Why blacks feel targeted by police

Regarding John Schlaffer’s recent letter, any “analysis” of police killings will of course show that in absolute numbers, more white people are killed in police shootings than black people (“Police shoot whites, too,” Sept. 23).

That’s because whites comprise roughly five times the share of the U.S. population as blacks. Any analysis that is based on nothing more than absolute numbers and does not take demographics into account is inaccurate and misleading.

According to the most recent Census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only account for about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers.

African-Americans, on the other hand, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot by the police yet they make up just 13 percent of the U.S. population. That means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police.

Sounds like ample reason for outrage to me.