Assault on our Police

The Assault on our Police
The View from the Middle

Police officers in our country have been under assault rhetorically and literally for the past three months, and most of that criticism has no merit. Abraham Lincoln once said, “if you look for the bad in people, expecting to find it, you surely will” and that mindset is what our law enforcement officers are facing today. They are the target of a relentless attack by the media and by left-leaning politicians that focuses only on negative stories and are often exaggerated or even totally false. As usual, false stories get headlines. Retractions are buried below the obituaries. I’ve never understood the symbolism of that practice until just now.

The Fayetteville City Council, in what can only be described as a politically correct move, voted to kill funding for two additional School Resource Officers and for the 4th District Drug Task Force. They also are working to stop construction of the new Police Headquarters. I can only describe this as short-term, politically correct, reactionary thinking. What the Fayetteville City Council members need is some actual data that tells the real story of what the police really do for the communities they serve.

One piece of data that was shared during their meeting is that young unarmed black men are disproportionately killed by the police. When you stretch that statement to say that they are twice as likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts, that’s when this charge veers into dishonesty. And when they suggest that these kinds of results are “epidemic” they are being hyperbolic.

In 2019, according to the Washington Post database June update, there were 55 shootings of unarmed men in the entire United States that resulted in death. Of that total, 25 were white, 14 were black and 16 were Hispanic or other. So, the truth is that young white men were nearly twice as likely to be shot than blacks. That is just a fact. It is also true, however, that African Americans represent 13% of the country’s population, but in these unarmed shooting deaths they represent 25% of the total. That is nearly twice their “fair share” so to speak. The media also won’t tell you that the trend for these kinds of tragedies have been going down since 2015 when the total tragic, unarmed, shootings of black men was about 40. From 40 to 14 in five years. We would love that to be zero, but you must admit the progress and hope for even more.

Is this an epidemic? People, who want you to think this is a plague, won’t tell you the raw numbers. While 14 young, unarmed black men lost their lives in police shootings, that number pales in comparison to the 8,000 young black men who killed each other in 2019. Now THAT’s an epidemic. And while Blacks represent only 13% of the population, they represent almost half (46%) of all murder victims. And finally, these murders are committed by other African Americans 94% of the time. Of course, this is true for all races. Whites kill whites, Hispanics kill Hispanics and Blacks kill other African Americans.

While there are things that white people can do to help reduce these numbers, even the brilliant economist and philosopher, Thomas Sowell, would suggest there is much that the Black community can and should do to help itself. In his book “Discrimination and Disparities”, Sowell strongly suggests that improved family structure and education are keys to addressing this epidemic. Never in his book did Sowell suggest that a reduction in the size of our police forces was any kind of a solution to this problem.

The other piece that is missing from this discussion is the enormity of the challenge that the police face. The total of 55 unarmed fatal shootings by police has to be put into perspective. Last year, the police had over 50 million interactions with the public and over 10 million arrests. And as you can imagine, the target of these arrests can be belligerent or on drugs or just plain abusive. The reality is, these 55 tragic results represent only .00055% of arrests that end up with this extremely regrettable result.

We need to keep the difficulty of their task in mind. Enforcing the law and having to arrest people who break that law is a difficult job. These are people that we ask to run towards the shooting and violence while the rest of us get to run away. We need to remember that these were the same people who ran towards the Twin Towers where 60 of them lost their lives that day and almost 250 more since from the poisons they inhaled as they did their work. They are the ones that ran towards the Pulse nightclub in Florida when the mass shooter took over 60 lives, and they are the ones that will run towards every school shooting, if our City Council will give them that chance. If the City Council and all of us don’t support our police today, I predict we will regret it in the future.

Are they perfect? No. Are there bad police officers? Sure. But there are bad people in every profession on earth. Are there bad, selfish CEO’s? Sure. Are there bad sales people (that’s what I did)? Yes. Are there bad, narcissistic, dishonest and even evil politicians? Absolutely. In fact, I’m going to suggest that we have a higher percentage of good, solid, admirable police officers than we have politicians of that same character in Washington DC.

Finally, there will be thousands of openings in police departments across this country this year because of the unwarranted abuse that we, the public, have been heaping on them over the last few months. Imagine a “peaceful protester” screaming insults at you just inches from your face. You know what they make. You know how difficult their job is! Are any of you willing to take their place?