Nothing you or I or any rational person can say will change the narrative by some on the Left that cop shootings of Black perps are racially motivated despite continuing evidence to the contrary. Studies have consistently shown that more White perps are gunned down by cops than Black perps. In fact, most Black perps are shot by Black officers. Also being consistently exploded is the myth that police are not held accountable when shooting Black perps. In fact, if you look at the high profile cases that make the headlines in the lib media, cops, of any color, are indeed prosecuted if they are found to have engaged in an unauthorized shooting. A Black economics prof at Harvard recently completed a study on the role race plays in the use of lethal force by police. He analyzed over 1000 police shootings from 10 large police departments in California, Florida and Texas. To his surprise, there was no evidence of racial bias associated with incidents in which cops fired their guns. Unfortunately though, the near hysteria promulgated by groups like Black Lives Matter has had an impact. Take Chicago, where 20 to 40 or so people are gunned down every week. Police are reluctant to intervene in certain neighborhoods on the south side and west side of the city where most of the shootings take place. That is because these are Black neighborhoods and police know that if they have to use deadly force, they will be criticized whether fairly or not. In the Big Apple, the mayor halted stop and frisk which is legal but doesn’t fit the liberal narrative of supposed racial bias. The result? The crime rate has soared. In Baltimore, after a perp flung himself around in the back of police van resulting in his foreseeable demise, Black and White police were charged with murder by an administration more concerned with political correctness than the facts. The police officers tried so far have all been acquitted by juries of their peers. The result? The crime rate has soared. This is not to say that all police are above reproach. If you watch even a few of the cop shows, you know that internal affairs is always looking over every cop’s shoulder. There is certainly evidence that there are poorly run cop shops all over the country. There is certainly evidence that there are bad cops, including racist cops. None of that, however, justifies a war on police, including the assumption by some that police should be greeted with suspicion and mistrust. Having carried a gun
and a badge in the so-called line of duty; having been a prosecutor, defense counsel and a judge, I got to know a lot of cops. There were good ones and a few bad apples. What I learned is that if they were bad cops, for whatever reason, they didn’t last long. Just as criminals eventually run out of luck, the same principle applies to bad cops. As a nation, we are going to have to make a fundamental decision: do we want to be safe and protected or do we want to encourage chaos on our streets? The sad irony in cities like Chi town is that the victims of most of the violence are poor Blacks and Hispanics. Not backing our police is the real racism.
