Are
Cops Killing Blacks?
Before the
horrific shooting at the Littleton, Colorado, high school, the media
sat around like the Maytag repairman on Prozac.
Monica’s gone,
impeachment and trial over with, the Jon Benet Ramsey mystery dormant.
Oh, sure, there’s the occasional O.J. flare-up, but, for the most
part, until Kosovo came along, one could almost hear the sound of
the media begging, "More firewood, please."
But, wait a second.
Look at these crime stats. Hmm, looks like blacks get busted more
often than whites. This appears to the trained eye like a clear-cut
case of racism. Driving while black. Race "profiling." Gentlemen,
start your laptops!
Does this emotionally-driven,
factually-devoid brand of journalism sound familiar? Sure, it does.
Remember the "epidemic" of arson against black churches?
"USA Today" and many other prominent newspapers bombarded
us with stories about the "epidemic," "rash,"
"scourge"—pick one—of the burning of black Southern churches.
The bigots are back, the bigots are back!
Soon public service
announcements popped up, urging citizens to dig deep and help rebuild
those black churches. Just when you thought you had the bigots
on the run, they’re ba-a-ack. Little buggers are more tenacious
than a Serb under a NATO air attack.
But, uh-oh, iceberg
ahead. Turns out, the story was bogus. Not only was there no increase
of racially-motivated burnings of black churches, but church-burnings
are dramatically down since 1980! By 63%! In fact, more mosques,
synagogues, and white churches have been burned in recent years than
black churches.
But for our race-tinted
guys and gals in the media, it only got worse. Nearly a third of those
arrested for burning black churches turned out to be...black. "USA
Today" prominently featured the burning of a Texas black church.
Authorities suspected bigotry. But, the cops later busted one of the
firefighters summoned to put out the fire. That’s right. A firefighter
set the fire and later had the nerve to respond to a call to help
put it out. And he was black. "USA Today" gave the arrest
of the suspect only a fraction of the coverage given the initial burning.
Which brings us
back to today’s accusation: reckless, out of control cops who "racially
profile." In New York, the cops beat a Haitian man. And, later,
the police shot, numerous times, an unarmed black immigrant. Based
on media reports, the New York cops seemed Gestapo-like. But then
there’s that troubling thing called data. Where is it? What supports
the contention that police brutality against minorities is widespread
and on the increase? In the last three years, NYPD shootings actually
decreased by a third. And fatal police shootings are down by
nearly 50%. New York crime did not go down because police brutality
went up.
The fact remains
that a small number of minorities commit a disproportionately large
amount of crime. It stands to reason that more from this "high
risk group" will be stopped, questioned, and arrested, for the
most part, with good cause. Are cops guilty of "gender profiling"
because cops target and arrest more men than women? Did Reverend Jesse
Jackson "racially profile" when he once said, "There
is nothing more painful for me than to walk down the street and hear
footsteps and start to think about robbery, and then see it’s somebody
white and feel relieved." Do we really want cops to spend less
time in high crime areas and more crime in low crime ones? Don’t trout
fishermen go, like, where the trout is?
And let’s not
forget. Arrests protect other people, you know. The victims of urban
crime remain urban dwellers.
Some lawmakers
want to require officers to keep detailed information about the race
or ethnicity of persons’ stopped. Police departments, irritated at
the guilt-by-badge accusations, resist. Fellows, don’t fight it. Tell
‘em, "go ahead, make my day." Keep the data. Remember, you
work for the public. Your "customers" demand this information.
So, give it to them. Then what? What will the screamers do when the
data fail to show a pattern of discrimination, that most stops and
searches are justified?
And remember the
President’s executive order directing a study on "environmental
racism," the allegation that the government puts toxic dump sites
near minority communities? According to the "Detroit News,"
the government failed to find environmental racism. And never released
the study! In fact, Jared Taylor writes in Paved with Good Intentions,
that whites are more likely to live near toxic waste sites than blacks.
He called environmental racism an "utterly spurious charge."
The Pigs-are-coming
argument does not wash. The search-for-the-great-white-bigot crowd,
as usual, ignores real problems: Irresponsible breeding, irresponsible
parenting, bad schools, crime. But, as long as they have a cop to
kick around they’ll kick. Until they need one.