A Little Much-Needed Perspective Please: Facts, Data Regarding America’s Cops

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Surge Summary: There are millions of arrests and police/citizen interactions every year the United States. Occasionally scandal or tragic outcomes result. Only focusing on the latter, however, hardly sketches an accurate portrait of what America’s law enforcement forces face and accomplish on a regular basis.

by Gary Bauer

Officer Kim Potter was released from jail [Wednesday] after posting $100,000 bond.  She’s facing manslaughter charges and 10 years in jail.  Barricades were erected around her home, which is also under police protection, as protesters are now carrying pigs heads on stakes.

The vile imagery is clear:  The mob wants Potter’s head.

A jury will decide Potter’s fate.  The violent mob should not be tolerated.  The Thin Blue Line is the only thing that stands between civilized society and mob “justice,” which is no justice at all.

It is important to hold our peace officers to high standards of professional conduct.  At the same time, we must keep these events in perspective.  The left-wing narrative of “systemically racist police shootings” is demonstrably false.

Here’s what you need to know:

• There are at least 10 million arrests every year.  That’s more than 27,000 arrests every day, virtually all of them are for the good of society.

• In the overwhelming majority of cases involving the deadly use of force, it is justified.  One study of officer-involved shootings found that “55% of the victims were white, 27% were black, and 19% were Hispanic. Between 90 and 95% of the civilians shot by officers were attacking police or other citizens; 90% were armed with a weapon.”

• Another study found that “officers were slightly more than three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects.”

• According to Heather Mac Donald, a Justice Department study of the Philadelphia Police Department found that black officers were 67% more likely than white officers to mistakenly shoot an unarmed black suspect.

• One Harvard study found no evidence of racial bias in police shootings.  The black professor who conducted the study called the findings, “the most surprising result of my career.”

• According to the Washington Post database of police shootings, 18 unarmed black people (and 24 unarmed white people) were shot by police last year.  Are we going to allow the media and the left to prejudge every case?  Are we going to have riots 18 times a year?

• “Unarmed” doesn’t always mean innocent.  In some cases, officers are being physically assaulted.  In other cases, an attacker is struggling for the officer’s weapon.

• Mac Donald also notes that “A police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.”

• Over the past decade, 511 police officers have been murdered in the line of duty.  As columnist Terry Jeffrey put it, that’s almost one a week, every year for the last ten years.

How many of their names do you know?  And how many riots have occurred because a police officer was shot and killed?

The views here are those of the author and not necessarily Daily Surge

Originally posted here.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

Gary Lee Bauer is an American politician and activist, who served in the Reagan administration. He later became president of the Family Research Council and a senior vice president of Focus on the Family. In 2000, he participated in the Republican presidential contest.