By Jason Riley | The Wall Street Journal
Photo: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the
aftermath of rioting
The media likes to break down cops’ behavior
by race, but doesn’t do the same for civilian crime.
Chicago has long been one of the nation’s
most dangerous big cities, and it seems determined to keep that distinction.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that 18 people
were killed on one Sunday, May 31, “making it the single most violent day in
Chicago in six decades.” Over the full weekend, “25 people were killed in the
city, with another 85 wounded by gunfire.” None of these deaths or shootings
involved police, so there will be no massive protests over them, no tearful
commentary on cable news and social media, no white politicians wrapped in
Kente cloth taking a knee for photographers.
Sadly, the only thing remarkable about the
episode is that it occurred in the middle of a national discussion about
policing. The political left, with a great deal of assistance from the
mainstream media, has convinced many Americans that George Floyd’s death in
police custody is an everyday occurrence for black people in this country, and
that racism permeates law enforcement. The reality is that the carnage we
witness in Chicago is what’s typical, law enforcement has next to nothing to do
with black homicides, and the number of interactions between police and
low-income blacks is driven by crime rates, not bias. According to the
Sun-Times, there were 492 homicides in Chicago last year, and only three of
them involved police.
So long as blacks are committing more than
half of all murders and robberies while making up only 13% of the population,
and so long as almost all of their victims are their neighbors, these
communities will draw the lion’s share of police attention. Defunding the
police, or making it easier to prosecute officers, will only result in more
lives lost in those neighborhoods that most need protecting.
There’s nothing wrong with having a debate
about better policing strategies, how to root out bad cops, the role of police
unions and so forth. But that conversation needs perspective and context, and
the press rarely provides it. People are protesting because the public has been
led to believe that racist cops are gunning for blacks, yet the available
evidence shows that police use of deadly force has plunged in recent decades,
including in big cities with large populations of low-income minorities. In the
early 1970s, New York City police officers shot more than 300 people a year. By
2019 that number had fallen to 34.
Part of the confusion stems from attempts to
equate any racial disparities with racism, which is as mistaken as equating age
and gender disparities with systemic discrimination. Young people are
incarcerated at higher rates than older people, and men draw more police
attention than women. Is something fishy going on here, or do such outcomes
simply reflect the fact that young men are behind most violent crimes? When
journalists break down police behavior by race but don’t do the same for
criminal behavior, you’re not getting the whole story.
A recent New
York Times report, for example, tells us that the racial makeup of
Minneapolis is 20% black and 60% white, and that police there “used force
against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people during
the past five years.” Left out of the story are the rates at which blacks and
whites in Minneapolis commit crime in general and violent crime in particular. Nor
are we told whether there is any evidence that white and black suspects of
similar offenses are treated differently. Minneapolis may in fact have issues
with police bias, but drawing conclusions about the extent of the problem or
even whether one exists would be premature based on the information provided.
Reports about race and policing that omit
relevant facts to push a predetermined narrative are not only misleading but
harmful, especially to blacks. We know from decades of experience that when
police pull back, criminals gain the advantage and black communities suffer,
both physically and economically. A common assumption among liberals is that
the movement of inner-city jobs to the suburbs in the late 1960s is what led to
the higher rates of crime, violence and other social pathologies associated
with ghetto life. But this gets the order wrong. The business flight took place
after the rioting, not before. Will history repeat itself?
The Walmart
and Target stores in Chicago that were
looted last week are two of the city’s largest retailers. They employ a
disproportionate number of low-skilled workers, and they haven’t decided
whether to reopen. If they don’t, it could mean fewer jobs and higher prices
for underserved minorities. Before we divert resources away from policing,
maybe we should consider the effect it would have on the willingness and
ability of businesses to operate in places where they’re most needed.
