Dangerous distortions about police officers shooting African American men are being circulated across the country, according to John Lott Jr., founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
"One claim that particularly upsets me has been this claim the Sunday morning talk shows have repeated — [and] you see it in the New York Times, the L.A. Times and many other places," Lott said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"That's the claim that black teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 are 21 times more likely to be shot by a police and killed than white teenagers of the same age. If it was true, they would be pretty outrageous one would say.
"But the problem is that the data is completely useless. There are 17,000 police departments in the United States. Only about one percent of the police departments report these numbers."
But Lott — author of
"More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws," published by University of Chicago Press — noted that even that one percent isn't based on random figures.
"It's not randomly picked between different police departments. There are overwhelmingly police departments in heavily black areas," he said.
"You would imagine you would get over-representation in terms of blacks being killed."
Lotts' comments come as the nation is embroiled in racial turmoil following the execution of two New York City police officers by a cop-hating gunman who wanted to avenge the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, two black men shot dead by white cops.
Lott also said it turns out that African Americans trust the police more than whites do.
"From 2008-2012, blacks were much more likely than any other racial group to report violent crimes to the police when they're committed against them," he said.
"If you look at blacks and whites, 54 percent of the time blacks had violent crimes committed against them, they'd report them to the police, whereas 45 percent were white and 40 percent for Hispanics, for example."
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