I downloaded a database on police shootings from the Washington Post website. I am a data analyst. I crunch numbers for breakfast and here are some of the findings.
Each year there are approximately one thousand fatal shootings of civilians by police. 2020 is on track to exceed the 1K figure.
Of these,an average of 60 fatal shootings are of UNARMED civilians. That’s about 5 a month or more than one a week.
By unarmed, I mean that the person is considered armed if he had anything at all in his hand even if it is as innocent as a pocket comb.
In the “fog and confusion” of war or a police show-down, anything in a person’s hand could be mistaken for a weapon. I must give the police the benefit of the doubt.
Of the 60 annual, fatal shootings, half the people were not fleeing.
A disturbing 9 of these fatalities over the past 4 years (more than two a year) were children under the age of 10. The youngest of these was 6 years old. How can an unarmed child be a threat to a trained policeman? Of these 9 children 7 were non-white.
95% of the unarmed people killed were male. This is down from 98% the last time I did this analysis.
About an equal number of whites and blacks are shot each year, however whites are 60% of the population and blacks are 13%. Blacks are shot at a rate 250% above their percentage of the population whereas for whites it 70%. To express that ratio in another way, your chances of being fatally shot by a policeman is more than 3.5 greater if you are black rather than white.
George Floyd won’t show up in the 2020 statistics; he wasn’t shot.
So as the media concentrates on the rioting, our leadership concentrates treating the symptom rather than the cause. Send in armed troops to stop the looting. Meanwhile the root cause goes untreated.
If Making America Great Again means placing property rights over human rights, I want no part of it.
I downloaded a database on police shootings from the Washington Post website. I am a data analyst. I crunch numbers for breakfast and here are some of the findings.
Each year there are approximately one thousand fatal shootings of civilians by police. 2020 is on track to exceed the 1K figure.
Of these,an average of 60 fatal shootings are of UNARMED civilians. That’s about 5 a month or more than one a week.
By unarmed, I mean that the person is considered armed if he had anything at all in his hand even if it is as innocent as a pocket comb.
In the “fog and confusion” of war or a police show-down, anything in a person’s hand could be mistaken for a weapon. I must give the police the benefit of the doubt.
Of the 60 annual, fatal shootings, half the people were not fleeing.
A disturbing 9 of these fatalities over the past 4 years (more than two a year) were children under the age of 10. The youngest of these was 6 years old. How can an unarmed child be a threat to a trained policeman? Of these 9 children 7 were non-white.
95% of the unarmed people killed were male. This is down from 98% the last time I did this analysis.
About an equal number of whites and blacks are shot each year, however whites are 60% of the population and blacks are 13%. Blacks are shot at a rate 250% above their percentage of the population whereas for whites it 70%. To express that ratio in another way, your chances of being fatally shot by a policeman is more than 3.5 greater if you are black rather than white.
George Floyd won’t show up in the 2020 statistics; he wasn’t shot.
So as the media concentrates on the rioting, our leadership concentrates treating the symptom rather than the cause. Send in armed troops to stop the looting. Meanwhile the root cause goes untreated.
If Making America Great Again means placing property rights over human rights, I want no part of it.