For the race baiters, cop haters, Hollywood elite, and anti-American left wing socialist/communist lunatics, the 2018 statistics are in for suspects shot and killed by the American police, and they’re not going to be happy.
Before we get into the numbers, consider that out of the 350 million people in the United States today, there are about 800,000 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, who on an annual basis interact with the American public, four or five times more than they actually effect arrests. For example, in 2017, approximately 10 million people were arrested in the United States, so when you consider police/public interactions, that number could be as high as 30-50 million interactions for that year.
Although the 2018 arrest numbers are not yet available by the FBI, I would bet they will be close to the 2017 statistics, which reported approximately 10,000,000 arrests for that year.
That said, there are some extremely important statistics that have been collected and analyzed by The Washington Post, titled "Fatal Force."
The Post has maintained an extremely accurate account of people shot and killed by America’s police, dating back to 2015, and according to their reporting, last year in 2018, 995 people were shot and killed by police, the lowest number since 2015 when they began collecting and reporting this data publicly.
So, here’s the 2018 breakdown of the 995 people shot and killed by the police.
403 were white, 210 were black, 148 were Hispanic, 38 were classified as other, and 199 were classified as unknown.
Out of that 995, 47 were unarmed — 23 were white, 17 were black, 5 were Hispanic, and 2 were unknown.
Out of the 30-50 million interactions that the police had with the American public last year, 10 million people were arrested, and less than 0.01 percent were shot and killed by the police. Out of those 10 million people arrested, 47 of those shot and killed were unarmed, which equates to 0.00047 percent, 17 of which were black.
Remarkably, for the race baiting, cop hating, left-wing propagandists that promote the social theory that all police officers are relentlessly targeting and gunning down unarmed people of color, these statistics prove those claims could not be farther from the truth. The reality is that out of the 10,000,000 arrests made last year in the U.S., 17 black people shot and killed by the police were unarmed, which equates to 0.00017 percent.
Members of Congress, governors, mayors, the Hollywood elite, and the left-wing mainstream media outlets have gone out of their way to demonize the police with their false, misleading, and inciting claims, yet have ignored the violence and murder rates in cities like Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee, and others. Could it be that they're just ignorant to the real facts, or, is it that they just don’t give a damn about the truth, and their rhetoric is strictly left-wing political propaganda meant to destroy community-police relations.
Instead of focusing their negativity on some of the best trained police officers in the world, perhaps they should focus on the communities of color where young black men and women are being slaughtered by black-on-black violent crime. Perhaps they should focus on the poverty-stricken communities beset by violent crime and murder, where no one wants to build new businesses, work, go to school, or visit — where no one feels safe.
The police are not the enemy, and for those that have made it a habit of attacking them with these false claims, society would be better served if they would focus on communities where black-on-black crime is murdering our young, destroying our country, and creating racial tensions that should not be.
As New York City’s 40th Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik was in command of the NYPD on September 11, 2001, and responsible for the city’s response, rescue, recovery, and the investigative efforts of the most substantial terror attack in world history. His 35-year career has been recognized in more than 100 awards for meritorious and heroic service, including a presidential commendation for heroism by President Ronald Reagan, two Distinguished Service Awards from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, The Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and an appointment as Honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
The writer is author of the following: "The Grave Above the Grave," "From Jailer to Jailed," and "The Lost Son, A Life in Pursuit of Justice."
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