The Day Ferguson Cops Were Caught in a Bloody Lie

Factcheck: Grim statistics on race and police killings


By Eric Bradner, CNN

Updated 3:38 PM ET, Wed December 3, 2014
Dispute over deaths at hands of police

Dispute over deaths at hands of police 03:05
Story highlights

A ProPublica analysis of police shootings shows that young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed than young white men
But Fox News host Bill O'Reilly is citing stats showing that more whites were killed by police than blacks in 2012
The differing statistics underscore analysts' complaint that the United States poorly tracks police shootings

Syndicated columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote this week that young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than young white men. Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly had a much different take on his show Monday night, offering that more whites are killed by police than blacks.

"In 2012, 123 African-Americans were shot dead by police. There are currently more than 43 million blacks living in the U.S.A.," O'Reilly said on his program. "Same year, 326 whites were killed by police bullets. Those are the latest stats available."

Two dramatically different statistics -- and they could both be right.

That reality, in part a result of weak local reporting and national data gathering efforts on police homicides, has long frustrated researchers and analysts who say they need to know more about those shootings.

Here's how the two pundits came to such dramatically different conclusions:

Kristof was citing an analysis by ProPublica, which combed through the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Supplementary Homicide Report.

The site reported: "The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police."

What's key is that ProPublica narrowed the scope of its analysis to the 15-to-19 age range, and adjusted for population differences to account for the fact that more whites live in the United States than blacks -- both key differences from O'Reilly's approach.

The Fox News host's numbers, meanwhile, came from a fatal injury database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A search in 2012 for deaths caused by "legal intervention" as a result of the use of a firearm -- that is, a police shooting -- yields just the numbers O'Reilly cited Monday night. In the 15-19 age range, the database shows 20 white people killed in 2012 and 14 blacks.

Where's the data on officer-involved shootings?

The problem, experts say, is that the United States doesn't collect accurate statistics and verify nearly enough information to show definitive trends in police shootings.

"There isn't a mandatory reporting. It is a self-reporting. Almost on the honor system," Sunny Hostin, a CNN legal analyst, said on CNN's "The Situation Room" on Tuesday.

"Although the FBI does have some statistics, most people know that those statistics can't even be counted upon, because they are self-reported," Hostin said. "So my suggestion has been all along that we need mandatory reporting from our law enforcement agencies around the country and I think that the number of officer shootings involving young black males is actually much higher than is even self-reported. That's something that needs to be part of the conversation."

Geoff Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist, recently told USA Today the FBI's database can confirm police have shot and killed people -- but provides few other details.

The numbers are self-reported by individual law enforcement agencies and not all local and state agencies participate. Most shootings are marked as justified homicides, with little follow-up.

''There is no national database for this type of information, and that is so crazy," Alpert said. "We've been trying for years, but nobody wanted to fund it and the (police) departments didn't want it. They were concerned with their image and liability. They don't want to bother with it.''

And you know that how? Have you checked all 359 cases? Of course not, it's a lot easy to denigrate the dead than check your facts.

This is an example of your racist mindset, you shoot from the hip hoping your prejudice makes up for any real evidence.

Again how is this racist? Bobsal never said anything about color, and neither did I. This has nothing to do with racism.

This thread is all about the Ferguson slaying. If you weren't thinking of dead black people why mention Martin Luther King?

He doesn't need a brain. He lets his guts do his thinking.

Do not compare where you and I come from on this issue. Anyone who claims there is no racial component in this is lying or self deceiving.

Anyone who claims that the primary problem here is racist cops is lying or self deceiving. We have a lot of problems in our " Justice" system, we have a lot of problems with abusive government, we have a lot of problems with people adopting victim identities and using that identity as an excuse to not try to make something of their lives and/or no take responsibility for their actions.

Trying to have it both ******* ways. Cops are the agents of the corrupt system you constantly claim is corrupt. But the cops are angels when it comes to treatment of suspects. Explain your disconnect.

That's one mixed up world you inhabit.

Cops have a racism problem, but it falls pretty far down the list of the problems with out "justice" system. BLM being all about racist cops is to prove an inability to see the big picture, an inability to prioritize. And these stupid mother fuckers do even worse, they make it all about bad cops just as we made Abu Ghraib all about bad reservists. STUPID! The problems flow from the top, if we want to fix what goes wrong on the streets between cops and citizens then we need to fix our political system and we need to fix our laws.So much of life has been criminalized, and this government gets off on beating on citizens. Fix that.

One of biggest reasons why BLM is not going far is because it is run mostly by feminists, who will not ever for any reason go against their partners, the state. They have to have this be all about bad cops, because to go further into the problem would bring about the question of why do they want to continually give more power to a government that clearly cant handle the power that it already has. If we follow them what we will do is drive down the morale of cops, and we will put their lives in danger as we force them the double or triple think every move.

The fact that BLM does not seriously want to deal with what is wrong with our "justice" system because it is politically inconvenient should discredit them. If they are frustrated then good, they should come up with a better plan, something that we can all get behind.

The problem with BLM is not racist whites, it is not that they have not been rioting enough, it is that they have a bad plan and seem to have a juvenile understanding of the problem.They are either dishonest or stupid, if they decide to fix that then we can talk about getting together to fix this abusive government. .

More paranoid nonsense about feminists stealing your cock. It doesn't take you long to start trotting out your pathetic bullshit.

You don't like BLM because the only person who is a victim in your narcissistic universe is you. You hate it when real victims are spoken about, then you start whining on about feminists and how they've emasculated you.

You are a victim though, of your own stupidity.

You're a ******* idiot. That remains a constant throughout.

The consensus is the BLM is run mostly by black progressive and mostly queer women....alleging that they are feminists is not going out on much of a limb. This would also be a good place to again take up my argument that young men of today are getting creamed by the women, they need help. A female dominated society is no better than a male dominated society was. I am a dinosaur, I still believe in and promote equality of the sexes.

"THE" consensus, eh? Where's that at, where you get your whites bleached between cross burnings and cockfights?

You're frothing at the mouth again. What did those nuns do to you?



Oh **** off. Nobody's going to believe that one. You think women are running the world now. God only knows what you think equality looks like.

I think the KKK Hawkeye's into is Kinder, Küche, Kirche.

No, I think that humans are forged early in life, and that after that we dont change much. If you want to see what is going on in the battle of the sexes you have to look at the young, how things are going with them. Young men are getting creamed. Now if we were all stupid like you we would wait 30 years before figuring this out, after men of all age groups are performing less well than women, but that is not my speed.

If we want equality now is the time to turn the wheel, we need to pull some if not all of the extra resources and encouragement that we give to young females and instead give it to young men. Or better yet just treat everyone equally.

I think we discovered your nexus here: they are and you're not.

If we were all stupid like you we'd still be living in the trees.

NJ admits police killed Jerame Reid with his hands up, but he moved a bit, so, you know, no charges

by
Shaun King
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Jerame Reid...alive and well
This is ugly.

Pulled over for not completely stopping at a stop sign, Jerame Reid, who wasn't even the driver, was unarmed, non-violent, had his hands up, and his murder was filmed. In the car with a friend, sitting on the passenger side, you can clearly see Jerame slowly getting out of the car, communicating that he's doing nothing wrong, and see him putting his hands on his in the air above his head.

Standing nearly 10 feet away, on the driver's side of the car, deathly afraid of a peaceful Jerame Reid, Officer Roger Worley fired the first shot at Jerame, but missed. Upon hearing this shot, the other officer, Braheme Days, fired seven rapid shots directly at Jerame and killed him right there on the spot.

After seeing the video and learning all of the facts, a New Jersey grand jury decided the officers didn't even need to go to trial. If you let them tell it, all is well is in the Garden State.

When we say black lives matter, we say it for Jerame Reid because this grand jury just decided that his life wasn't even worth a basic criminal charge of something like reckless homicide.

And here's what's altogether flagrant ...

The officer who fired seven shots at Jerame Reid is being sued for raping a woman.

Not only that, but Jerame Reid's family won a lawsuit against the state for a 2009 instance where he was severely beaten by law enforcement.

In conclusion, what we see here is that the system will bend over backwards to protect violent police at all costs. It's despicable and reveals that even in some instances where a brutal police murder is filmed, it still takes a prosecutor who wants a conviction to get behind it.

Originally posted to shaunking on Fri Aug 21, 2015 at 08:33 AM PDT.
Also republished by Police Accountability Group, New Jersey Kossacks, and Daily Kos.

YOU " never met a black man you didn't like" so I figured I would use a black famous person, rather than a white person who sometimes you like but sometimes you don't. I figured I would play to my crowd to make point clearer. I have mentioned many times before that I don't care what color thug it is.