Black deaths at the hands of police are statistically rare, and those involving unarmed suspects are rarer still

Was a Judicial Nominee Prejudiced in Her ‘Role as an Advocate’? Nusrat Choudhury claimed police kill unarmed black men in America ‘every day.’ That’s nowhere near true. by Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"There is no evidence that police officers kill unarmed black men daily. Black deaths at the hands of police are statistically rare, and those involving unarmed suspects are rarer still. Arrests in the U.S. number more than 10 million in a typical year. According to a database maintained by the Washington Post, police shot 1,054 people in 2021, including 234 whites and 139 blacks. Thirty-three of those shooting victims were unarmed, including eight whites and six blacks.

Meanwhile, black homicides not involving police numbered more than 7,700 in 2019 and more than 9,900 in 2020 and are expected to surpass 10,000 when the 2021 figures are released. These civilian shooting deaths are the real scourge of low-income black communities, but highlighting them doesn’t advance the left’s political agenda. So such activists as Ms. Choudhury choose to keep the focus on law enforcement, even if it means distorting the truth and smearing police.

To make matters worse, mainstream media outlets go out of their way to spread the ignorance that these activists spew. Last week the New York Times ran a story about the rise in shootings in New York City and the impact on children, 40 of whom have been shot this year. Nowhere in the story are we told that the shooters and shooting victims in these tragedies are almost always black or Hispanic. Aside from a reference near the end to a candlelight vigil attended by “mostly young Black children between 12 and 14 years old,” race isn’t mentioned."