Law Enforcement and the Killing of Americans

I retired in 2015 after 31 years of law enforcement for the City of Riverside Police Department. A lot has changed since I walked into my first roll call in 1984! Back then, there might be one Black American or a female during briefing. There also was not much in equipment except for a handgun, shotgun, mace, hand-radio and straight baton. But that changed tremendously over the years with all of law enforcement. A huge part of that change was an increasing commitment to diversity, training, community-police relations, de-escalation techniques, less lethal options, tasers, audio/video of police contacts, and much more. The point is that law enforcement is constantly evolving and improving, but what about society relative to criminal behavior; especially in large inner cities?

What happened to George Floyd was abhorrent and no decent person justifies the officers actions or believes they are not criminal. But did it happen because of institutional racism throughout law enforcement that leads to a disproportionate number of blacks killed?

In reality, twice as many white people are killed by police. In about 75% of police shootings, the decedent is not black. There’s also the false narrative that if police shoot a black person, it must be because the officer is racist. Fact is the majority of “police on black” shootings are of armed, violent suspects. Accordingly to the FBI, the number of violent assaults against law enforcement has dramatically risen while, surprisingly, the number of police shootings has decreased. In 2017, police killed 457 whites and 223 blacks. In 2018, 399 whites and 209 blacks, 2019 370 whites and 235 blacks, and 2020 42 whites and 31 blacks so far. When compared to other races killed by police, blacks make up about a quarter of the total number of people killed by police, although they account for a higher proportion of the violent crime in large inner cities. Point is that you would therefore expect that number to be higher. Much of this information can be obtained by the FBI uniform crime statistics and Washington Post who started keeping stats on the subject.

What about violent crime in our large, inner cities? Black males account for over 60% of the murders and other violent crimes. A young black male is far more likely to be killed by another black male than the police. Sadly, a police officer is far more likely to be killed by a black male than a black male is to be killed by police.

Law enforcement must always strive to improve their professionalism and weed out “bad” cops. If it's unfair to judge the black culture by some of the previously stated information, then it's equally wrong to judge law enforcement based on the behavior of, comparatively, a few bad cops. Some agencies have farther to go than others, but most of that is due to budgets, poor pay, training, etc.; not systemic racism. The false narratives in the media and elsewhere designed to increase racial divide must stop. Police are not responsible for the socioeconomic conditions that are at the base of much of the problem. Overall, law enforcement will continue evolving and improving for the better. It's time for society to look inward and do the same.