What the Media Does Not Want You to Know about Police Shootings and Race By Michael P. Tremoglie

What the Media Does Not Want You to Know about Police Shootings and Race

By Michael P. Tremoglie

White officers were 87 percent of America’s 641,208 police and accounted for 82 percent of justifiable homicides by police in 1998. Black officers were 11 percent of police forces and accounted for 17 percent of all justifiable homicides.

According to the FBI, blacks were 43 percent of the known killers of law enforcement officers during the period from 2004-2013. But blacks were only about 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2013. You will not read this in the New York Times.

Here are several more facts that no other journalist has provided. I have stated these during interviews on the Bill Bennett show and the Seth Leibsohn radio shows:

Black officers, from 1980-2008, were involved in 13% of justifiable homicides by police, but 3% of those they killed were white compared to 11% who were black (the differences were due to rounding). You will not hear this from the Boston Globe.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 2003 through 2009, a total of 4,813 deaths were reported to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program. Of these, about 6 in 10 deaths (2,931) were classified as homicide by law enforcement personnel

Homicides by law enforcement personnel accounted for 61 percent of the arrest-related deaths for the period 2003-2009. Homicides by law enforcement accounted for 60.9 percent of whites and for 61.3 percent of blacks killed while being arrested for this period. This will not be published in U.S. News.

It was estimated, by the FBI, that during these same seven years state and local law enforcement officers made nearly 98 million arrests. This means that only 5 thousandths of one percent of arrests involved the killing of the person being arrested. Think about this - one out of every 20,000 arrests result in someone being killed. According to one source, there is a four times greater chance of being electrocuted than being killed while being arrested. Sean Hannity does not know this.

The most comprehensive study of homicides by police that I could locate was conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, and published in March 2001. I wrote about this for an online magazine in 2002. You will not hear this from Byron York.

The report titled Policing and Homicide 1976 to 1998, listed the demographic information about citizens killed by police that were determined to be justifiable homicides and about police killed by citizens.

This monograph stated that black officers committed a statistically disproportionate amount of justifiable homicides by police in 1998. White officers were 87 percent of America’s 641,208 police and accounted for 82 percent of justifiable homicides by police in 1998. Black officers were 11 percent of police forces and accounted for 17 percent of all justifiable homicides.

Black officers also killed black felons more than white officers and vice-versa. The black-officer-kills-black-felon rate was 32 per 100,000 black officers in 1998, which is higher than the white-officer-kills-black-felon rate of 14 per 100,000 white officers. The white-officer-kills-white-felon rate was 28 per 100,000 white officers in 1998, which is higher than the black-officer-kills-white-felon rate of 11 per 100,000 black officers.

The study also stated that young black males murdered police officers at a rate almost 6 times that of young white males. Young black males made up about one percent of the U.S. population but 21 percent of felons who murdered a police officer from 1980 to 1998. Young white males were eight percent of the population but 20 percent of the murderers of law enforcement officers for the same time frame.

One other aspect of this is that most justifiable homicides by police are intraracial. According to FBI national data on justifiable homicides by police from 1976 to 1998. The officer’s race and the felon’s race were the same for about 65 percent of justifiable homicides by police. You will not be told this by Chris Wallace.

Finally, what is probably the most shocking fact is the attitude of the public. According to the University of Chicago's prestigious National Opinion Research Center, General Social Survey, 12.8 percent of Americans, in 2012, who said that they can imagine a situation where they would approve of a police officer striking a citizen - said that a policeman should not strike an adult male citizen who was attacking the policeman with his fists. What is even worse is that this figure has increased about four times what it was nearly forty years ago.

Simply put, about 12 of every 100 Americans, do not think police officers should defend themselves even when the officer is being attacked by someone using their fists. It is quite possible that the majority of these people are journalists.