thing supposed to be disclosed in an article like this?
Or that he’s a white nationalist with ties to the Alt-Right and Matt Heimbach?
I would also like to point the pure coincidence that Blake Deal is a covert white supremacist who has liked a lot of Alt-Right pages on his Facebook page and recently friended Matt Heimbach, one of the most prominent modern leaders of the White Nationalist movement. Thought I’d add it in for perspective, everyone. 🙂