Since 2015, The Washington Post has maintained a comprehensive database of fatal police shootings in this country. Last year, The Post logged a total of 1,004 killings.
Of the 802 shootings in which the race of the police officer and the suspect was noted, 371 of those killed were white, 236 were black. The vast majority of those killed were not, in fact, unarmed; the vast majority were armed. And African-American suspects were significantly more likely to have a deadly weapon than white suspects, yet more white suspects were killed.
This is not genocide. It's not even close to genocide. It is laughable to suggest it is.
Overall, there were a total of precisely 10 cases in the United States last year, according to The Washington Post, in which unarmed African- Americans were fatally shot by the police. There were nine men and one woman.
Now, as we said, a lot is at stake. The country is at stake. So we want to take the time now to go through these case by case, into the specifics.
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The first was a man called Channara Pheap. He was killed by a Knoxville police officer called Dylan Williams. According to Williams, Pheap attacked him, choked him and then used a taser on him -- the suspect on the police officer before the officer shot him. Five eyewitnesses corroborated the officer's claim, and the officer was not charged.The second case concerns a man called Marcus McVeigh. He was by any description a career criminal from San Angelo, Texas. He had been convicted of aggravated assault, assault on a public servant and organized criminal activity.At the time he was killed, he was wanted on drug dealing charges. The Texas State trooper pulled him over. McVeigh fled in his car, then he fled on foot into the woods. There he fought with the trooper and was shot and killed. The officer was not charged in that case.
Marzua Scott assaulted a shop employee. When a female police officer arrived and ordered the suspect toward her car, he instead charged her and knocked her to the ground. At that point, she shot and killed him. The entire incident was caught on body camera. The officer was not charged.Ryan Twyman was being approached by two LA County deputies when he backed into one of them with his vehicle. The deputy was caught in the car door. He and his partner opened fire. The deputies were not charged in that case.Melvin Watkins of East Baton Rouge, La. shot by a deputy after he allegedly drove his car toward the deputy at high speed. The deputy was not charged.Isaiah Lewis, meanwhile, wasn't just unarmed, he was completely naked. Williams broke into a house and then attacked a police officer. The police tased Williams, but he kept coming at them and attacking. The officer shot him. They were not charged.Atatiana Jefferson was shot by a Fort Worth deputy called Aaron Dean. A neighbor had called a non-emergency number after seeing Jefferson's door open, thinking something might be wrong. Police arrived. Jefferson saw them approach from a window and was holding a gun at the time. According to body camera footage, the officer shot Jefferson within seconds. That officer has been charged with homicide. Christopher Whitfield was shot and killed in a place called Ethel, La. He had robbed a gas station. Deputy Glenn Sims said his gun discharged accidentally while grappling with Whitfield. Sims, who is black himself, was not charged in that killing.Kevin Mason was shot by police during a multi-hour standoff. Well, Mason turned out not to have a gun. Mason claimed to have a gun, claimed to be armed and vowed to kill police with it. They believed him. Mason had been in a shootout with police years before.And finally, the tenth case concerns Gregory Griffin. He was shot during a car chase. An officer called Giovanni Crespo claimed he saw someone pointing a gun at him. Later, a gun was in fact found inside the vehicle, and yet Officer Crespo was charged anyway with aggravated manslaughter.[/list]Those are the facts. That is the entire list from 2019, last year --
10 deaths. In five deaths, an officer was attacked just before the shooting occurred. That is not disputed.One allegedly was an accident. That leaves a total of
four deaths during a pursuit or in a standoff. So out of four, in two of those cases -- and fully half -- the officer was criminally charged. Is it possible that more of these officers should have been charged? Of course, it's possible. Justice is not always served, that's for sure.But either way, this is a very small number in a country of 325 million people. This is not genocide. It's not even close to genocide. It is laughable to suggest it is.
In fact, the number of police killings is dropping. In 2015, during Barack Obama's presidency, 38 unarmed black Americans and 32 whites were slain by police. Overall totals have fallen since then, and they have fallen far more dramatically for African-American men.Last year was the safest year for unarmed suspects since The Washington Post begin tracking police shootings. It was the safest year for both white and black suspects.
At the same time,
this country remains a dangerous place for police officers. Forty-eight of them were murdered in 2019 according to FBI data. That's more than the number of unarmed suspects killed of all races.One final number for you, because it matters: In 2018,
7,407 African-Americans were murdered in the United States. If 2019 continues on a similar trajectory, -- and we hope it doesn't, but if it does -- that would mean that for every unarmed African-American shot to death in the United States by police, more than 700 were murdered by someone else, usually by someone they know.Again, those are the facts. They are not in dispute. Are African-Americans being "hunted" as Joy Reid recklessly claimed on MSNBC recently? Or something else happening?
Is our nation being ripped apart by a total and complete lie, a provable lie? A lie used by cynical media manipulators and unscrupulous politicians who understand that racial strife -- race hatred -- is their path to power, even if it destroys the country.
You have the facts now and you can decide what's really going on.