In the wake of the horrific Baton Rouge shootings that resulted in multiple injuries and deaths of police officers, outspoken Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke appeared on CNN with Don Lemon. It was during this interview where Clarke at times incoherently ranted about Black Lives Matter while twisting numbers around to try a dismiss a legitimate concern which is the correlation of young African-American male deaths at the hands of police officers.
Well… here are some numbers for you Mr. Clarke via a late 2015 study by The Guardian:
Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year.
Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age.
Paired with official government mortality data, this new finding indicates that about one in every 65 deaths of a young African American man in the US is a killing by police.
Additionally The Guardian found that of the African-American males killed in 2015, 25 percent where unarmed compared to the 17 percent of white unarmed males that were killed.
Again, these aren’t numbers that should be dismissive. Nor should the growing violence against police and law enforcement officials in the United States.
More violence shouldn’t dismiss violence and violence in general doesn’t solve violence. And on that note, a few bad apples shouldn’t tarnish or generalize a movement or profession like police officers. I’d say a vast majority of Black Lives Matter members are peacefully trying to address and bring to light the numbers previously mentioned by that Guardian study in 2015. On that same token the vast majority of police officers in this country are not racist and are only trying to protect and serve.
