intaintwhatyouknow

 

I don’t know anyone who does not feel that police who abuse their power such as those in the George Floyd death should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Black Lives Matter (BLM), the press, and politicians state vociferously that this is evidence of systemic bias against blacks rather than an isolated incident about a few “bad apples.”[1]

The media and political rhetoricians provide names of others, but I started to notice they were repeating the same five or six names…most of which are years old.

However, anecdotal evidence is notoriously weak and often represents a logical fallacy.   I began to wonder just how many blacks are killed by police every year.  Based on the headlines, I figured it had to be in the thousands…maybe hundreds of thousands in a country of 321 million people.

Is anyone but me surprised to know?

It is less than 250?

Not 250 thousand, not even one thousand…250 — per year!  So far, through half of 2020 it is 88.

Number of people shot to death by the police in the United States from 2017 to 2020, by race

FOIS Graph

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

The black population of the U.S. is about 41 million.  250 is 0.0006% of 41 million.

Is anyone but me surprised to know that, by this standard, systemic racial bias in the United States of America of 0.0006% — rounds to zero?

Systemic Racial Bias in the U.S. — Rounds to Zero

This is of course based on one statistic.  There may be other ways to validate systemic racial bias, but since this is the one being trumpeted by media, politicians and BLM, I started there.

We’ll address some of those in future posts.  I know.  Big surprise.

 

 

[1] Nothing about looking logically at this emotional issue should be construed as supporting racism.  In fact, we cannot expect to change racist behavior including crime unless we evaluate it objectively.  I have attempted to list sources, verify their credentials and that their data and analysis meets accepted scientific disciplines.  I have attempted to separate those from my opinions.  I am cool if you want to respectfully and rationally disagree with sources, credentials, data and analytical disciplines or my opinions.  If you want to go on a childish emotional rant, that is what got us into this mess.  Please forward those to “File 13”.