I would like to present some “food for thought”. Logic. Reason. Data. Facts.
I’m an engineer. Highly “data-driven”. Logical. Research oriented. I like numbers. Statistics. Data.

I DO feel emotion, pain, outrage, sympathy, and outrage, just like anyone else, although I do not let it rule my decision-making. I mention that because frankly, you wouldn’t believe some of the names I’m called when I try to inject fact into arguments dominated by feelings and emotion.

I AM outraged at the death of George Floyd. No question about it. His death was unwarranted, unjustified, and should never have happened. I’m glad the cop was arrested and will stand trial. He clearly broke the law and should pay the price, as should ANY police officer who so flagrantly and obviously breaks the law.

I’m outraged when ANY cop violates his oath, regardless of the color, race, ethnicity, gender, etc. of his victim. My personal belief is that police SHOULD be held to a higher standard than the common person. They swear an oath, undergo training, and their job is to “protect and serve”. I strongly believe that MOST do just that.

Where I have a major issue is with the immediate assumption that any time the victim is black, the cause MUST be “Racism“. I simply do not buy that. There are MANY reasons for things, of which racism is only one.

IF the victims were all, or even mostly black, exclusive of any other factors, then sure. BUT, that is NOT the case. It simply is not borne out by the data.

In the case of George Floyd, there were four officers involved. One each White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian.

I KNOW, without doubt, that some people will call me a racist for pointing this out. For daring to ask pointed questions, for questioning the popular narrative. I also know, from data, that blacks ARE more likely to be stopped by police. More likely to be arrested and imprisoned. And, I believe (without actual hard data) that at least some of that is due to racism.

If we can improve policing to prevent situations where someone is injured or dies without justification (and frankly, the vast majority of cases in which a cop seriously injures or kills someone, of ANY race, ARE justifiable), that would be awesome.

I have no doubt there are any number of cases where alternate means could be used to subdue a suspect. But, I ALSO know that frequently, that is NOT the case, and the officer does NOT have the luxury to “armchair quarterback” it after the fact. He or she has to make a split second decision, in the moment, based on what they perceive, and if they decide wrong, they could well be dead.

Police die at a much higher rate than do non-police. In fact, although many will scoff or, again, call me a racist, police are some 18 times more likely to die at the hands of a black male than a black male is likely to die at their hands. That is a sobering statistic, especially if you are a police officer.

If YOU were a police officer, knowing that, and knowing that crime rates are higher in the black community, would YOU ignore that? Would YOU simply pretend that, based on statistics, your risk when stopping a black male is not higher than when stopping a white male? Or, would you be more vigilant? Less likely to believe what they are telling you?

I think this is a VERY painful truth to hear or confront, and it leads to very painful and haunting questions about WHY those statistics occur. There is no question that crime in “the black community” is higher. It’s NOT because of people’s skin color, that’s for sure. Black people kill one another at significantly higher rates than do other “races”. If we do not acknowledge it and seek the causes of it, will we EVER make it better? I don’t believe so.

My personal belief is that higher crime rates are closely related to socio-economic conditions, lack of family structure, including two-parent households, a culture which demands non-cooperation with police and which does not believe that integrating into the “majority culture” is beneficial or possible for them, and massive “social” programs which encourage economic dependence on the government and discourage self-reliance and beliefs that education and working are necessary or “good”.

The bare truth is that there are MANY things that cause injury and death. MANY professions where mistakes can be fatal or really serious and actually happen. The police are no different.

Medical mistakes FAR outrank injuries and deaths at the hands of police (According to a 2018 study by Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes). So do injuries and deaths from driving (around 39,000 dead in 2019, with 4.4 million injured), including while impaired or texting/distracted. Smoking? 480,000 per year. Alcohol? About 88,000 per year in the USA (of which 9,900 are included in driving deaths).

My point is that we don’t have calls to ban driving because some people abuse their driving privileges (actually, MANY do based on my personal observations of just how many people still hand-hold their phones or are visibly and obviously texting going down the highway). We don’t ban medicine because some doctors, nurses, or others make mistakes or don’t follow their rules and standards. We haven’t banned smoking, although it kills and incapacitates millions of people. We haven’t banned alcohol (well, we did once, that didn’t work out well), and we have not successfully figured out how to stop the 67,000 or so deaths per year from opioid abuse.

Yet, we have riots in the streets over the deaths of some 235 people a year at the hands of police, of whom the majority WERE armed. WERE violently and aggressively attacking the police or others. WERE refusing to comply. WERE refusing to surrender. For details, see the Washington Post’s database on Police Shootings. It is VERY comprehensive. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

We have people shout us down when we point out that police kill white people, too, disproportionately to their crime rate statistics, and in all likelihood, with roughly the same frequency of justifiable and non-justifiable deaths (although statistics show that more unarmed whites are killed by police than unarmed blacks – but “unarmed” is not always a good indicator. The majority of those were also VERY violent, trying to kill the officer, get his gun, etc.).

We also have some examples like George Floyd, who was killed by a cop who violated every standard, his training, and regulations governing restraint techniques.

It is important to note (WITHOUT JUSTIFYING HIS DEATH!!!!!) that if Floyd had not been high on Fentanyl and Meth, had not tried to pass counterfeit bills, and had complied completely with the orders of the police, he would be alive.

Again. I am NOT justifying or excusing his death. Not at all. There IS no justification for it. None. Unfortunately, though, the truth is that if Floyd had not been violating the law, he would be alive today. Had he not resisted during his arrest, he would be alive. The “tone” of the interaction matters in almost every case where the police kill someone. That is ALSO a fact. People who do not comply are very clearly more likely to encounter force to subdue them.

We don’t expect (not really) or demand perfection. When shit happens, we address it through the legal system or whatever means are available to us.
Policing is NO different. Most do it well, conscientiously, honorably, with the best of intentions, follow training and regulations, and should be respected for doing a VERY difficult, dangerous, scary, stressful job. They should not be tarred by the few who DISHONOR their profession.

A few numbers for those interested in facts and willing to at least consider understanding a broader picture:

There are some 60 MILLION interactions annually between police and civilians, approximately 12 million of which involve an arrest. There are between 800,000-1.1 million police in this country (depending on which estimate you use).

In 2019, the police killed 1,041 people, of whom about 24% were black. 235 people. Most violent, aggressive, and armed. There were 370 white people killed by police in 2019. Same thing. Most armed, violent, and aggressive. This number has been reasonably consistent for the last 5 years it’s been tracked exhaustively by the Washington Post (hardly a Conservative publication). Their numbers are reasonably consistent with others and therefore, believable (my opinion).

There are between 14,000-17,000 homicides per year in this country, some 53% of them of black victims. The vast majority of those who murdered those black people were black. A tiny percentage were white. Most assaults and homicides are “Intraracial”, i.e. blacks kill blacks, whites kill whites. Blacks are 8 times more likely to be murdered than Whites, again, almost exclusively by other Blacks. 235 of them were killed by police, but of those, most were ruled justifiable because of the circumstances (violently attacking a police officer while armed, mostly).

There are a LOT of non-fatal gunshot victims, too, per the CDC, “There were a total of 603,000 emergency department visits in the US for non-fatal firearm assaults in the 10-year period between 2007–2016. For non-fatal firearm assaults with recorded race, 77,000 victims were white non-Hispanic, 261,000 were black and 94,000 were Hispanic, 8,500 were other non-Hispanic and for 162,000 the race was not recorded.” Note that this breaks down to approximately 43% Black, 15.5% Hispanic, 12.5% White, .14% “other”, and 27% non-recorded. Again, the overrepresentation of minorities, particularly blacks, is staggering and beyond disturbing.

The conclusion, unfortunately, is that it is not white people who are killing black people, nor is it the police, at least not in large or significant numbers.

Killings by police of minorities IS “sensational” and almost always makes headlines these days, but it is NOT “common”. The number of minorities killed randomly or with no rational explanation is tiny, no matter how much people want to believe differently or how much they insist it is so. It’s simply not true.

That is NOT to say that the emotional pain is false or that the outrage or feeling of being targeted is wrong or misguided. Given a history of feeling targeted, a sensitivity is understandable, even if the facts don’t support it. One cannot argue with the feelings others feel. To them, it is very real. But, it presents a very real problem when trying to resolve an issue that is not factually based. What is the solution?

Nationally, the racial demographics of police officers pretty much mirrors the racial demographics of the country. 77.1% of Police officers are White, 13.3% are black. Obviously, some cities have huge majorities of black and minority officers, while other cities have the opposite. But, generally, violence against minorities by police is not even close to being exclusively by white police officers. That also begs a question – are the minority officers also racists? If not, what explains their “targeting” of minorities? Does it not suggest that other causes besides racism are at play?

We can talk all day about racism, discrimination, profiling, anecdotal “evidence” (“My cousin once got beat up by a cop”) or (“I was really scared for my life when the cop pulled me over for speeding”), but today, minority representation in the police force is pretty well matched to minority representation in the population, and minorities are just as, or even more likely, to kill minority suspects than are white officers.

I understand that today’s “narrative” is that “the police, especially white police, are brutal goons who are deliberately seeking out and killing black people”. I also understand that I am not Black and my feelings and experiences are, of necessity, different.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately), that narrative is not really true, despite the feelings and emotions, and even though there ARE higher numbers, proportionately to the population percentages, of minorities with interactions (peaceful OR violent) with police. But, there ARE factors other than race involved. Race is certainly a factor, but it’s far from the only one and probably not even the most important one. A demographic that has significantly higher rates of negative interactions with police due to higher crime rates within that demographic is likely to suffer higher rates of violence by the police.

From the above discussion, it’s obvious that there is more than one issue going on here.

We have the issue of “police “brutality“, whether directed at minorities or non-minorities. We have the issue of “racism“, whether perceived, real, or some combination. We have the issue of “huge numbers of crimes against and by blacks“. We have an issue of “perception“, which I believe to be distortion. Not deliberate, but which leads to errors in determination of causes and solutions. All of these have different causes and different solutions, and all have different magnitudes.

So where does that leave us? How do we get better?

First, in my opinion, is confronting the facts. Acknowledging them. Expanding on the categories and numbers to have a VERY clear picture of magnitude, depth, and breadth. Then, and ONLY then, diving deep into the issues to determine the true causes of the issues, and working to resolve them.

If we jump to conclusions based on faulty data, we will identify faulty causes, and our solutions will be faulty, as well. We will fix nothing.

You have to ask yourself. Do you really want to fix the problem, or not? If you do, blindly flailing about is not going to do it. Misidentifying the problem or the causes is not going to do it.

If you think that anyone who disagrees with you is a racist, you are not going to solve the problem. You will make it worse. You will create MORE division and enmity between races, not less. No matter how many white people acknowledge the problem and want to fix it, many white people will feel like they are under attack, under siege, and they WILL fight back. They WILL resist efforts to actually achieve racial “harmony” and equality, which is what, supposedly, this is all about.