Two Thoughts on Ferguson

I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading, and mostly trying to just listen. But there were two points I wanted to put out there in response to people complaining that all of the anger in Ferguson and throughout the country is somehow misplaced.Comparison of People Killed by Law Enforcement

PercentByRace

Statistics on “justifiable police homicides” in the U.S. (chart 1) are far from perfect. But when police are three times more likely to kill a black person than a white person, then we have a serious, widespread, and ongoing problem.

Of course, if you grew up black in this country, you probably knew that already…

Graph 1 Data:

Reported Number of Civilians Shot and Killed in 2011
# Killed Total Pop. Percentage
USA 404 311,582,564 0.00013%
Australia 6 22,340,000 0.00003%
Germany 6 81,797,673 0.00001%
England & Wales 2 56,600,000 0.00000%
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-do-us-police-kill-so-many-people-2014-8
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/population-estimates-for-uk–england-and-wales–scotland-and-northern-ireland/mid-2011-and-mid-2012/stb—mid-2011—mid-2012-uk-population-estimates.html

 

Graph 2 Data:

People Shot and Killed by Police in the US, from 1999-2011, by Race
# Killed Total #s from 2010 Census Percentage
White 2,151 223,553,265 0.00096%
Black 1,130 38,929,319 0.00290%
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/21/michael-medved/talk-show-host-police-kill-more-whites-blacks/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity