By Walter E. Williams
Listening to the news media and the Black Lives Matter movement, one would think that black deaths at the hands of police are the major problem.
It turns out that in 2015, police across the nation shot and killed 986 people.
Of that number, 495 were white (50 percent), 258 were black (26 percent) and 172 Hispanic (17 percent).
A study of 2,699 fatal police killings between 2013 and 2015, conducted by John R. Lott Jr. and Carlisle E. Moody of the Crime Prevention Research Center, demonstrates that the odds of a black suspect's being killed by a black police officer were consistently greater than a black suspect's getting killed by a white officer.
Politicians, race hustlers and the news media keep such studies under wraps because these studies don't help their narrative about racist cops.
The homicide victim
is not the only victim, whether he is a criminal or not, for there are mourning
loved ones. No one ever fully recovers from having a son, daughter, husband, mother
or father murdered.
Murder is not the only crime that takes a heavy toll on the
black community.
Blacks are disproportionately represented as victims in
every category of violent crime -- e.g., forcible rape, robbery and aggravated
assault.
Today's level of
lawlessness and insecurity in many black communities is a relatively new
phenomenon.
In the 1930s, '40s and '50s, people didn't bar their windows.
Doors were often left unlocked. People didn't go to bed with the sounds of
gunshots.
What changed everything was the liberal vision that blamed crime
on poverty and racial discrimination.
Academic liberals and hustling
politicians told us that to deal with crime, we had to deal with those
"root causes."
Plus, courts began granting criminals new rights that
caused murder and other violent crime rates to skyrocket.
The liberals'
argument ignores the fact that there was far greater civility in black
neighborhoods at a time when there was far greater poverty and discrimination.
The presence of
criminals, having driven many businesses out, forces residents to bear the
costs of shopping outside their neighborhoods.
Fearing robberies, taxi drivers
-- including black drivers -- often refuse to do home pickups in black
neighborhoods and frequently pass up black customers hailing them.
Plus,
there's the insult associated with not being able to receive pizza or other
deliveries on the same terms as people in other neighborhoods.
In low-crime
neighborhoods, FedEx, UPS and other delivery companies routinely leave packages
that contain valuable merchandise on a doorstep if no one is at home. That
saves the expense of redelivery or recipients from having to go pick up the
packages.
In low-crime communities, supermarket managers may leave plants,
fertilizer and other home and garden items outdoors, often unattended and
overnight. They display merchandise at entryways and exits.
Where there is less
honesty, supermarkets cannot use all the space that they lease, and hence they
are less profitable.
In high-crime neighborhoods, delivery companies leaving
packages at the door and supermarkets leaving goods outside unattended would be
equivalent to economic suicide.
Politicians who call
for law and order are often viewed negatively, but poor people are the most
dependent on law and order.
In the face of high crime or social disorder,
wealthier people can afford to purchase alarm systems, buy guard dogs, hire
guards and, if things get too bad, move to a gated community.
These options are
not available to poor people. The only protection they have is an orderly
society.
Ultimately, the
solution to high crime rests with black people.
Given the current political
environment, it doesn't pay a black or white politician to take those steps
necessary to crack down on lawlessness in black communities.
