A new think tank report takes aim at the Black Lives Matter movement’s contention that law enforcement’s use of lethal force unequally targets blacks compared to other racial or ethnic groups.
According to the report by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, not only are a higher percentage of whites and Hispanics killed by police, the greater threat to blacks comes from violent criminals within their own communities.
The evidence does not support the conclusion that American police are waging a racist war against blacks,” Manhattan senior fellow Heather Mac Donald writes.
“Law enforcement could end all use of lethal force tomorrow, and it would have, at most, a negligible effect on the black death-by-homicide rate, which is driven overwhelmingly by murders committed by other black civilians,” Mac Donald notes.
Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza is quoted as saying: “It’s also pretty callous, in my opinion, to say ‘all lives matter’ when black folks are being killed every 28 hours by police or vigilantes.”
But Mac Donald points out that blacks actually face a lower level of lethal force by police than either whites or Hispanics.
“Police shootings account for a much smaller share of homicides in the black community than in other communities: 4 percent of black homicide victims are killed by the police, compared with 12 percent of white and Hispanic homicide victims,” she states.
Think Tank: Data Show Black Lives Most Threatened by Violent Criminals, Not the Police