USA TODAY International Edition
Policing debate needs more facts, fewer slogans
Facts matter when people are looking for solutions to any problem, and there is no shortage of facts demonstrating that too many black men die unnecessarily at the hands of police.
But slogans such as “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” — and simplistic narratives suggesting that this is exclusively a white- vs.- black racial problem — muddy the issue and fail to explain complexities.
Baltimore, for example, erupted in violent protests last year after the death of Freddie Gray, a young black man taken into custody and placed in a police van, shackled but not belted, where he suffered a fatal spinal injury.
The tragedy, however, doesn’t fit the cookie- cutter explanation of a white power structure atop a majority black city. Baltimore has a black mayor. The department has been headed by several black commissioners. As of last year, nearly half of police were black. Among the six officers involved in Gray’s death, three are African-American. And three of the six have been acquitted in trials before an African- American judge.
Nor does race alone explain the recent Philando Castile shooting in St. Paul. The shocking aftermath was streamed live on video by his girlfriend, who said that after a traffic stop Castile was fatally shot while reaching for his license and registration. The shooter? A Latino officer.
And “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” — the slogan that launched a movement — was debunked by a Justice Department investigation released last year. The agency found that the account of Michael Brown being shot in Ferguson, Mo., while his hands were raised was inconsistent with physical and forensic evidence.
None of this is to deny a racial component to police- involved shootings. But other intractable problems are also at play in a crisis that has deepened in recent days with the fatal ambush of five officers in Dallas and three in Baton Rouge by African Americans apparently bent on revenge.
Myriad problems include the fact that some cops, regardless of race, develop an us- vs.- them mentality that separates police officers from the policed. And if cops are jittery after these shocking assassinations and loose talk about a “war on police,” well, who can blame them?
An unconscious bias does exist in police work, as FBI Director James Comey has noted. Because “a hugely disproportionate percentage of street crime is committed by young men of color,” Comey said, veteran officers often take “a mental shortcut” that leads them to be more suspicious of black men.
It’s not fair. It’s dangerous. But it’s reality.
One reason the public knows so little about what drives policeinvolved shootings is that most departments have failed to systematically collect data, despite years of accusations of excessive force against minorities and millions of dollars paid out by some cities in settlements with victims’ families. That lack of information is “embarrassing and ridiculous,” Comey has said.
In the absence of facts, shouting slogans, clinging to false narratives or arguing over the merits of “Black Lives Matter” vs. “Blue Lives Matter” will only get in the way of addressing a crisis that diminishes all lives.