Last Call For Bad Math

You can always count on the Assrocket to compare apples to Easter Island head statues.

What was the racial breakdown of those who were shot by police in 2015? The largest number, 494, almost exactly half, were white. 258 were black, 172 were Hispanic, and the remaining 66 were either “other” or unknown. (Interestingly, Asians are rarely shot by police officers.)

The 258 blacks represent 26% of the total. That is about double the percentage of blacks in the American population. Is that prima facie evidence of racism on the part of law enforcement? Of course not. It is common knowledge that blacks have an unusually high rate of contact with the police, both as victims and as perpetrators. In 2012-2013, the Department of Justice found that blacks were the perpetrators of 24% of all violent crimes where the race of the perpetrator was known (in 7.8% of violent crimes, it was unknown).

So the percentage of blacks fatally shot by police officers (26%) is almost exactly equal to the percentage of blacks committing violent crimes (24%). Indeed, given that the black homicide rate is around eight times the white rate, it is surprising that the portion of blacks fatally shot by policemen is not higher.

I'm trying to think about this from a number of angles, and all I can come up with is "committing a violent crime" is equal to "being shot and killed by police".  I mean, that's exactly the two statistics he's comparing here, so he must be implying that if you commit a violent crime, you should be killed by a cop.

I mean, not sent to jail, or captured alive, or evaluated for possible mental health issues, or treated as a human being, it's just "police should be executing black people and actually I don't know why that rate isn't higher." Note the default here.

Hindraker has thrown out some doozies over the years, but this may actually be the worst, most callow, heartless, staggeringly false argument for the justification of police violence against black America that I have ever seen.

Why aren't more of us being killed by cops?  He seriously wants to know this.

It's astonishing.