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VonKliem's avatar

Sir,

The medical examiner interviewed by the FBI was asked whether he could conclude “but for” the pressure applied by the officer Floyd would be alive. He could not make that determination. The drug levels, compromised cardiovascular system, and exertion alone presented a high risk of death. There are cases with nearly identical facts to the Floyd case, except after restraining the suspect, the officers rolled the suspect onto their sides, applied no pressure, monitored their vitals, and the suspect still died of heart failure. I can’t think of a good reason the officers failed to transition from suspect restraint to patient care. But the officers obviously did not perceive their conduct to be putting Floyd at risk of death. I’ve supervised and trained cops for decades now and there were obviously better ways to handle the medical care of Floyd. No one seems to be arguing against that. But I am convinced the calloused look on the officer’s face was the result of years of hearing hostile crowds interfere with arrests and suspects who feign injury and breathing difficulty to gain some advantage. That said, we train and advise cops to establish control first and then to treat health complaints as though they were serious. They very frequently are not. Every senior officer I’ve discussed this case with has said some version of the same thing... as supervisors we would have walked up, asked what they had, and within a minute we would have had them roll the suspect to his side, verify medical services were in route, and monitored his vitals. There is plenty to complain about in the Floyd case and as a former prosecutor I can imagine criminal charges might be appropriate. But I’m not convinced the officers foresaw death as a probable outcome of their conduct. I am not convinced Floyd wasn’t already on his way to dying or that any medical intervention available to the officers would have changed that. I am certainly not convinced that race had anything to do with how Floyd was handled. Officers working metropolitan areas spend the vast majority of their time interacting with black community members, victims, witnesses, and not just criminals. The racial math problem of white cop plus black suspect equals racism doesn’t work. I don’t hear you making that argument but I did notice that you curiously over simplify and mischaracterize the cases you cite. One example is the Alton Sterling case, which your article might leave readers believing officers shot him for a minor infraction. The officers were responding to a 911 call that Sterling had threatened someone with a gun; Sterling was large, strong, and failing to follow orders. Officers tried to first talk with Sterling, tried to tackle him despite knowing he might have a gun, tried to control his arms, and only after he tried to pull out the gun during the struggle did the officers shoot him.

There is a powerful anti-police marketing campaign being waged and it has been effective. The feelings are real and I have no doubt many black people have been convinced to fear police. But the facts don’t support that narrative.

Police use of force is statistically rare, and most Americans will never witness, let alone experience, "police violence."

In fact, according to their 2018 survey, the Department of Justice found that 75% of white residents and 80% of black residents not only hadn't experienced force, they actually had no official contact with the police that year. Instead, only about 0.4% of U.S. residents experienced a use of force or even just a threat of force in 2018. That means 99.6% did not.

It is important to remember that, even though 0.4% is an extraordinarily low percentage, that number only represents the number of people who experienced police use of force. Instances of excessive force, or even complaints of excessive force, are far lower.

Even so, with an estimated 65,000,000 (some estimates as high as 350,000,000) police encounters each year, there will always be dozens of examples of clearly excessive force. Equally obvious is that, for every example of a cop getting it wrong, there are hundreds of thousands of examples where officers are getting it right--often with extraordinary skill, restraint, and at great risk to themselves.

Anyone still claiming that there is an “epidemic of police violence” or "systemic police brutality" will find little support in the research:

"The one consistent finding across every prior study of police use of force is that force of any type is a rare phenomenon. Regardless of the samples, measures, or analyses used, uses of force are rare among all residents, among all police-public contacts, and occur in only a small proportion of incidents where residents are arrested."

Progress toward national estimates of police use of force (2018)

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Joe G.'s avatar

Let's first put the statistical stupidity to bed. "Proportion of the overall population" on its face is a preposterous way of gauging bias. Men are 25 times more likely to be killed by cops than women. Does this demonstrate that cops have a beef with men? White men are killed at a rate of 2 to 1 relative to Asian men. Racism against whites? (source: Washington Post Police Killing DB). Of course not. Men commit more violent crime than women. Whites commit more violent crime than Asians. Blacks commit more violent crime than both groups. Mystery solved.

As for Chauvin being a racist. In the absence of explict evidence of such, who really knows? Who knows what's in the heart of a man. Is he deparved? Yes. His motivation? Only him and his maker know.

We're entering some very dangerous territory in our country because of a pernicious form of racial reductionism that's taken hold in society. White guy kills Asian women? White Supremacy. Chauvin is a white cop. Floyd was a black man. Racism. The Georgia voting law? Reincarnation of Jim Crow. Want to schools to open in your community? White privilege motivated by white supremacy.

I think a lot of this has to do with the recent permeation of Critical Race Theory precepts into the mainstream thinking of people who just a short time ago would have called such stupidity…well, stupidity.

Why is this happening? I think Shelby Steele captured the dynamics of current race relations nearly 40 years ago in his brilliant work entitled "The Content of Their Character". In that book Steele asserts that the mixture of white guilt and the power victimhood status provides to black people lies at the heart of our racial strife. It’s a pernicious dynamic that acts to maintain the racial status quo. I see that at play big time today with the likes of BLM and the CRT crowd shaming as many white people as they can and convincing them that they are oppressors in need of penance and pushing the victim card in the black community.

The significant successes these groups are having will come at a perilous cost. There are 10's of millions who are sitting on the sideline seething over the non stop racial propaganda and finger-pointing. The vast majority of these people are good and decent souls who have a 21st century perspective on race; meaning they really don't give a damned about it. Their families are integrated. Their friends are diverse. The stereotypes and blatant racism of the past died with their parents , grandparents and last episode of All in the Family. Bottom line? The left risks radicalizing these people. They're brining into existence the very thing they claim they're fighting. They're turning a bogyman into Frankenstein. And in doing so they’re ripping defeat from the jaws of victory.

I often wonder if that is not the left's plan. They see the society changing dramatically and realize that the power they derive from white guilt and black victimhood slipping out of their hands. And you know what? They'll do anything to keep that power, even if it means telling young black boys and girls that the likes of math is an evil invention of the white man.

And this is why people like John , Glenn, Steele, Williams, Sowell, etc. are so importanrt....black people who are impervious to the Orwellian charge of racism and white supremacy. Our collective fate, both black and white folks, lies in their hands.

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