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Retired neurosurgeon and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said this week that "all lives matter," including black lives, and called an exchange on the subject at Tuesday's Democratic presidential debate typical of political correctness in the country.

"Of course all lives matter - and all lives includes black lives," Mr. Carson said on Wednesday evening's "The Kelly File" on Fox News. "And we have to stop submitting to those who want to divide us into all these special interest groups and start thinking about what works for everybody."

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley responded to a question at Tuesday's Democratic presidential debate by saying "black lives matter," while former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia said that as president of the United States, "every life in this country matters."

Demonstrators from the Black Lives Matter movement have interrupted Mr. Sanders and Mr. O'Malley on the trail this year, and Mr. O'Malley later apologized after responding at the Netroots Nation conference in July: "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter."

Mr. Carson called Tuesday's exchange "so typical of political correctness in our country."

"There are a lot of policies that this administration has embraced that hurt black lives, that hurt all people who are in the underclass," Mr. Carson said. "You know, the way that we have doubled the national debt and basically abolished the banking system, savings accounts and bonds and things like that, which used to be a mechanism for poor people and middle class people to grow their money - it virtually doesn't exist anymore."

"You have to have risk tolerance so you can go into the stock market - that tends to happen with people with more income," he said.

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Ben Carson: 'Of course all lives matter - and all lives includes black lives'

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Retired neurosurgeon and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said this week that "all lives matter," including black lives, and called an exchange on the subject at Tuesday's Democratic presidential debate typical of political correctness in the country. "Of course all lives matter - and all lives includes black lives," Mr. Carson said on Wednesday evening's "The Kelly File" on Fox News.

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Jennie Wagner

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The "Black Lives Matter" Slogan Ignores Self-Destructive Behavior, by Derryck Green

"Black Lives Matter" is a great slogan. As a black man, I agree that black lives matter just as much as the lives of any of our racial counterparts.

But chanting, marching and hashtag activism isn't going to work unless we also are willing to see the big-picture problems affecting black America.

Here's a hint: making black lives matter has little to do with institutional racism, white privilege and white cops.

One website organizing people pushing "black lives matter" calls it "a slogan under which black people can unite to end state sanctioned violence both in Ferguson, but also across the United States of America... to end the insidious and widespread assault on black life." It states "Black people make up a mere 13 percent of the U.S. population [but] make up more than a third of those killed in officer-involved shootings across the country."

Perhaps. But the virtuous goal of promoting the perceived value of black lives in the manner now demanded by radical community activists is tragically misguided.

Activism advocating that black lives matter could have much more moral authority, and could be taken much more seriously, if it focused on actions devaluing black lives. These have very little to do with white cops and everything to do with self-destructive black behavior.

There is a disparity regarding violent death in the black community. We are killing our own at an alarming rate. According to a U.S. Department of Justice analysis, most murders are intraracial and "93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks" between 1980 and 2008. Yet Attorney General Holder, President Obama and Reverend Sharpton haven't wanted a national conversation about this shocking figure.

In a black-white comparison, black homicide victimization rates were around six times higher than for whites. Furthermore:

Blacks were 47.4 percent of all homicide victims and 52.5 percent of offenders.

Blacks accounted for 62.1 percent of all drug-related homicide victims compared to 36.9 percent for whites. Over 65.6 percent - almost two-thirds - of all drug-related homicide offenders were black as compared to 33.2 percent being white.

Blacks were 44.1 percent of felony murder victims and almost 59.9 percent of the offenders.

It's not like things improved under Obama's leadership. According to FBI statistics for 2012, 2,412 of 2,648 cases of black homicide had a black perpetrator.

This, to me, qualifies as an "insidious and widespread assault on black life." Yet those claiming black lives matter fixate on Michael Brown and Eric Garner while virtually ignoring the thousands of black-on-black murder victims who remain largely nameless and faceless except to their loved ones.

The internecine war doesn't begin there. It actually begins in the womb. As deadly as black-on-black crime can be, the most dangerous place for a black child is still in the womb.

While blacks make up only around 13 percent of the American population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported black abortions accounted for nearly 35.7 percent of all abortions performed in 2010. In Mississippi, blacks accounted for 71.7 percent of all abortions, despite blacks comprising only around 37 percent of the population.

Similarly, a report from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found more black babies were killed by abortion (31,328) in New York City than were born (24,758) in 2012 - totaling 42.4 percent of all abortions performed there.

Black lives matter? Not only is it questionable if black lives really do matter to blacks themselves, but one could also sincerely question if deep self-hate is responsible for motivating blacks to kill themselves off with the recklessness that seems to permeate our actions.

Combining the black victims of abortion and black-on-black homicides, we are facing an assault on black lives that has nothing to do with racist, white cops.

If we don't take our own lives seriously, why should we expect or demand that anyone else do so?

I believe black lives matter. It's more than an Internet hashtag to me. But black lives should matter to black folk at least as much as they matter to others. Black lives have to matter just as much when blacks take them.

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Derryck Green, a member of the national advisory council of the Project 21 black leadership network, received an M.A. in Theological Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing his doctorate in ministry at Azusa Pacific University. Comments may be sent to [email protected] .

Published by the National Center for Public Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21, other Project 21 members, or the National Center for Public Policy Research, its board or staff.

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The "Black Lives Matter" Slogan Ignores Self-Destructive Behavior, by Derryck Green - The National Center

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"Black Lives Matter" is a great slogan. As a black man, I agree that black lives matter just as much as the lives of any of our racial counterparts. But chanting, marching and hashtag activism isn't going to work unless we also are willing to...

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Problems with "Black Lives Matter" movement

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Problems with "Black Lives Matter" movement

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Race riots erupted in the streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin this weekend. 23-year-old Sylville Smith was shot and killed by a police officer. Smith had an illegally obtained pistol in his possession and refused to put it down when the officer ordered him to. Smith had a history of past arrests, according to Milwaukee Police Capt. Mark Stanmeyer.

Several people responded by rioting in the streets. A lot of destruction took place and several businesses were burned down. Some of the rioters were part of the Black Lives Matter movement, as evident by photographs of rioters wearing their shirts. The rioters were also chanting "black power" and beating up any white person in sight.

The rioters didn't take into account the fact that the officer who shot Smith was black. They also didn't seem to understand how this officer's actions could possibly be justified. Especially with Smith's arrest history, the fact that the gun was stolen, and his refusal to put it down. Instead, hatred and violence came out of many ill-informed people.

Don't get me wrong, I believe there are many well-intended people within the Black Lives Matter movement. I also believe police brutality is a real problem. However, this isn't something that only affects black people. White people are also victims of police brutality, as are Hispanics, Asians, and every other race. I will avoid statistics and comparisons as to which group experiences it more. I don't believe that will help anyone. The fact that it is even happening is enough.

Therefore, it is unsettling to me when I see black-on-black crime go by unnoticed in the Black Lives Matter movement. It seems like the only black lives that matter to them are the ones taken by police officers. This is something Peggy Hubbard knows all too much about. Hubbard posted a rant criticizing the movement. The rant went viral last year and Hubbard appeared on CNN to speak with Don Lemon.

Hubbard pointed out the death of 9-year-old Jamyla Bolden, who died from a stray bullet. Hubbard said that while Bolden's death was mostly ignored, violence erupted from protesters when a wanted criminal was shot dead by cops after he reportedly pointed a gun at them.

"You say black lives matter? Her life mattered. Her dreams mattered. Her future mattered. Her promises mattered," Hubbard said.

I do feel that many of those within the Black Lives Matter movement are going to unnecessary and dangerous lengths. These lengths are dividing and segregating people. This past June, a vigil was being held for the victims of the Orlando shooting at the University of Missouri. Suddenly, three Black Lives Matter members got on the stage. One of them was activist Tiffany Melecio. When Melecio got on stage, she criticized the audience for not coming to their racial demonstrations.

"I was really nervous to get up here because there's a lot of white people in the crowd," she said.

Members of Black Lives Matter Toronto halted the city's Pride parade in July. Co-founder Alexandra Williams said the group was holding Pride Toronto accountable for their "anti-blackness." Ironically, Black Lives Matter Toronto was invited to the parade as its Honoured Group. The parade was halted for up to 30 minutes, until the executive director of Pride Toronto, Mathieu Chantelois, signed a document agreeing to the group's demands.

One of those demands was that the parade can no longer have police floats. Black Lives Matter Vancouver made the same demand. I disagree with this wholeheartedly. This action would encourage the assumption that all police are evil. I don't believe that is the case. I think there are several police officers who are good people. I believe they should have the right to show their support for their city's LGBT community. I find an action like this hypocritical, as I'm sure Black Lives Matter members wouldn't want someone to make a generalization about black people.

I believe the only way to make real progress is for people to unite. I do believe there are some within the Black Lives Matter movement who condemn this divisive behavior. However, it's a shame that the ones with the loudest voices are the ones who are, whether intentional or not, causing more separation. It is not a contest of who's oppression is more important. It is not a question of who's life is more valuable. We're all just human beings and unity is the only way out of this mess.

Perhaps it was best said by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

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The Problems I Have With The Black Lives Matter Movement

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Race riots erupted in the streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin this weekend. 23-year-old Sylville Smith was shot and killed by a police officer. Smith had an illegally obtained pistol in his possession and refused to put it down when the officer ordered him to. Smith had a history of past arrests, according to Milwaukee Police Capt.

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Is "Black Lives Matter" really helping Blacks?

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Is "Black Lives Matter" really helping Blacks?

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A Washington Times columnist is counseling people to think twice about the White House-supported Black Lives Matter movement after a series of violent attacks against police officers.

Roland Warren, president of the pro-life group Care Net, writes: "Anyone who really cares about all black lives ought to think twice before they get on this movement's bus. It's heading in the wrong direction."

The movement developed after the shooting deaths of black teens Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. In both cases, the shooters were exonerated.

But with encouragement from the White House, the movement alleging blacks are being targeted by white cops has surged, and threats by Black Lives Matter activists have been followed by a series of police shootings.

Near Boston dozens of police officers are upset over a Black Lives Matter banner that has been hanging outside a city hall.

Countering slogans have included "all lives matter," "blue lives matter" and "cops' lives matter."
In "Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America," Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson - a true black leader whom many affectionately call "the other Jesse" - shows how the civil rights establishment has made a lucrative career out of keeping racial strife alive in America.
Although the motive is yet unknown, the latest shooting left one officer dead and another injured at a traffic stop in San Diego late Thursday.

Police confirmed one person was in custody, and a house where a second suspect might be hiding was surrounded. The officers in the department's gang unit reportedly had pulled a car over when they called for help. Other officers arriving on the scene found both suffering from gunshot wounds. One died a short time later, and the other remained hospitalized.

NBC News reported San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer condemned the shooting, tweeting that officers in the city need the community's support.

"Violence against the men and women who wear the badge is violence against us all," he wrote.

According to a report from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, law enforcement fatalities increased by 78 percent in the first half of 2016, even before the killing in San Diego. Not including the most recent killing in San Diego, 32 officers have been killed in firearms related deaths this year, compared to only 18 deaths during the same period last year.

Even worse, "ambush killings of unsuspecting law enforcement officers" is the leading circumstance of these killings, with 14 such cases in the first half of 2016 compared to only three in the same period in 2015.

The nation was shocked when a sniper motivated by "recent police shootings" killed five police officers in Dallas in early July.

The ambush was followed by another ambush in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a few days later that left three officers dead. Other ambushes against police officers took place in Tennessee, Georgia and Missouri earlier this month.

Jeff Roorda, a retired police officer, four-term Missouri state representative, and the executive director and business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, says police around the country are on edge.

"Irresponsible political prosecutions and the anti-police violence that accompanies them makes cops rightfully fearful for their safety, their jobs and their freedom," the author of the upcoming book "The War on Police" told WND.

A variety of other shootings of police officers, some ambush-style, also have been reported.

That the movement itself exhibits little respect for officers was affirmed at the Democratic National Convention this week, when there was a moment of silence for fallen police officers.

It was marred by chants of "black lives matter" from the crowd. The ugly moment left law enforcement representatives angered and underscored the anti-officer climate that has become associated with the movement.

Fox News reported: "After the mothers of black men who had been killed in racially charged incidents were welcomed onto the stage earlier in the week, Philadelphia's Fraternal Order of Police chapter pressed the DNC to honor fallen cops. Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez was invited to speak about the five cops killed in her city July 7, and said she and her fellow officers took the job to 'serve and protect, not to hate and discriminate.'

"Man in the crowd cheered Valdez, but the jeers were audible, too," the report said.

"When Valdez asked the crowd to join her in a moment of silence for cops killed in the line of duty, jeers erupted from the crowd."

The circumstances prompted Warren to turn a spotlight on the Black Lives Matter movement itself.

On its website, "Black Lives Matter boasts that it was launched as a response to the deaths of black males, most notably Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. You would expect that when you review its website, it would be chock-full of references to helping black men and boys.

"But you would be wrong," he wrote. "Dead wrong."

"Prominent on Black Lives Matter's website is a list of its 12 'Guiding Principles.' These principles serve as a vision statement for what the group hopes to accomplish. So, if Black Lives Matter had the ability to wave a proverbial 'magic wand' to create its reality in the black community, these principles would be it. However, if you objectively read these principles, you will quickly notice that most of them have nothing to do with the issues facing the black community and, certainly, not the black men and boys that the group has used as 'martyrs' to gain a national voice. Moreover, as you read the principles, you will not find a single reference to black men and boys, except for 'trans brothers,' which are men who want to be considered women," he wrote.

"Also, it is clear that the Black Lives Matter ideology sees no role for black men, especially not as husbands and fathers. For example, consider the guiding principle titled, 'Black Villages': 'We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and 'villages' that collectively care for one another, and especially 'our' children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.'"

"For centuries, the blood of black men has been used to advance the agenda and fortures of others. And sadly, the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement are the latst to adopt this pernicious strategy. They seek to deny black men the right and honor that so many have died for - to be good husbands to their wives and good fathers to their children," Warren wrote.
In "Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America," Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson - a true black leader whom many affectionately call "the other Jesse" - shows how the civil rights establishment has made a lucrative career out of keeping racial strife alive in America.

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Think 'Black Lives Matter' is helping blacks? You're 'dead wrong'!

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A Washington Times columnist is counseling people to think twice about the White House-supported Black Lives Matter movement after a series of violent attacks against police officers. Roland Warren, president of the pro-life group Care Net, writes: "Anyone who really cares about all black lives ought to think twice before they get on this movement's [...]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Race riots erupted in the streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin this weekend. 23-year-old Sylville Smith was shot and killed by a police officer. Smith had an illegally obtained pistol in his possession and refused to put it down when the officer ordered him to. Smith had a history of past arrests, according to Milwaukee Police Capt. Mark Stanmeyer.

Several people responded by rioting in the streets. A lot of destruction took place and several businesses were burned down. Some of the rioters were part of the Black Lives Matter movement, as evident by photographs of rioters wearing their shirts. The rioters were also chanting "black power" and beating up any white person in sight.

The rioters didn't take into account the fact that the officer who shot Smith was black. They also didn't seem to understand how this officer's actions could possibly be justified. Especially with Smith's arrest history, the fact that the gun was stolen, and his refusal to put it down. Instead, hatred and violence came out of many ill-informed people.

Don't get me wrong, I believe there are many well-intended people within the Black Lives Matter movement. I also believe police brutality is a real problem. However, this isn't something that only affects black people. White people are also victims of police brutality, as are Hispanics, Asians, and every other race. I will avoid statistics and comparisons as to which group experiences it more. I don't believe that will help anyone. The fact that it is even happening is enough.

Therefore, it is unsettling to me when I see black-on-black crime go by unnoticed in the Black Lives Matter movement. It seems like the only black lives that matter to them are the ones taken by police officers. This is something Peggy Hubbard knows all too much about. Hubbard posted a rant criticizing the movement. The rant went viral last year and Hubbard appeared on CNN to speak with Don Lemon.

Hubbard pointed out the death of 9-year-old Jamyla Bolden, who died from a stray bullet. Hubbard said that while Bolden's death was mostly ignored, violence erupted from protesters when a wanted criminal was shot dead by cops after he reportedly pointed a gun at them.

"You say black lives matter? Her life mattered. Her dreams mattered. Her future mattered. Her promises mattered," Hubbard said.

I do feel that many of those within the Black Lives Matter movement are going to unnecessary and dangerous lengths. These lengths are dividing and segregating people. This past June, a vigil was being held for the victims of the Orlando shooting at the University of Missouri. Suddenly, three Black Lives Matter members got on the stage. One of them was activist Tiffany Melecio. When Melecio got on stage, she criticized the audience for not coming to their racial demonstrations.

"I was really nervous to get up here because there's a lot of white people in the crowd," she said.

Members of Black Lives Matter Toronto halted the city's Pride parade in July. Co-founder Alexandra Williams said the group was holding Pride Toronto accountable for their "anti-blackness." Ironically, Black Lives Matter Toronto was invited to the parade as its Honoured Group. The parade was halted for up to 30 minutes, until the executive director of Pride Toronto, Mathieu Chantelois, signed a document agreeing to the group's demands.

One of those demands was that the parade can no longer have police floats. Black Lives Matter Vancouver made the same demand. I disagree with this wholeheartedly. This action would encourage the assumption that all police are evil. I don't believe that is the case. I think there are several police officers who are good people. I believe they should have the right to show their support for their city's LGBT community. I find an action like this hypocritical, as I'm sure Black Lives Matter members wouldn't want someone to make a generalization about black people.

I believe the only way to make real progress is for people to unite. I do believe there are some within the Black Lives Matter movement who condemn this divisive behavior. However, it's a shame that the ones with the loudest voices are the ones who are, whether intentional or not, causing more separation. It is not a contest of who's oppression is more important. It is not a question of who's life is more valuable. We're all just human beings and unity is the only way out of this mess.

Perhaps it was best said by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

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The Problems I Have With The Black Lives Matter Movement

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Race riots erupted in the streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin this weekend. 23-year-old Sylville Smith was shot and killed by a police officer. Smith had an illegally obtained pistol in his possession and refused to put it down when the officer ordered him to. Smith had a history of past arrests, according to Milwaukee Police Capt.

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According to the mainstream media, Black Lives Matter is a peaceful group fighting for civil rights. But this narrative flies in the face of hard truths concerning Black Lives Matter's conduct since its inception in 2012.

Especially in light of the recent acts of anarchy and cop assassinations committed by members and sympathizers of the movement, it's important that the public know exactly what this group participates in and stands for.

Here are five things you need to know about Black Lives Matter:
1. Black Lives Matter pushes a false narrative based on lies.
Leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement have expressed outrage over white cops allegedly targeting and murdering black men in cold blood with racial animus. The movement has depicted such horrors as an "epidemic."

But such a narrative is false; statistical evidence has wholly debunked these claims and a new study has actually found no racial bias against blacks in police shootings.

Further, even the blown-up stories in the media helping to build the false narrative are built on lies: The Black Lives Matter movement earned its claim to fame by promoting the lie that Michael Brown was fatally shot by white officer Darren Wilson while he was surrendering with his "hands up."

This is false. It never happened. Instead, Brown was believed to have been reaching for Wilson's gun moments before he was shot and killed in an act of self-defense. This was evidenced in the Justice Department's own investigation, which completely exonerated Wilson of wrongdoing.
2. Black Lives Matter calls for anarchy, and they follow through on it.
Still, even today, Black Lives Matter protesters chant the lie over and over again.

Black Lives Matter protesters' staple chant is "no justice, no peace." They have also explicitly called to "dismantle this system."

And yes, they act on those calls for anarchy.
3. Black Lives Matter has explicitly called for dead cops and the "lynching" of white people.
For instance, in response to the acquittal and total exoneration of law enforcement office Darren Wilson, movement members set the city of Ferguson, Missouri on fire. Innocent people had their businesses trashed and looted while the peaceful people of Missouri (black and white alike) awakened to find their city in shambles, literally on fire.

Further, just this weekend, over 300 people were arrested at Black Lives Matter protests held in New York, Chicago, Minnesota and Louisiana.

Black Lives Matter members have disturbingly called for the murder of innocent white people, white police officers in particular.

Here are four videos calling for such action.

At a Black Lives Matter protest held in Portland, Oregon on Sunday, one attendee told fellow protesters to evade the law and murder cops if they feel they have been targeted by an officer for a crime they did not commit:
4. Black Lives Matter has pushed for segregation, even from Black Lives Matter sympathizers and their own members who are not black.
Black Lives Matter protesters chant "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon!" at the Minnesota State Fair:
5. The Obama Administration has legitimized Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter protesters chant "What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want them? Now!" in response to the death of Eric Garner:

A radio host affiliated with Black Lives Matter agrees with an anonymous caller demanding that white people be a "sacrifice" for alleged racially-motivated police brutality. The caller suggests that after black people murder innocent white people, they should "hang them from a tree, take pictures of it and send it to mother f*ckers."

In November of 2015, Black Lives Matter members openly promoted segregation: "Activists" at the University of Missouri demanded a "blacks only healing space" where white "allies" and sympathizers of their cause were kicked out. This counterproductive move was in response to perceived "racial injustices" and "white privilege" at the college.

Earlier this month, Black Lives Matter members reportedly refused to sell a white supporter of the movement a Black Lives Matter t-shirt because of the color of his skin. Apparently the t-shirts were reserved for blacks only.

Despite all the racist, hateful acts committed and promoted by members of the Black Lives Matter movement, our president continuously legitimizes the group.

As recent as February of this year, Mr. Obama invited race-hustlers and prominent Black Lives Matter figures such as Deray McKesson to speak about race at the White House. He reportedly told McKesson and the other so-called "activists" that they have done "outstanding work" and "made history."

"We've got some young people here who are making history as we speak."

Barack Obama, praising Black Lives Matter supporters

"We've got some young people here who are making history as we speak," said Obama. "People like Brittany [Packnett] who served on our Police Task Force in the wake of Ferguson and has led many of the protests that took place there and shined a light on the injustice that was happening. People like Deray McKesson who has done some outstanding work mobilizing in Baltimore around these issues -- and to see generations who are continuing to work on behalf of justice and equality and economic opportunity is greatly encouraging to me."

Of course, the left as a whole, Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and the mainstream media at large, have also pitched in to legitimize and pander to the hate group.

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5 Things You Need To Know About Black Lives Matter

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According to the mainstream media, Black Lives Matter is a peaceful group fighting for civil rights. But this narrative flies in the face of hard truths concerning Black Lives Matter's conduct since its inception in 2012.

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Genesis Skull

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The Counted is a special Guardian project to record all people killed by police in the United States this year.

We have gathered information from official databases and crowdsourced counts to create a full and detailed view of killings by law enforcement agents in the US.

This page shows the names and, where possible, faces of those killed since January 1 2015, as well as other details about the manner of their deaths and the status of any investigations into the incidents.

You can see these incidents mapped throughout the United States, and read more about the methodology of the project here.

We are actively searching for more information about many of these cases. If you have anything you can share with us, you can send us details by clicking here and filling in the form. You do not have to share identifying information about yourself.

You can also join our community on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to keep track of The Counted and share more information.

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The Counted: people killed by police in the United States - interactive

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The Guardian counted the people killed by US law enforcement agencies in 2015 and 2016. Here are their stories

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Genesis Skull

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On Sunday morning, three police officers were shot dead in Baton Rouge. This attack came just 10 days after five police officers were killed in Dallas. Both events were revenge attacks for the killing of young black men by police.

The bloodshed has shocked the US, leading President Barack Obama to call for calm. But how many police officers are killed in the US in a normal year? And how many people are killed by police?

Police killed

"There's a widespread perception in the American public, and particularly within law enforcement, that officers are more threatened, more endangered, more often assaulted, and more often killed than they have been historically," says Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of Southern Carolina and former policeman.

"I think it's a very strong perception. People truly believe it. But factually, looking at the numbers, it's not accurate," he says.

FBI data on police officers "feloniously killed" - killed as a result of a criminal act - indicates that the numbers have been falling, he says.

Looking at the 10 years from 2006 to 2015 the annual average number of police deaths was 49.6, Stoughton says, which he notes is "down significantly from the high".

"The high was the 10-year period prior to 1980, when we had an average of 115 - actually 114.8 officers feloniously killed... in the line of duty every year."

At the same time the number of police officers has increased dramatically in the US.

At the same time the number of police officers has increased in the US. There are a quarter of a million more police officers working today than there were three decades ago.

So when you consider the number of officers killed per 100,000, there has been a dramatic decrease. The annual per capita number of officers killed has dropped from 24 per 100,000 in the 10 years to 1980 to 7.3 per 100,000 in the 10 years to 2013 (the last year for which there is good data).

This chimes with a bigger trend, which is a steady reduction in crime, including homicides.

Killed by police

Official data on the number of people killed by the police turns out to be remarkably unreliable.

"We can't have an informed discussion, because we don't have data," FBI Director James Comey said in the House of Representatives in October.

"People have data about who went to a movie last weekend, or how many books were sold, or how many cases of the flu walked into an emergency room. And I cannot tell you how many people were shot by police in the United States last month, last year, or anything about the demographics. And that's a very bad place to be."

He had previously said it was "unacceptable" that the leading sources of this information were newspapers, the Washington Post and the Guardian.

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Although the FBI does gather some data on fatal shootings, police forces are not obliged to provide it, and only some of them do. This led the Washington Post to start tracking civilian deaths itself after the shooting of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson in August 2014, by monitoring reports in the media.

"We looked at the FBI database, since that was the official government accounting for things. And saw that over the past decade, the average number of shootings that they counted was about 400. By the end of last year, we had almost 1,000 fatal shootings that we had captured," says Kimberly Kindy, an investigative reporter at the newspaper.

Blacks are being shot at a rate that's 2.5 times higher than whites
Kimberly Kindy, Washington Post

"What we didn't know though, of course, as we went into this year and did it a second year was - was last year a normal year? Is 990 people being killed by police in a single year about what you would expect year in and year out?"

So far, 2016 appears to be roughly on track with 2015, Kindy says.

"In fact there's been an increase, a 6% increase in fatal shootings when we compare the first six months of last year to the first six months of this year... So that's about three people are dying a day, who are being fatally shot by officers."

The Guardian has recorded even more deaths in 2015 and 2016, including deaths as a result of tasering, collisions with police vehicles and altercations in police custody.

The Washington Post journalists also collect information about the race of those shot by police. According to Kindy, about half are white, and about half are from minorities, but adjusting for the size of the populations, Kindy says, "minorities are definitely being shot at a higher rate than whites".

This is particularly noticeable in the case of the black population.

"Blacks are being shot at a rate that's 2.5 times higher than whites," Kindy says.

The big question is whether that is evidence that the police are discriminating against African Americans. There's an obvious argument that it is: African Americans are just 13% of the US population, and yet 26% of the people killed by the police.

But there's another way to look at these numbers. Nearly 50% of convicted murderers in the US are African Americans. Why that number is so high is a difficult question to answer. So is the question why African Americans are also far more likely than whites to be murder victims.

The point is that if African Americans are more likely to be involved in violent crime - both as perpetrators and victims - then the higher rate of police shootings may not be surprising.

The truth is that the raw statistics can't tell us whether the police are treating African Americans differently from white people. To understand that, we'd need to look at more details about what happened in each incident. There's a big difference between a case where someone was shooting at the police, and a case where someone was passive and unarmed.

One person who has tried to do that is an economist from Harvard University called Roland Fryer, the first ever African American to win the prestigious John Bates Clark medal in economics. This month Fryer released a preliminary study examining records from 10 cities and counties, with the best data coming from Houston - it's not yet peer-reviewed, but it has received a lot of attention in the press.

Fryer's research suggests that African Americans and Hispanics are substantially more likely to experience force in their interactions with the police - such as having a gun pointed at them, being handcuffed without arrest, or being pepper-sprayed or hit with a baton. This racial difference is reduced, but doesn't completely disappear, when Fryer adds all sorts of statistical controls such as whether the incident was indoors or outdoors, in a high-crime area, took place at night, and so on.

However, Fryer doesn't find any racial difference in the cases where police offers actually shoot someone.

The debate over this continues, both on the streets and in academia.
Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

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US police shootings: How many die each year?

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On Sunday morning, three police officers were shot dead in Baton Rouge. This attack came just 10 days after five police officers were killed in Dallas. Both events were revenge attacks for the killing of young black men by police. The bloodshed has shocked the US, leading President Barack Obama to call for calm.

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Katherine Green

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This movement is not the answer to problems in black communities.

What is Black Lives Matter?

Yesterday, I heard from a number of Evangelicals who would answer the question like this: It's a peaceful movement of men and women who aren't saying that only black lives matter but rather reminding a nation still burdened by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and persistent reality of contemporary discrimination that black lives also matter - that black men and women should be treated with equal dignity in every quarter of American life, including by law enforcement.

This version of Black Lives Matter wants transparency, accountability, and assurances that police abuse and violence will be fairly and impartially investigated - not swept under the rug by the "blue wall of silence." This version of Black Lives Matter seeks basic police reforms - such as body cameras, ending stop-and-frisk, or retraining police on de-escalation measures - that it believes will go a long way toward easing existing tensions between the police and the black community.

Whether it is right or wrong, this version of Black Lives Matter is reasonable, peaceful, and worth engaging on the merits of their proposals. But that's not the only version of Black Lives Matter. Existing side-by-side with the millions of Americans who express the sentiments above is an extraordinarily radical organization, along with a persistent strain of violence that - if present at conservative events such as tea-party rallies or pro-life vigils - would completely discredit the movement. Just consider the last five days:

&dash; In Dallas, a black terrorist opens fire on police, killing five in the worst police massacre since 9/11.

&dash; In Tennessee, a black man who claimed to be motivated by "police violence against African Americans" opened fire on a highway, killing a woman and injuring three others - including a police officer.

&dash; In Missouri, a black motorist ambushed a white police officer after a traffic stop - shooting the officer in the neck and leaving him "fighting for his life."

&dash; Also in Missouri, a young black man threw a planter through the front door of an off-duty police officer's home and advanced into the house while the officer's wife, mother-in-law, and young children tried to escape through a back window. The officer opened fire and killed the intruder. He apparently targeted the home after an online argument over Black Lives Matter.

&dash; In Minnesota, Black Lives Matter protesters attacked police with "rocks, bottles, and other items," injuring 21 - including an officer who suffered a broken vertebra "after a concrete block was dropped on his head."

This is a partial list, not counting lawless protests that blocked interstates, bridges, and other roads across the United States, creating a number of inherently dangerous confrontations between protesters, motorists, and the police. And - again - it's a partial list from the last week only. Extend the time horizon and the killings increase, the violent protests increase, and the incidents of chants calling for violence multiply.
RELATED: America Is Driving toward the Abyss, and It's Time We Hit the Breaks
And consider the Black Lives Matter organization itself. Its website is a grab-bag collection of unthinking radicalism and cultural Marxism. Want to know what Black Lives Matter thinks about the nuclear family? Consider its statement on so-called Black Villages:

We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and "villages" that collectively care for one another, and especially "our" children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.

Do you want a nuanced and careful response to the problem of high crime rates in black communities and the problem of mass incarceration? Don't go to Black Lives Matter - It believes that "2.8 million Black people are locked in cages in this country is state violence." Then there's this incredible statement about gender and sexuality:

Black queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us, and that is state violence.

Or there's this statement about black people with disabilities:

Black folks living with disabilities and different abilities bear the burden of state sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by white supremacy, and that is state violence.

What? American governments are conducting heinous experiments on African Americans with disabilities? This is either an academic nonsense-critique of the standard ways that American society tries to accommodate people with disabilities or next-level conspiracy theorizing.

So I ask again. What is Black Lives Matter?

#share#Conservatives - especially academic conservatives - are accustomed to a form of argument called " motte-and-bailey." Based on an old form of community fortification, the "bailey" is the pleasant place where people work. The "motte" is the strong place they retreat to when attacked. Applied to argument, the bailey represents your expansive, desired idea. The motte is the idea you retreat to when attacked. When you repel the attack, then you go back out to your bailey - making the same arguments you couldn't defend earlier.

Black Lives Matter has been playing a double game.

Campus feminists are the masters (mistresses?) of the form. With one breath they'll declare that feminism means smashing the patriarchy, blasting apart gender norms, and celebrating lesbianism (that's the bailey), and then when they're challenged on their extremism, they'll retreat to the motte of claiming that "feminism is just the belief that women are equal." In other words, they take extreme positions, retreat to moderation to bolster credibility, then go right back to the extreme when the pressure eases.

Black Lives Matters radicals have perfected the art. They advance narratives every bit as inflammatory as the worst white-nationalist rhetoric - repeating known lies such as it's "open season" on black men or "hands up, don't shoot" - and they aggressively launch lawless protests, excuse (and sometimes foment) violence, and traffic in conspiracy theories. Last year - in the middle of the Baltimore riots - Ta-Nehisi Coates, a National Book Award winner and perhaps the most admired black writer in the United States, said this:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

But now - as the violence escalates - Black Lives Matter is really about peace and justice. It's really just about declaring that black people should be treated with dignity and respect. No one should judge the many by the actions of the few, right?

#related#In reality, Black Lives Matter has been playing a double game. It harbors, shelters, and empowers true radicals, people who not only have no problem seeing our cities burn, they're also fanning the flames. Yet it also counts as sympathizers the millions more who want no part of riots or police shootings. The moderates, however, can't purge the radicals because the radicals run the organization. They provide the energy, the activists, and the day-to-day protests. The moderates, by contrast, rarely turn out, and when they do, they don't even understand the organization they support or know the voices they're truly magnifying.

If the moderates can't seize control - if they can't dominate not just the narrative but the organizational apparatus itself - then Black Lives Matter will continue to be a destructive force in national life, incalculably aided by the support of millions who join with it in moments of crisis - chanting its slogans, filling its coffers, enhancing its influence, and unwittingly helping to push America one step closer to 1968.

David French - David French is a senior writer forNational Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. @DavidAFrench

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Black Lives Matter: Radicals Using Moderates to Help Tear America Apart | National Review

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This movement is not the answer to problems in black communities. What is Black Lives Matter?

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Genesis Skull

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President Barack Obama has no problem making disgusting, untrue assertions about cops being racist at a funeral for murdered cops yet does not give major speeches on the epidemic of black-on-black crime. Here are seven statistics you need to know about black-on-black crime that the president will not address.
1. Data shows that 93 percent of black homicide victims are killed by other blacks.
The left's rebuttal is that that 84 percent of white homicide victims are killed by other whites, but The Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley points out that the white crime rate is "much lower than the black rate."
2. According to Riley, "Blacks commit violent crimes at 7 to 10 times the rate that whites do."
Blacks committed 52 percent of homicides between 1980 and 2008, despite composing just 13 percent of the population. Across the same timeframe, whites committed 45 percent of homicides while composing 77% of the population, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Here are some more statistics from the FBI:

In 2013, the FBI has black criminals carrying out 38 per cent of murders, compared to 31.1 per cent for whites. The offender's race was "unknown" in 29.1 per cent of cases.

What about violent crime more generally? FBI arrest rates are one way into this. Over the last three years of data - 2011 to 2013 - 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black.

3. Black crime is even more prevalent in the country's largest cities and counties.
Heather Mac Donald writes in her book The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe that in Chicago, IL, blacks committed 76 percent of all homicides, despite composing 35 percent of the city's population. Blacks also accounted for 78 percent of all juvenile arrests. Whites, who compose 28 percent of the city's population, committed 4 percent of its homicides and 3.5 percent of its juvenile arrests. Hispanics, who compose 30 percent of the city's population, committed 19 percent of its homicides and 18 percent of its juvenile arrests. (Another eye-opening fact from Mac Donald's research is that only 26 percent of murder cases were solved in Chicago.)

Blacks are 10 percent of the population in Los Angeles, CA, but commit 42 percent of its robberies and 34 percent of its felonies. Whites make up 29 percent of the city's population, and commit 5 percent of its robberies and 13 percent of its felonies.

In New York City, blacks committed "75 percent of all shootings, 70 percent of all robberies, and 66 percent of all violent crime," despite only composing 23 percent of the population, said Mac Donald in a Hillsdale speech. Additionally, 2009 Bureau of Justice Statistics numbers show that in 2009, "blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15 percent of the population in these counties."
4. There were almost 6,000 blacks killed by other blacks in 2015.
By contrast, only 258 blacks were killed by police gunfire that year.
5. The percentage of blacks arrested for crimes is consistent with police reports.
This is according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, as well as this 1985 study:

"Even allowing for the existence of discrimination in the criminal justice system, the higher rates of crime among black Americans cannot be denied," wrote James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein in their classic 1985 study, "Crime and Human Nature." "Every study of crime using official data shows blacks to be overrepresented among persons arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for street crimes." This was true decades before the authors put it to paper, and it remains the case decades later.

"The overrepresentation of blacks among arrested persons persists throughout the criminal justice system," wrote Wilson and Herrnstein. "Though prosecutors and judges may well make discriminatory judgments, such decisions do not account for more than a small fraction of the overrepresentation of blacks in prison."

This data disproves the notion that racism is what drives higher rates of arrests among the blacks than among whites or broader America.
6. According to Riley, "Black crime rates were lower in the 1940s and 1950s, when black poverty was higher" and "racial discrimination was rampant and legal."
If it's not racism and poverty that are blame for the high black crime rate, then what is?
7. According to Mac Donald, "A straight line can be drawn between family breakdown and youth violence."
As economist Thomas Sowell points out, before the 1960s "most black children were raised in two-parent families." In 2013, over 72 percent of blacks were born out of wedlock. In Cook County -which Chicago belongs to - 79 percent of blacks were born to single mothers in 2003, while only 15 percent of whites were born to single mothers.

"Until that gap closes, the crime gap won't close, either," writes Mac Donald.
This article has been updated.

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7 Statistics You Need To Know About Black-On-Black Crime

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President Barack Obama has no problem making disgusting, untrue assertions about cops being racist at a funeral for murdered cops yet does not give major speeches on the epidemic of black-on-black crime. Here are seven statistics you need to know about black-on-black crime that the president will not address. 1.

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Genesis Skull

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AP Photo/Cliff Owen

The Alton Sterling and Philando Castile shootings have caused an uproar among leftists because they fuel their narrative that racist white police officers are hunting down innocent black men. But the statistics - brought to light by the superb work of Heather Mac Donald - tell a different story.

Here are five key statistics you need to know about cops killing blacks.

1. Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015. According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or "were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force," according to Mac Donald in a speech at Hillsdale College.

Some may argue that these statistics are evidence of racist treatment toward blacks, since whites consist of 62 percent of the population and blacks make up 13 percent of the population. But as Mac Donald writes in The Wall Street Journal, 2009 statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15 percent of the population in these counties.

"Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers' own risk of using lethal force," writes MacDonald.

MacDonald also pointed out in her Hillsdale speech that blacks "commit 75 percent of all shootings, 70 percent of all robberies, and 66 percent of all violent crime" in New York City, even though they consist of 23 percent of the city's population.

"The black violent crime rate would actually predict that more than 26 percent of police victims would be black," MacDonald said. "Officer use of force will occur where the police interact most often with violent criminals, armed suspects, and those resisting arrest, and that is in black neighborhoods."

2. More whites and Hispanics die from police homicides than blacks. According to Mac Donald, 12 percent of white and Hispanic homicide deaths were due to police officers, while only four percent of black homicide deaths were the result of police officers.

"If we're going to have a 'Lives Matter' anti-police movement, it would be more appropriately named "White and Hispanic Lives Matter,'" said Mac Donald in her Hillsdale speech.

3. The Post's data does show that unarmed black men are more likely to die by the gun of a cop than an unarmed white man...but this does not tell the whole story. In August 2015, the ratio was seven-to-one of unarmed black men dying from police gunshots compared to unarmed white men; the ratio was six-to-one by the end of 2015. But Mac Donald points out in The Marshall Project that looking at the details of the actual incidents that occurred paints a different picture:

The "unarmed" label is literally accurate, but it frequently fails to convey highly-charged policing situations. In a number of cases, if the victim ended up being unarmed, it was certainly not for lack of trying. At least five black victims had reportedly tried to grab the officer's gun, or had been beating the cop with his own equipment. Some were shot from an accidental discharge triggered by their own assault on the officer. And two individuals included in the Post's "unarmed black victims" category were struck by stray bullets aimed at someone else in justified cop shootings. If the victims were not the intended targets, then racism could have played no role in their deaths.

In one of those unintended cases, an undercover cop from the New York Police Department was conducting a gun sting in Mount Vernon, just north of New York City. One of the gun traffickers jumped into the cop's car, stuck a pistol to his head, grabbed $2,400 and fled. The officer gave chase and opened fire after the thief again pointed his gun at him. Two of the officer's bullets accidentally hit a 61-year-old bystander, killing him. That older man happened to be black, but his race had nothing to do with his tragic death. In the other collateral damage case, Virginia Beach, Virginia, officers approached a car parked at a convenience store that had a homicide suspect in the passenger seat. The suspect opened fire, sending a bullet through an officer's shirt. The cops returned fire, killing their assailant as well as a woman in the driver's seat. That woman entered the Post's database without qualification as an "unarmed black victim" of police fire.

Mac Donald examines a number of other instances, including unarmed black men in San Diego, CA and Prince George's County, MD attempting to reach for a gun in a police officer's holster. In the San Diego case, the unarmed black man actually "jumped the officer" and assaulted him, and the cop shot the man since he was "fearing for his life." MacDonald also notes that there was an instance in 2015 where "three officers were killed with their own guns, which the suspects had wrestled from them."

4. Black and Hispanic police officers are more likely to fire a gun at blacks than white officers. This is according to a Department of Justice report in 2015 about the Philadelphia Police Department, and is further confirmed that by a study conducted University of Pennsylvania criminologist Greg Ridgeway in 2015 that determined black cops were 3.3 times more likely to fire a gun than other cops at a crime scene.

5. Blacks are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops. This is according to FBI data, which also found that 40 percent of cop killers are black. According to Mac Donald, the police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person.

Despite the facts, the anti-police rhetoric of Black Lives Matter and their leftist sympathizers have resulted in what Mac Donald calls the "Ferguson Effect," as murders have spiked by 17 percent among the 50 biggest cities in the U.S. as a result of cops being more reluctant to police neighborhoods out of fear of being labeled as racists. Additionally, there have been over twice as many cops victimized by fatal shootings in the first three months of 2016.

Anti-police rhetoric has deadly consequences.
This article has been modified to correct Greg Ridgeway's name.

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5 Statistics You Need To Know About Cops Killing Blacks

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The Alton Sterling and Philando Castile shootings have caused an uproar among leftists because they fuel their narrative that racist white police officers are hunting down innocent black men. But the statistics - brought to light by the superb work of Heather Mac Donald - tell a different story.

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Genesis Skull

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Dylan Noble died on the last Saturday of June.

Police in Fresno, Calif., received a report of a man walking a downtown street with a rifle, but when they arrived, they instead found Noble speeding by in his pickup truck.

When they tried to pull him over, the 19-year-old led police to a nearby gas station and then exited his car.

"The driver then turned towards officers with one hand concealed behind his back, and told officers he hated his life," the Fresno police department said in a statement. "As he continued to advance towards officers, an officer-involved shooting occurred."

The department framed it as a "suicide by cop." His family insisted that could not be the case, urged federal officials to investigate and demanded that video from the body cameras worn by both officers involved be released.

"I am outraged that the police would shoot my son and say that it is his fault," Veronica Nelson, Noble's mother, told reporters at a news conference not long after the shooting. "So please join me as I'm demanding justice for Dylan."

Noble's friends and family gathered for days at the gas station parking lot where he was killed - some waving Confederate flags and others chanting, "White lives matter."

And soon, they were angry at their inability to garner more attention. At a time when dozens of police killings have prompted outrage, why hadn't this one? Was it because Noble was white?

[Read more: Fatal shootings by police are up in the first six months of 2016]

Many across the nation find themselves this week asking a similar question in the days since two recent police shootings of black men - in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, Minn. - have sparked nationwide protests:
Doesn't the available data show more white Americans are being killed by police officers? Where is the outrage for them?
"If we have a shooting, we end up assuming that it had to be racial," former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) said Saturday during an interview with Fox News, in which he argued that national concerns about police killings of black men are overblown.

"When in fact, as we know ... more white people have been shot by police officers this year than minorities," he said.

Huckabee is not, factually, incorrect.

In 2015, The Washington Post launched a real-time database to track fatal police shootings, and the project continues this year. As of Sunday, 1,502 people have been shot and killed by on-duty police officers since Jan. 1, 2015. Of them, 732 were white, and 381 were black (and 382 were of another or unknown race).

But as data scientists and policing experts often note, comparing how many or how often white people are killed by police to how many or how often black people are killed by the police is statistically dubious unless you first adjust for population.

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 about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.

U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people: 50 each. But because the white population is approximately five times larger than the black population, that means unarmed black Americans were five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer.

[Unarmed and black: Police are still killing unarmed black men at higher rates than whites]

Police have shot and killed a young black man (ages 18 to 29) - such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. -175 times since January 2015; 24 of them were unarmed. Over that same period, police have shot and killed 172 young white men, 18 of whom were unarmed. Once again, while in raw numbers there were similar totals of white and black victims, blacks were killed at rates disproportionate to their percentage of the U.S. population. Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation's population.

And, when considering shootings confined within a single race, a black person shot and killed by police is more likely to have been unarmed than a white person. About 13 percent of all black people who have been fatally shot by police since January 2015 were unarmed, compared with 7 percent of all white people.

In response to these statistics, critics of police reform - often political conservatives and police unions - typically argue that the reason more black men and women are shot and killed by police is that black Americans commit more violent crime.

"There's too much violence in the black community," former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said Sunday on CBS's "Face The Nation." "If you want to deal with this on the black side, you've got to teach your children to be respectful to the police, and you've got to teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police; the real danger to them, 99 out of 100 times, 9,900 out of 10,000 times, are other black kids who are going to kill them. That's the way they're gonna die."

As the New York Daily News noted: Giuliani is wrong about the so-called black-on-black crime rate. According to FBI numbers from 2014, about 90 percent of black homicide victims were killed by other black people. The "white-on-white" murder rate that same year - homicides in which a white person was killed by another white person - was 82 percent of all murders of white people.

[How Philando Castile's killing changed the way blacks talk about traffic stops]

But it is true that a disproportionate amount of murders and other violent crimes are committed by black Americans.

Because detailed FBI data on crime can lag by several years, the most-cited statistics on this point refer to 2009 data. According to that data, out of all violent crimes in which someone was charged, black Americans were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the country's 75 biggest counties - despite the fact that black Americans made up just 15 percent of the population in those places.

"Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers' own risk of using lethal force," wrote Heather Mac Donald, a conservative researcher, in a Wall Street Journal column headlined "The Myths of Black Lives Matter" that was originally published in February and re-published this weekend. The assertion that the black men and women killed by police are primarily violent criminals and the explanation for racial disparities in who gets killed by law enforcement is the premise of Mac Donald's new book, "The War on Cops. "

"Blacks are three times as likely to be killed by cops as are whites, on a per-capita basis," Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer and criminal justice researcher at John Jay College of Criminal Justice told the New York Times last April. "But part of that is because of crime in predominantly black neighborhoods."

Despite these arguments, police reform advocates and researchers as well at The Post's own analysis has consistently concluded that there is no correlation between violent crime and who is killed by police officers.

[White N.C. man arrested after pulling gun on deputy, who wrestled it away, sheriff says]

A 2015 study by a University of California at Davis researcher concluded there was "no relationship" between crime rates by race and racial bias in police killings. A report released last week by the Center for Policing Equity, which reviewed arrest and use-of-force data from 12 police departments, concluded that black residents were more often targeted for use of police force than white residents, even when adjusting for whether the person was a violent criminal.

"We've been hearing these arguments going around without any data or any evidence from folks who are saying that police are killing so many people - particularly black people - because they say black people are in high-crime communities and potentially involved in criminal activity," Samuel Sinyangwe, a data analyst and activist with Campaign Zero - a policy-oriented activist collective associated with the Black Lives Matter protest movement - told the Huffington Post in December.

In a report covering 2015 data, Campaign Zero compared violent crime rates of 50 major cities to the rate at which police officers killed people, concluding that there was no correlation.

As part of its data effort, The Posttracks the "threat level" of each person who is shot and killed by a police officer: Were they shooting at the officer? Were they threatening the officer? Were they fleeing?

Overall, the majority of the people who have been shot and killed by police officers in 2015 and 2016 were, based on publicly available evidence, armed with a weapon and attempting to attack the officer or someone else.

But an independent analysis of The Post'sdata conducted by a team of criminal-justice researchers concluded that, when factoring in threat level, black Americans who are fatally shot by police are no more likely to be posing an imminent lethal threat to the officers at the moment they are killed than white Americans fatally shot by police.
[Study finds police fatally shoot unarmed black men at disproportionate rates]
The study also sought to answer whether officers were more likely to shoot and kill someone who is unarmed if the shooting happened to occur in a high-crime area. They concluded that is not the case.

"The only thing that was significant in predicting whether someone shot and killed by police was unarmed was whether or not they were black," said Justin Nix, a criminal-justice researcher at the University of Louisville and one of the report's authors, said in April. "Crime variables did not matter in terms of predicting whether the person killed was unarmed."

"This just bolsters our confidence that there is some sort of implicit bias going on," Nix said. "Officers are perceiving a greater threat when encountered by unarmed black citizens."

Racial disparities in the rate of police shootings do not mean, though, that criminal-justice experts are not concerned about how many people are being killed by police officers - including white people.

Statistics kept by the FBI have never counted more than 460 police shootings in a single year. However, The Post'sdatabase chronicled 990 fatal police shootings in 2015, and 494 of those people were white.

Among them are several cases that drew national headlines. Two officers will face trial for the shooting of 6-year-old Jeremy Mardis, 2015's youngest police-shooting victim. The family of Zachary Hammond, who was shot and killed by officers in Seneca, S.C., received a $2.15 million settlement.
[Inside small-town Louisiana feud that led to a 6-year-old boy's police killing]
And the civil suit is still pending in the case of Deven Guilford, a white 17-year-old who was killed during a traffic stop. Guilford flashed his headlights on a snowy Michigan night in February 2015 to signal to an oncoming driver to turn off his high beams. The driver turned out to be an officer, who did a U-turn and pulled Guilford over. In a confrontation captured on several cameras the two argued, then fought.

Guilford voluntarily exited the car and lay on the ground when commanded - but he refused to set down his cellphone. Sheriff's Department Sgt. Jonathan Frost shocked him with a stun gun. The video goes black. Then, the sound of gunshots.

"Deven went from flashing his lights to being dead six minutes later," Hugh Davis, an attorney for Guilford's family, told The Post in December. "And there is no explanation for it."
[The Washington Post's 2015 database of fatal police shootings]
In Fresno, Noble was at least the seventh person shot and killed by city police since 2015, and one of three white men (the other four were Hispanic men), according to The Post'sdatabase.

And cellphone video obtained by the Fresno Bee raises new questions about the police account of the shooting.

In the video, Noble can be seen lying on the ground next to his pickup truck as officers yell at him to keep his hands up. One officer fires one shot. Noble can be seen raising his arm and heard saying, "I've been shot." Then another shot can be heard.

Late last, week the FBI said it would open an investigation.
Steven Rich contributed to this report, which has been updated.

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Analysis | Aren't more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no.

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Dylan Noble died on the last Saturday of June. Police in Fresno, Calif., received a report of a man walking a downtown street with a rifle, but when they arrived, they instead found Noble speeding by in his pickup truck.

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Katherine Green

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WHETHER ON THE SIDE OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS OR THE POLICE, THERE IS AN URGENT NEED TO SHIFT THE FOCUS FROM BLAME GAME TO INTROSPECTION--BEFORE MORE NEEDLESS LOSS OF BLACK OR BLUE LIVES.

She: "Please stop by at the store and pick us up some apples and oranges."

He: "Hmm, why?? Do you have a problem with bananas and grapes? Aren't all fruits good for you? Why are you favoring only apples and oranges?"

Pardon the pun, but that's a darn fruity response, wouldn't you say?

It's no different when your knee jerk response to "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) is "All Lives Matter" (ALM). And, unlike buying fruits, throwing out an ALM in response to BLM is more than just nonsensical--it's downright pejorative. It's like flipping the middle finger at the problem--an alarmingly disproportionate number of Black men being killed in police encounters, often in questionable circumstances: Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, and now, back-to-back killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille. And for each such high profile case, there are hundreds of others that remain under the radar.

Some of us--Asians, Hispanics, Whites or other--become part of the problem when we fail to recognize these feelings of anguish, and in our callous cluelessness shove an "All Lives Matter" in the face of "Black Lives Matter." The attitude that comes with ALM (versus the empathy that BLM evokes) prevents non-Blacks from understanding the pain, helplessness, fear, and anger that Blacks are feeling. It's an epidemic!

Under the current circumstances, BLM is not only a valid movement, but a direly needed one.
Corruption of the Black Lives Matter movement
But as with every activist movement that involves the masses, there is the possibility of corruption of original values, objectives, and methods. In the case of BLM, its fringe has engaged in inflammatory rhetoric and hyperbole--making the entire police fraternity its enemy. That's a recipe for escalating--not solving--the problem!

The overall Blacks-police dynamic can be reversed only if BLM shifts some of its energy from laying the entire blame on cops in general, to also introspecting to see the role and responsibility they have to improve the situation. (The reverse is also equally needed: introspection and correction of police procedures and culture).
Introspection on the side of Black Lives Matter
This brings us to a critical element at play in the dynamics between law enforcement and Blacks that is largely ignored in BLM activism: the conduct of civilians in a police encounter. In far too many high profile incidents of Black men being killed by police, there has been at least one or more of the following on the part of the victim: disobedience, defiance, arguing, resisting arrest, aggression, absconding, brandishing a weapon, etc. Let me be very clear on two points (a) I realize such is not the case in all encounters where the victim ended up dead. (b) Such bad behavior by itself cannot be reason enough for the police to use lethal force, in most cases.

And yet I am surprised that time and again videos are circulated on social media as evidence of police brutality--with not a single word about the fact that the encounter would not have escalated if the civilian would have simply avoided the above mentioned set of behaviors. I am not sure if it's an ingrained reaction to the history of slavery and the abuses suffered at the hands of the KKK during the segregation eras, but there seems to be widespread defiance and distrust of the police among African Americans. It's sad to think that many of the dead victims in these cases would have been alive if they had simply complied with an officer of the law.

Yes, it's quite possible that you may be unfairly pulled over, or that the officer abuses his authority. But what civilians forget is that a police encounter is not a court of law. This is not the time and place to argue your case. The one and only thing to do when pulled over by the police is to obey their orders. That's the only way law enforcement can be effective. Will there be officers who will abuse this privilege? Of course. But if you have the misfortune of facing one of them, your chances of not being killed are much better if you are completely compliant.

The civilian has far more control and responsibility in a police encounter than what BLM activism suggests. If the movement is serious about preventing such police abuse, it needs to put at least some emphasis on encouraging Black youngsters to cooperate with, instead of defying law enforcement.
Introspection on the side of the police
On the side of the police, it's disturbing to see, in some of these high profile encounters, trigger-happy officers apparently on a murderous rampage--as opposed to trained professionals who should know how to defuse a hostile fellow with a single strategic shot or two. Yes, yes, I understand the adrenaline rush, and how fear impairs judgement; but I am sorry if I hold professionally trained police officers to higher standards than civilians. Time and again we have seen officers gunning down a civilian who was clear no threat to anyone.

While obedience to the police is the best advice for civilians, a civilian's insubordination alone should not be reason enough for a police officer to escalate an encounter to having to shoot him. Only the threat of bodily harm to the officer or others justifies pulling out Tasers or guns. Most everything else, such as insubordination, could perhaps be better addressed through summons, fines, and even jail time--after the fact, when the heightened tension of a roadside encounter has faded. But there seems to be a police culture in some circles that thinks otherwise. I'm no expert, but what I see is Tasers and guns coming out way too soon and often in disproportion to the offense at hand.

From better background checks to better training, there's much that police departments could do to improve the situation. Meditation, for example, has been found very effective by police departments in Canada and elsewhere in the world. Advanced practitioners claim that sustained practice brings a slow-motion-like trance in high adrenaline situations, giving one a better access to the gap between stimulus and response--the crucial factor for so many policing situations.

Regardless of the specific solutions, the polarization, and consequently the collateral damage to Black lives and Blue lives, will only get worse--unless both sides shift from blame-game to introspection.

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Here's What's Missing From 'Black Lives Matter'

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WHETHER ON THE SIDE OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS OR THE POLICE, THERE IS AN URGENT NEED TO SHIFT THE FOCUS FROM BLAME GAME TO INTROSPECTION--BEFORE MORE NEEDLESS LOSS OF BLACK OR BLUE LIVES. She: "Please stop by at the store and pick us up some apples and oranges." He: "Hmm, why??